Entries tagged with “NPR” from Reality Window

It's great that Roxana Saberi has been released. And yes, anyone who's listened to the news on NPR or any of the cable news shows knows about it. Funny though that we haven't heard about any of the journalists the US is holding without trial on a daily basis, much less a weekly or even monthly basis, from any of these same news sources.

Glenn Greenwald points out the hypocrisy in the media's coverage in this post:

Saberi's release is good news, as her conviction occurred as part of extremely dubious charges and unreliable judicial procedures in Iran.  And, as Ambinder suggested, her release most likely is a positive by-product of the commendable (though far from perfect) change in tone towards Iran specifically and the Muslim world generally from the Obama administration.  But imprisoning journalists -- without charges or trials of any kind -- was and continues to be a staple of America's "war on terror," and that has provoked virtually no objections from America's journalists who, notably, instead seized on Saberi's plight in Iran to demonstrate their claimed commitment to defending persecuted journalists.

Beginning in 2001, the U.S. held Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj for six years in Guantanamo with no trial of any kind, and spent most of that time interrogating him not about Terrorism, but about Al Jazeera.  For virtually the entire time, the due-process-less, six-year-long imprisonment of this journalist by the U.S. produced almost no coverage -- let alone any outcry -- from America's establishment media, other than some columns by Nicholas Kristof (though, for years, al-Haj's imprisonment was a major media story in the Muslim world).  As Kristof noted when al-Haj was finally released in 2007:  "there was never any real evidence that Sami was anything but a journalist"; "the interrogators quickly gave up on asking him substantive questions" and "instead, they asked him to spy on Al-Jazeera if he was released;" and "American officials, by imprisoning an Al-Jazeera journalist without charges or meaningful evidence, have done far more to damage American interests in the Muslim world than anything Sami could ever have done."

In Iraq, we imprisoned Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein -- part of AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning war coverage -- for almost two years with no charges of any kind, after Hussein's photographs from the Anbar province directly contradicted Bush administration claims about the state of affairs there.  And that behavior was far from aberrational for the U.S., as the Committee to Protect Journalists -- which led the effort to free Saberi -- documented:

Hussein's detention is not an isolated incident. Over the last three years, dozens of journalists--mostly Iraqis--have been detained by U.S. troops, according to CPJ research. While most have been released after short periods, in at least eight cases documented by CPJ Iraqi journalists have been held by U.S. forces for weeks or months without charge or conviction. In one highly publicized case, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, a freelance cameraman working for CBS, was detained after being wounded by U.S. military fire as he filmed clashes in Mosul in northern Iraq on April 5, 2005. U.S. military officials claimed footage in his camera led them to suspect Hussein had prior knowledge of attacks on coalition forces. In April 2006, a year after his arrest, Hussein was freed after an Iraqi criminal court, citing a lack of evidence, acquitted him of collaborating with insurgents.

Right now -- as the American press corps celebrates itself for demanding Saberi's release in Iran -- the U.S. continues to imprison Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer for Reuters, even though an Iraqi court last December -- more than five months ago -- found that there was no evidence to justify his detention and ordered him released.  The U.S. -- over the objections of the CPJ, Reporters Without Borders and Reuters -- refused to recognize the validity of that Iraqi court order and announced it would continue to keep him imprisoned.

One finds only a tiny fraction of news coverage in the U.S. regarding the treatment of al-Haj, Hussein, Jassam and these other imprisoned journalists as has been devoted to Saberi.  It ought to be exactly the reverse:  the American media should be far more interested in, and opposed to, infringements of press freedoms by the U.S. Government than by governments of other countries.  Yet the former merits hardly a peep, while the latter provokes all sorts of smug and self-righteous protests from American journalists who suddenly discover their brave commitment to press freedoms when all that requires is pointing to a demonized, hated foreign government and complaining.

There's more. Be sure to check out the information included in his updates to his post.

And to the news media, why don't you turn your investigative reporters loose on some of the stories behind the imprisonment of these other journalists? Or is it only American journalists held by foreign governments that are worthy of your coverage?

