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Reports from the National Conference on Media Reform
Update from St. Louis - 9:00 p.m. EST, 8:00 CST in R&B town!
Hello from St. Louis -
Many thanks to Dwahzon for taking my scattered report earlier. There's so much to report; I don't even know where to begin. As Phil Donahue said, it's great to be here with an "assembly of people of conscience."
The one message I take away from today's sessions is that there is so much more happening in the world -- and specifically Iraq -- that we're not being told. This is nothing new to many people here at the DCP, but it was amazing and enlightening to hear in a public venue from notable people/jounalists/reporters who have been there and have seen what's happening, only to return to the US and find out how they're being silenced by corporate media.
Naomi Klein gave a very compelling speech about how media is really the meta-issue to all the social movements that are happening in our country and the world. Media reform is a global issue because all nations have to live with the US's lack of democracy, but the source of the problem must be tackled from within the US. Our task is not to plea for the corporate media's attention, but to revolutionize the media! Electronic media is one system we can use to manage public outrage and compassion.
Ms. Klein, who is a Canadian, born to US parents who left during the Viet Nam War, says we must root media reform in the War in Iraq. There is more than enough news out there on a weekly basis to show how weak our administration and media monopoly is. We’ve seen horrendous photos from Abu Ghraib, but the media is consistently "turning down the volume" on the issues we face, treating them as if they really weren't there. The result: compassion fatigue. But we need to ask, “Where’s the justice? Where’s the empathy?”
We must amplify the war; we should demand that the war be covered – demand to know why we are fighting this war, what the economic impact is. It’s a deep insult that we can’t get more news and we should be morally outraged. “We can’t bring the troops home if we can’t see them!”
Being outraged alone makes people think you’re crazy. Outrage needs company. But we cannot ignore the need to amplify the issues. We certainly need to understand the methods of amplification as well as find our own methods of amplification.
And that, my fellow DCPers, is what we’re all about and why we’re here – to give voice to our outrage, and to turn that outrage into action.
I also attended a session where Patti Smith, poet, singer, songwriter, musician extraordinare very eloquently paraphrased something she heard Ralph Nader say: “When something is worth having, you have to be able to fight, and to lose and lose and lose until you win.”
Now I'm off to hear some of that great local R&B...more tomorrow and tomorrow night, when Al Franken will be hosting the induction ceremony for the Big Media Hall of Shame. Any guesses who will get it???
REPORT FROM THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR MEDIA REFORM:
Marianne Wood is representing the Democracy Cell Project (DCP) in St Louis at the Freepress National Conference for Media Reform. She’s just reported in after the opening session.
There’s a lot of energy and a lot of people here. The theme of the opening session was:
People get ready, there’s a train a-coming. We are here to celebrate successes and gather the momentum.
Other interesting notes from the opening session:
St Louis is the home of Joseph Pulitzer… he would be horrified at what the media has become.
There are 2500 people registered to attend the conference… they had to close off registration. All 50 states and DC and 8-10 countries are represented.
Robert McChesney – President of Free Press spoke… opened with a Chinese proverb about crisis and there is both danger and opportunity in crisis. Said we have to recognize the danger and the spectacular opportunity. …Had a Freepress Media Reform conference 18 months ago. This conference has doubled in size. Plan to have another one in another 18 months. ...We have to make media reform an issue that people talk about it… have to take it to the public.
Amy Goodman spoke; she gave a history of grassroots movements. …Said we have extreme media today, not mainstream media. …We need to address the question: how do we un-embed the media? Embedded media as we have today is co-opted and we have pundits who know so little about so much. …We need less reality TV and more of the reality of war. Injured soldiers brought home at night so they don’t draw attention. That’s how we’ll stop the war.
Marianne reported that she connected with the Champaign-Urbana IndyMedia group and they’ve invited DCP to visit them. They did a local campaign… raised $75k and purchased a local empty post office building and are using that as their center now.
Pictures and more reporting from the Freepress Media Reform conference in St Louis to come.
More info on conference: http://www.freepress.net/conference/
Go Marianne! Learn lots!
YES YES YES NOW LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR RECRUITMENT MR BUSH WOW
Navy Judge Finds War Protest Reasonable
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 13 May 2005
"I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal."
-- Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant, presiding at Pablo Paredes' court-martial
In a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a Navy judge gave Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes no jail time for refusing orders to board the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard before it left San Diego with 3,000 sailors and Marines bound for the Persian Gulf on December 6th. Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant found Pablo guilty of missing his ship's movement by design, but dismissed the charge of unauthorized absence. Although Pablo faced one year in the brig, the judge sentenced him to two months' restriction and three months of hard labor, and reduced his rank to seaman recruit.
"This is a huge victory," said Jeremy Warren, Pablo's lawyer. "A sailor can show up on a Navy base, refuse in good conscience to board a ship bound for Iraq, and receive no time in jail," Warren added. Although Pablo is delighted he will not to go jail, he still regrets that he was convicted of a crime. He told the judge at sentencing: "I am guilty of believing this war is illegal. I am guilty of believing war in all forms is immoral and useless, and I am guilty of believing that as a service member I have a duty to refuse to participate in this War because it is illegal."
Pablo maintained that transporting Marines to fight in an illegal war, and possibly to commit war crimes, would make him complicit in those crimes. He told the judge, "I believe as a member of the armed forces, beyond having a duty to my chain of command and my President, I have a higher duty to my conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these higher duties dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or indirect, in the current aggression that has been unleashed on Iraq."
Pablo said he formed his views about the illegality of the war by reading truthout.org, listening to Democracy Now!, and reading articles by Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Naomi Klein, Stephen Zunes, and Marjorie Cohn, as well as Kofi Annan's statements that the war is illegal under the UN Charter, and material on the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals.
I testified at Pablo's court-martial as a defense expert on the legality of the war in Iraq, and the commission of war crimes by US forces. My testimony corroborated the reasonableness of Pablo's beliefs. I told the judge that the war violates the United Nations Charter, which forbids the use of force, unless carried out in self-defense or with the approval of the Security Council, neither of which obtained before Bush invaded Iraq. I also said that torture and inhuman treatment, which have been documented in Iraqi prisons, constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and are considered war crimes under the US War Crimes Statute. The United States has ratified both the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, making them part of the supreme law of the land under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
I noted that the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires that all military personnel obey lawful orders. Article 92 of the UCMJ says, "A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States...." Both the Nuremberg Principles and the Army Field Manual create a duty to disobey unlawful orders. Article 509 of Field Manual 27-10, codifying another Nuremberg Principle, specifies that "following superior orders" is not a defense to the commission of war crimes, unless the accused "did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful."
I concluded that the Iraq war is illegal. US troops who participate in the war are put in a position to commit war crimes. By boarding that ship and delivering Marines to Iraq - to fight in an illegal war, and possibly to commit war crimes - Pablo would have been complicit in those crimes. Therefore, orders to board that ship were illegal, and Pablo had a duty to disobey them.
On cross-examination, Navy prosecutor Lt. Jonathan Freeman elicited testimony from me that the US wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan also violated the UN Charter, as neither was conducted in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council. Upon the conclusion of my testimony, the judge said, "I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal."
The Navy prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Pablo to nine months in the brig, forfeiture of pay and benefits, and a bad conduct discharge. Lt. Brandon Hale argued that Pablo's conduct was "egregious," that Pablo could have "slinked away with his privately-held beliefs quietly." The public nature of Pablo's protest made it more serious, according to the chief prosecuting officer.
But Pablo's lawyer urged the judge not to punish Pablo more harshly for exercising his right of free speech. Pablo refused to board the ship not, as many others, for selfish reasons, but rather as an act of conscience, Warren said.
"Pablo's victory is an incredible boon to the anti-war movement," according to Warren. Since December 6th, Pablo has had a strong support network. Camilo Mejia, a former Army infantryman who spent nine months in the brig at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for refusing to return to Iraq after a military leave, was present throughout Pablo's court-martial. Tim Goodrich, co-founder of Iraq Veterans against the War, also attended the court-martial. "We have all been to Iraq, and we support anyone who stands in nonviolent opposition," he said. Fernando Suárez del Solar and Cindy Sheehan, both of whom lost sons in Iraq, came to defend Pablo.
The night before his sentencing, many spoke at a program in support of Pablo. Mejia thanked Pablo for bringing back the humanity and doubts about the war into people's hearts. Sheehan, whose son, K.C., died two weeks after he arrived in Iraq, said, "I was told my son was killed in the war on terror. He was killed by George Bush's war of terror on the world."
