The Furious Spinner

Does one take a break because one is broken or to prevent the breaking? Or neither? Much has happened this week, personally and nationally. I'm not sure I can remember it all. British MP George Galloway came to Washington and told the U.S. Senators that they had caused the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis, as well as the deaths of over 1,600 U.S. soldiers and the wounding of over 15,000 soldiers. He didn't mince his words. It was a great thing to see and hear. (He has been accused of corruption in the oil for food scandal—falsely as far as I can tell. He's a peacenik, and you know how the US and British government feel about those kinds of people.)

Galloway told the Senators,"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You trashed my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies."

Speaking of sending young men and women off to slaughter, we found out this week that investigative journalism isn't dead--it's alive in well in a high school in Colorado. Senior David McShane went to an Army recruiting office and pretended he was a high school dropout with a drug problem. The recruiter told him how to get a fake high school diploma and how to pass his drug test. McShane taped this encounter and wrote an article for his school paper. Kind of puts all those gr'ups writing for the Big Time to shame, don't it? While Wolf Blitzer and all the rest blather on about Michael Jackson, etc., this young man did some real jouralism. Bravo! Because of McShane's work (and some other reports of similar ethical...slip-ups by the recruiters) the Army ordered their recruiters to "stand down" for a day and to get their minds right.

We went to see Jeff Cohen, the founder of the media watch group FAIR, last night. He's worked for CNN, MSNBC, and FOX as a liberal commentator so he has a front row seat to the corporate media who are "sitting on the windpipe the First Amendment." He talked about their "drunken exuberance" for celeberity news, which is their "weapons of mass distraction." The corporate media likes us distracted because then we aren't asking any questions. The networks are terrified of being accused of being liberal. On one network where he worked, if they had a liberal guest on a program, they had to have at least two other guests who weren't liberal on at the same time. (I know that's a lousy sentence but it's almost midnight and I can hardly think.) Showing footage of civilian casualties was forbidden and if something did slip in somehow, the civilian casualties were blamed on the oppressive government instead of our bombs.

War is another reality show to the corporate media, with its own theme music and logo. He talked about what many of us have noted: the people who were right about the Iraq war (no WMD, etc.) are no longer on the air; the people who were wrong are still on the air. "The Bush administration has contempt for facts." He talked about the Ron Suskind interview piece from last fall (which I had read and blocked out because it was so terrifying) where he quotes a Bush aide telling him that "guys like" Suskind were "'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

Cohen had some good news. The rise of the independent media might be able to shift things. Indy media can challenge biases and exclusion, build non-corporate media, and work toward media reform. Let's hope he's right.

And the Senate is still heading toward the nuclear option. They want to cement Bush's position as Emperor. I haven't the energy to think about it right this moment.

Here at home, my mother seems to be on the road to recovery, knock on wood. We had the benefit for Linda today. Lots of people worked really long hours and donated lots of moula. It was a boost to so many of us for the event to be successful. After working in the peace group and trying often unsuccessfully to get people involved and excited, it was good to see the community come out and support one of their own. Blessed be.

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.