I've written about this before on other blogs. Ilona Meagher's PTSD Combat blog and her subsequent book, 'Moving a Nation to Care', were among the notable earlier bloggers to take on PTSD and the suicide rate in our military.

NPR's two significant investigative report series by Daniel Zwerdling and Tom Bowen (1, 2) aired over the last few years, focused on PTSD, suicide and how it was being addressed or not being addressed in the military. Scroll to the bottom of each of the NPR links for links to all the related stories in each of the series and followup reporting.

All that just illustrates that this report by MSNBC on the latest stats in which the number of suicides exceeded the number of casualties due to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, should not be a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention.

This is a complete version of the MSNBC interview with General Peter Chiarelli, Army Vice Chief of Staff.

Ilona pointed out a blogpost by a vet named Scott Lee who explains what he struggled with in transitioning back to civilian life. It's powerful. Go read.

Then think about the news stories concerning Fort Drum and how the Army pressured the people there to delay or reject returning soldiers' paperwork for disability benefits. And of course, the stories from the Washington Post series on the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the complete fiasco there.

I expect a lot from the new administration but it's just as important that the current military command hierarchy steps up to the plate. This is not about proving how tough you are. It's about taking care of our soldiers and vets who fight with their minds and hearts as well as with their bodies in a war zone that has no front, a zone in which they are always on alert.

Glenn Greenwald deserves an award for his efforts at keeping the media honest about their reporting on John Brennan and why his name was withdrawn from consideration as director of the CIA. As one of the "liberal bloggers" whose name is maligned in some of the reporting, I greatly appreciate his efforts at setting the record straight. His conversation with Tom Gjelten of NPR over his reporting is the epitome of such efforts. It culminated in this statement by Tom at one point:

Okay. That would be fair. That's how I should have said it. You're absolutely right. I should have said it that way. That's a little bit - and I'm sure you recognize this - I short-handed it and sometimes it's necessary to short-hand things and sometimes when you do that, you over-simplify what is a more complicated issue. I acknowledge that.

Unfortunately, NPR isn't the only media organization that's engaged in this misrepresentation and the conversation between Tom and Glenn begs the question, "Who's manipulating who and for what purpose?" Glenn goes into more detail in this post, "The CIA and its reporter friends: Anatomy of a backlash":

The backlash from the "intelligence community" over John Brennan's withdrawal -- which pro-Brennan sources are now claiming was actually forced on Brennan by the Obama team -- continues to intensify. Just marvel at how coordinated (and patently inaccurate) their messaging is, and -- more significantly -- how easily they can implant their message into establishment media outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they're told from their cherished "intelligence sources" and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true and/or hearing any divergent views...

Glenn goes onto to quote example after example of media verbiage which explicitly misrepresents what the liberal bloggers actually wrote. How difficult is it for journalists to actually go out and read the liberal blogs? Had they actually done so rather than taking John Brennan's word for it or that of his supporters, one hopes they would have found it much more difficult to write what they did.

Mr. Greenwald goes onto point out just why this is such a serious affront to good journalism and democracy in 5 well-made points that should trouble any thinking person.

All of this illustrates the unparalleled power which the "intelligence community" exerts over our political debates, how easy it is for them to manipulate intelligence reporters who depend on cooperation with their intelligence sources and who thus identify with them and happily amplify whatever they are fed, and -- most of all -- how profoundly unrealistic is the expectation that, now that Democrats are "in control," they're just going to blithely proceed to impose all sorts of new restrictions on the CIA and the rest of the Surveillance State -- let alone launch probing investigations and impose accountability for past crimes -- without much of a major fight.

Just consider what all of this "reporting" has in common:

(1) All of these reports rely exclusively on pro-Brennan sources, allies and friends of his in the CIA who have fanned out to plant their storyline with their favorite reporters. [...]