Aidan Delgado, who received conscientious objector status after spending nine months in Iraq, worked in the battalion headquarters at the Abu Ghraib prison. Confirming the Red Cross's conclusion that 70 to 90 percent of the prisoners were there by mistake, Delgado said that most were suspected only of petty theft, public drunkenness, forging documents and impersonating officials. "At Abu Ghraib, we shot prisoners for protesting their conditions; four were killed," Delgado maintained. He has photographs of troops "scooping their brains out."
Pablo's application for conscientious objector status is pending. He has one year of Navy service left. If his C.O. application is granted, he could be released. Or he could receive an administrative discharge. Worst case scenario, he could be sent back to Iraq. But it is unlikely the Navy will choose to go through this again.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051305X.shtml
Marianne,
Get lots of great ideas and we'll carry them forth together.
You go girl!!!
Hello all, and before I go on any further, let me just say that the internetS have been a major problem for me for the last two days. I won't go into detail, only say GRRRRRRRRRR, and then move on.
I am so glad Marianne is at the conference, and I look forward to her reports.
To Ira-as far as our Pa. bases go, I have not heard a peep out of Santorum yet, but I'll keep you posted.
To Indy--fork over a 'C' note and go see Howie, it will do you good to rub elbows with the na-bobs. (lol-kidding!!!)
To the good students of Princeton, you rock my world, kids!!!
And a hello and how are ya to all the rest of you that I've missed the last few days!!!!
To
from Salon.com
When suicide bombings are newsworthy
by Mark Follett
Iraqi insurgents have unleashed a wave of carnage over the last two weeks, primarily using suicide attacks, in an attempt to disrupt the newly formed Shiite majority government. The eruption of violence has been as intense as any since U.S. troops seized Baghdad more than two years ago. As the New York Times reported late Wednesday -- after yet another series of bombings stretching from Baghdad to Kurdish territory 150 miles north -- the number of Iraqi soldiers, police officers and recruits killed in the wave of attacks now totals more than 250. At least 150 civilians have also been killed during the days of bloodshed, bringing the toll to more than 400 killed. (And undoubtedly many hundreds more wounded.)
This is anything but ho-hum evidence of "some insurgents willing and able to kill civilians," as John Tierney, conservative columnist and heir to William Safire at the New York Times, would have the American public think. This is a lot of insurgents willing and able to kill lots of civilians, and Iraqi and U.S. troops -- despite the continued presence of more than 140,000 of the latter, and despite some fairly rosy prognostications of late from the Pentagon and Bush White House.
If anything, the violence is a potent sign that U.S. and new Iraqi government forces are still unable to get a grip on security, and that the post-Saddam brew of emboldened ethnic factions may well boil over into full-scale civil war. That's a message, of course, that Sunni and other Arab militants operating there would like to get across. Tierney argued earlier this week, to considerable fanfare, that a misguided press is helping them do so. (Perhaps as the new guy on the job he felt he had to make an impression. Peddling a flimsy and not terribly original idea, he did.) But if all the journalists suddenly packed up and went home, the picture of Iraq right now wouldn't look one iota different, at least not for those on the ground. Stateside, it might go from only marginally interrupting "Survivor" and "American Idol," to not interrupting them at all. It might give President Bush a little nudge up from the current quagmire of public disapproval on the war. But changing the channel isn't going to ensure next season's premiere of "Democracy Dawns in the Middle East" any more than it will help bring the men and women in uniform safely back home.
A newsflash for Tierney and all the others on the right eager to declare the media tangled up in its own "liberal bias," or just plain in cahoots with the insurgency: The story here isn't 100 television cameras aiding and abetting the militants. It's 100 years of acid history uncorked by a U.S. invasion. It's the Bush administration planning for the Iraqis to throw flowers -- not their own bodies strapped with explosives -- at their liberators' feet.
-- Mark Follman
[08:30 EDT, May 12, 2005]
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/12/bombings/index.html
Fight for Media Reform
by John Nichols
The struggle to repair the dangerously dysfunctional media system that tells us more about Michael Jackson's trial than about the truth of what is going on in Iraq will be a long and difficult one.