In all of these accounts, Brennan's false claims of unfair persecution -- that he was attacked simply because he happened to be at the CIA -- are fully amplified in detail through his CIA allies, most of whom are quoted at length (though typically behind a generous wall of anonymity). But Brennan's critics are almost never quoted or named ... The "reporting" is all from the perspective of Brennan and his CIA supporters. None of these journalists even entertain the idea of disputing or challenging the pro-Brennan version.

(2) None of this reporting even alludes to, let alone conveys, the central arguments against Brennan and the evidence for those arguments.  Unmentioned are his emphatic advocacy for rendition and "enhanced interrogation tactics."  None of the lengthy Brennan quotes defending these programs are acknowledged, despite the fact that not only bloggers, but also the much-cited psychologists' letter, emphasized those defenses (that letter complained that Brennan "supported Tenet's policies, including 'enhanced interrogations' as well as 'renditions' to torturing countries").  The seminal article on these CIA programs by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer -- who interviewed Brennan and identified him as a "supporter" of these programs despite "the moral, ethical, and legal issues" -- does not exist in the journalists' world.  

What instead pervades these stories is the patently deceitful claim typified by Newsweek's Michael Hirsh, who asserted that the case against Brennan was made "with no direct evidence" and then chuckled that this is "common for the blogging world" -- an ironic observations given that Hirsh himself is either completely ignorant of the ample evidence that was offered or is purposely pretending it doesn't exist in order to defend the CIA official Hirsh lauded as "the first-class professional."  That's how the persecution tale against Brennan is built -- by relying on mindless reporters to distort (when they weren't actively suppressing) the evidence against him.

(3) In these accounts, Brennan is described in reverent terms ("first-class professional"; a "natural candidate"; "the guy who's most qualified for the job") while his critics remain unnamed and unseen though dismissed with derogatory, demonizing terms ("some ill-informed bloggers"; "ill-informed but powerful activists"; "a few obscure blogs"; "bloggers" who don't "have that familiarity").

(4) Concerns over torture and rendition -- despite being widespread among countless military officials and intelligence professionals -- are uniformly depicted as nothing more than ideological idiosyncrasies from the dreaded Left ("left-wing hit job on Brennan"; "largely on the left"; "left-leaning bloggers and columnists"; "Obama's liberal base"; Obama's "most ardent supporters on the left"; "liberal critics"; "liberal bloggers"; "confined to liberal blogs"; "the Democratic base").

Thus:  non-ideological, pragmatic, Serious centrists (which, as everyone knows, is what we need now) are free of this nattering fixation on all this "torture" talk.  Serious adults know that it's time to move on and not hold grudges.  It's only the shrill ideologues on the Left who care about such things and want to hold it against those who defended these programs.  Depicting one's critics as confined to "the Left" is a time-honored Beltway method for rendering the criticisms unserious, and it's in full force here (and, as Digby ironically notes, it is the Right, far more than the Left, that has waged war against the CIA in recent years; the Left has largely defended the CIA against manipulation and abuse by the Bush White House). 

(5) What all of this is -- more than anything else -- is a clear warning to Obama from the CIA about the dangers of paying heed to anti-torture and pro-civil-liberties factions, and they're not really even hiding that.  They're explicitly expressing the message as a warning:  "the President-elect risks sending a troubling signal to the intelligence community."  As Mazzetti and Shane put it after speaking with their favorite sources:    Obama risks "alienating an agency with a central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda."

Those warnings are issued with an eye towards the events they know full well are imminent:  debates over how legally restrained the CIA should be in its interrogation and detention powers; demands that light be shined on what the CIA spent the last eight years doing at the behest of Dick Cheney and with the legal imprimatur of David Addington's cabal; and, most of all, efforts to hold those who committed war crimes accountable (efforts which would and should be directed at high-level Bush policy makers and legal advisers who enabled those crimes, not lower-level intelligence agents, but which the CIA nonetheless fears).

His conclusion should wake more than a few of us up.