But this fight is on, and it is a fight we dare not lose -- as it is a struggle for nothing less than the future of freedom of the press and our very democracy.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0512-22.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of These Days
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Whenever I get asked to speak about the media and its role in our world, I always remember something that happened to me in the fall of 2002.
snip~~
I have this dream. In my dream, I turn on my TV and CNN is on. Some talking head is there to do the top of the hour report. In my dream, the talking head says, "Today in Iraq, the 26,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, the 500 tons which is one million pounds of sarin, mustard and VX gas, the 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, the mobile biological weapons labs, the uranium from Niger and the robust nuclear weapons program that George W. Bush told us about in his January 2003 State of the Union address were, once again, not found anywhere. Now here's Flappy with the weather."
One of these days, my friends. One of these days.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051105A.shtml
More Naomi Klein (on Guantanamo):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1483893,00.html
She will not back candidates in our two-party system though. She is pretty far left, & an antiglobalizationist like George Monbiot.
Also very good:
http://www.robert-fisk.com
http://www.gregpalast.com
http://www.juancole.com
All good, then remember to vote pragmatically.
We have to do that still.
good site, good links:
http://www.newscorpse.com
See also "Sites to See" in the Forum
otv4d---
i would not bet my personal/private account on ever hearing that broadcast.
tut~
I concur. Its Will Pitt's dream, but alas, only a dream.
Coming soon to the SUV bumper in front of you:
if you thought the rightwing-bush worship couldn't possibly get any more ridiculous, you are wrong.
here ya go::
http://www.bushfish.org/index.html
This might help you feel better:
http://www.bushislord.com/index.php
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushlord.htm
Touche!
Thanks for the TGIF humor!
Sometimes we just have to laugh a little, to make it through.
Today the BBC had a report on the new movie about the Crusades. They interviewed several experts on that period, who talked about how Hollywood epics are always revisionist and glammed up, not particularly true to history. They also played the sound bite of W calling the "war on terror" a "Crusade," right after 9/11. The commented that in the west, the Crusades are thought of as being historic and over. However, in the mideast, they are thought to have been restarted by the west in the 1990s, using economic and political means to put down the mideast. They do not see it the same at all. That's why reports of a Quran being put into a toilet at Guantanamo are sparking protests all over the Muslim world now, from Afghanistan to Indonesia.
Separation of church and state is the only way to avoid "clash of civilizations" and prevent replay/continuation of the Dark Ages.
Interesting stuff from Ron Chusid at http://www.lightupthedarkness.org
The Extremist War on Moderates
Over at Daily Kos, Armando has a post entitled "The Extremist War on Moderates" . He is speaking of the attacks from the extremists in control of the Republican Party on the moderates in the party.
Meanwhile, his site has had three front page attacks so far this week on John Kerry, the party's last Presidential candidate and a man with a long history of fighting for liberal issues. I have held off on completing my full response to the latest attacks, but I could not resist a brief comment on the hypocrisy shown this morning by Armando. As those of you who followed yesterday's thread at Kos are aware, Armando repeatedly responded to my criticism of their flawed arguments and misquotation of Kerry by launching obscenities and charges of lying, while failing to write a single word of meaningful refutation.
We cannot claim the high moral ground compared to Republican extremists when Democratic extremists do the same. Similarly we cannot protest the vicious attacks of the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters when people like Kos and Armando do the same, although with even less intelligence and wit than we see from their equivalents on the right.
I hope we learn a lesson from the Republican's fall into the grasp of the extremists. If Democrats allow the likes of Kos and Armando to become our leaders, we are no better.
You tell 'em, Ron!
Since it is a slow night and Mr. M was talking about Trains...
WhooowhoooOoooOOooOOOooOOOooOOOOooOoOoOOoO
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If this is pooched, Dick would you please fix your font...ASCII is back! LOL!
Posted by: DiAnne at May 13, 2005 10:50 PM
DiAnne - This is amazing. I met the person who put up this site today and spent quite a bit of time talking with him. He's a great artist as well as an activist.
Late night, I am in San Francisco wishing I could be in two places at once. The other city would be St. Louis. To see that Champaingn-Urbana raised 75K for the progressive efforts makes me wish I could be in three places. The other would be my alma mater.
NotmyPresident. Thanks for the laughs. They are good for the spirit.
By the way, I have noticed more and more people are angry with George Bush. Sitting on a cable car today. I was pleasantly surprised to hear people talking about how this country is turning into a two class society. The super rich and the very poor-no middle class. This was on a cable car, and I didn't even start the conversation! Also at the airport yesterday two people asked me about the book I was reading: God's Politics by James Wallis. Also the flight attendant asked me about the book. All said to me how wrong it was for our country to be stuck in this war. In each instance people blamed George Bush, and I never heard an objection.
Senator Kennedy
will be appearing on CNN's "Inside Politics" today at 3:30 PM EST, and on CBS' "Face the Nation" this Sunday, May 15th, to talk about a variety of issues, including his new immigration proposal, on which he is working with Senator John McCain, and and the fight over President Bush's judicial nominees.
For more details on these issues, go to http://www.tedkennedy.com/journal
Check out the great speech he gave last week. I posted it earlier.
Marianne
You mean the NewsCorpse site? Cool! I heard about it from Bert at Vets for Peace, Mpls.
Great report, by the way! So glad you are in St. Louis - & enjoy the R&B (love R&B)!
Morning DCPer's
Check the list of blogs "blogging" at the National Conference on Media Reform.
http://www.freepress.net/conference/=blogs
ANNOUNCER: In the old days, war profiteering was a grueling round-the-clock job. You actually had to make something, like planes or guns, and then overcharge the government obscenely. Now, thanks to the Republicans, countless Americans are becoming "war profiteers" in their spare time - and you can, too. Riches once thought to be the exclusive preserve of a few unsavory arms merchants have been made available to thousands of successful Americans, many of whom pull in the cash literally as they sleep!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/opinion/14miller.html?
Read the Republican Guide to Tax Cuts
Also:
Bush Told Blair Invasion was "Inevitable"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051405Z.shtml
But we all knew this. I knew from the day of Coup 2000 that we were headed there.
-- By the way, great link to the coverage of the media convention in the FreePress link!!
Bush wanted people in the former Soviet satellite republics to rise up against authoritarian governments and support democracy. Now they're doing it - in Uzbekhistan, but there we support the authoritarian government that is putting down the demonstrations in a bloody manner. This is confusing.
Typical news report:
Paris Hilton hates reading the menu!:-
Hotel heiress and socialite Paris Hilton is not in the habit of doing much by herself and apparently hates reading the menu when she dines out.
The Reality series star reportedly amused former Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson when she refused to read the menu at a restaurant.The blonde socialite was dining out with Anderson when she suddenly flew into a rage because no one would read the contents out to her, reports the Sun.
"She's funny. Last time I met her we were in a restaurant together she slammed the menu down and screamed. 'I hate reading! Someone tell me what's on the menu!' Pammie was quoted by GQ magazine as saying.
"I mean, I'm blonde but c'mon," she added.
The Department of Defense is now inserting Body counts into news from the Middle Eastern Front, as if to keep track of who is winning.
The ruse of body counts is a dispicable method to justify deaths of American Soldiers Honoring their duty. That our White House could be capable of that level of Service and Honor, would truly be something.
Nobody will win this war, unless we murder a few million Iraqis and level whats left of their Nation. Then we will no longer be a Democracy nor a Republic, but a maniacal Regime deserving the worlds emnity.
Thank God for the stories I am able to read here, American Citizens standing up to Power gone mad. Freedoms and Rights are not place holders in the Constitution. They are Fighting Words, meant to boil your blood, stir your soul, and force action.
We are Meant to be arrested protesting this Adminstration. We are meant to be derided in the mainstream media. We are meant to stand in the rain before the Capital bringing attention to the corruption of our Constitution.
It is the path to change, to force a Nation to look itself in the Mirror. To look at its leadership and find it desperately wanting of Honesty, Courage and Integrity.
There is an Illusion of freedom, and the reality of freedom. There are Illusions of rights, and the reality of rights enumerated in the Constitution. This Nation does not know the difference any longer. If it did there would be marches that would tremble the very columns of the White House.
DiAnne - Thanks for the plug.
Marianne - Thanks for the ride to the Loop. It was so great meeting you. Promise to keep in touch.
btw...Great site! I'm gonna spend some more time here when I get home.