What happened with John Brennan is very straightforward and ought not be particularly controversial. This is someone who explicitly defended some of the most controversial Bush interrogation and detention policies. Everything that Obama said about such policies, and everything his supporters believe about them, should, for that reason alone, preclude Brennan from being named to any top intelligence post, let alone CIA Director. It's just as simple as that.

But, as has been historically true, many in "the intelligence community" are outraged by what they perceive as outside "interference" -- as though the CIA shouldn't be subjected to the same set of oversight, limitations, and democratic accountability, debate and restrictions as every other part of government. That something as straightforward as the John Brennan controversy can produce this level of backlash from the intelligence community is a very potent sign of the formidible barriers to real reform of our interrogation and detention framework and, especially, to the prospects for meaningful disclosure of, and accountability for, past crimes.

It appears as if some of the Cheney-Bush attitude about accountability has infected government agencies and the management of our national security. We need some one at the CIA who is willing to put it back on the right track; not use his "influence" to push access journalists into PR journalism on his behalf, which in the end, only demonstrates just how unqualified John Brennan is for the position based on ethical grounds.

NPR's All Things Considered had an interesting piece yesterday afternoon about what happens with Obama's network now that the election is over. One of the people interviewed was Micah Sifry who talked about people in Connecticut who've moved their group onto a platform that will remain active regardless of what happens to mybarackobama.com and allow them to continue organizing. So knowing that Micah had undoubtedly had more to say about it at techpresident.com, I went searching and found this post: What Happens to the Obama Network After the Election?

Take this email exchange that I have had in the last 24 hours with some of the core activists in Connecticut for Obama. Monday, Stephen Wilmarth, the site owner of a Ning social network group called ctobama.org wrote techPresident the following note:

Thought you'd want to keep your eye on this....

As we approach election day, our Connecticut for Obama (Ning) grassroots organizing network Web site will undergo a profound change. Unlike traditional campaign Web sites that will shut down as the activities associated with the election process draw to a close, our netroots organizers will convene and discuss how we turn our registered network users from the task of electing Barack Obama to the office of President, to a network of organizers who can participate in the governing process. Having found our voice, we intend to keep it alive and flourishing and growing long after the campaign has ended, and turn our energies toward the challenges of governing. Our mission is to continue in our role as a group motivated community organizers, to advocate for the issues that brought us into the process in the beginning. We will continue to make use of the rich social media tools and online resources to keep our group of over 1,000 grassroots organizers and campaign workers, many of us new to the political process, highly engaged. So, watch this space! [...]

Do other people share Wilmarth's vision? We're going to find out just how many pretty soon. Jennifer Just, the Obama for America Connecticut field organizer, wrote a quick note affirming Wilmarth's messages to me, saying, "[Obama] wouldn't be here, nor would we, w/out new media...I especially love the book 'here comes everybody' & am v. excited about the future of grassroots organizing after this." I asked her if she thought many of the volunteers working on the campaign now were in it for the longer haul. She wrote back, taking a break from entering data, "MORE than up for it...we can't stand the idea of not working together so we've already talked about ways of working together...likely that we won't all stay together but at least use these tools etc. to move forward on those things that compel each of us."

Micah links to a dkos post that Al Giordano wrote about a panel that he did in Madison on the topic. The diary includes a cautionary tale from the 2004 Kerry-Edwards blog experience:

On Election Night in 2004, the official Kerry-Edwards blog - which had hundreds of fresh comments and news rolling in about problems with the right to vote all day long - was suddenly taken offline at 2 a.m.

One source that was there, staffing the blog, provides this account:

"...at 2 am, without any indication at all, the blog disappeared. No one answered phone calls. It was clear they had all turned out the lights and left. I went into the MT program and saw that Ari had shut it down. I could have turned it back on, but by then I was so pissed--truly, a sense that they never got it, never saw the people who worked so hard on it as the incredibly smart informed and hardworking folks they were, never really understood the relationship between changing hearts and minds through dialogue to the ATM that was feeding them. I left it down.

"People were massively hurt. There was a forum that was on a separate server which was run entirely by volunteers and the campaign did not turn that off; they had forgotten it was there. There was an IRC chat room and most of the bloggers went there; the chat room was run by another volunteer and existed on a server in Kansas, I think. I spent almost 48 hours without sleep in the IRC, helping people cope with their sense of outrage and disappointment, most of which became directed at John Kerry himself, despite my constant efforts to help people separate the issues out."

As one of the people who managed the IRC channel and helped out on the K-E blog, I can attest to that experience. The anger and rage at being shut down so abruptly and relationships severed, coming on top of the shock of Kerry's loss, was phenomenal.

Some of the moderators from the Kerry-Edwards blog and the IRC channel went on to form the Democracy Cell Project. Our logo was "Educate Activate Empower". Unfortunately technology tools such as Ning weren't around yet and we didn't have the funding to create a platform that would work nationally.

That was then. This is now.

And now we do have tools that allow us to expand on the network built by Obama for America. It's exciting to see that Connecticut is leading in this ongoing experiment with their site, newly renamed GroundUp. Interestingly the logo is surprisingly (or not so surprisingly if you think about it) similar to the DCP's. It's "Recruit Empower Multiply".

Speaking of multiplying, there's a number of house-parties and get-togethers scheduled for Dec. 11-14 across the state at which people will be gathering to talk about what they'd like to tackle next. Locations include Stamford, Mystic, New Haven, Windsor, Bloomfield, Middletown, Branford, Glastonbury, Meriden, and East Haddam as of today.

To check further details, use both the GroundUp event list and the mybo search to locate the events.

I'd propose that part of what's next is to see how we connect with activities and groups already organizing and build a highly effective grassroots-netroots organization.

McCain said during his convention speech:

"I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them."

Per the New York Times, the reality is this:

This drastically simplifies what the candidates' tax plans would do. Mr. McCain would preserve all of the Bush tax cuts, while Mr. Obama would let them expire for those making more than $250,000 a year. Mr. McCain would also double the child tax exemption to $7,000 and reduce business taxes. Mr. Obama would reduce income taxes and provide credits for people earning less than $250,000 a year.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that Mr. Obama's plan would amount to a tax cut for 81 percent of all households, or 95.5 percent of those with children. The center calculated that by 2012 the Obama plan would let middle-income taxpayers keep about 5 percent more income on average, or nearly $2,200 a year, while Mr. McCain would give them an average 3 percent break, or about $1,400. The richest 1 percent would pay an average $19,000 more in taxes each year under Mr. Obama's plan but see a tax cut of more than $125,000 under Mr. McCain.

The repetition of outright lies and misrepresentations by the Republican nominees is astounding.

NPR mentioned it in their coverage of the Republican nominees' campaign speeches for today. Don Gonyea noted that she's repeating her lie about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere word for word. The Wall Street Journal mentions it although they don't manage to call it a lie.

How is it that the Republican nominees can stand up in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people and outright lie and no one calls them on it? What does that say for their honesty? Their strength of character? Nothing good.

TPM puts it this way and they did a damn good job of it.

Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report discussed a recent poll ranking the Republican candidates and the difference between what was reported in the poll and what the vote totals were on a straw poll taken at the Values Voters conference.

In short, it showed that Mike Huckabee has a very strong level of support, exceeding that for Romney and Giuliani by far, among the Christian right wing of the Republican party.

I can recall hearing Renee Montagne interview Mike Huckabee on NPR earlier this year and thinking, "If this man wins the Republican nomination, he's a real threat." Despite how far right his policies and positions are, he's a gifted communicator and he comes across as very personable and friendly and able to present those positions in a non-threatening manner. His interview with Robert Siegel also reflected that same approach.

It was this point in particular in the Siegel report that caught my attention.

A Baptist minister by training, Huckabee says that reclaiming a nation for Christ doesn't mean coercing people to be of a particular faith.

"It means that we would reflect what [Christ] reflected, and that is compassion and love," Huckabee says.