Fables of the Reconstruction: Bad Days Ahead in Iraq

Politics

BUSHUSSABRAHAMLINCOLN

At hearings being held in Washington D.C. today and Wednesday, the Senate and House armed services committees are being provided information about current Iraq operations from U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers and State Department Undersecretary Marc Grossman. During one of the worst months of the yearlong campaign in Iraq, members of Congress are finding themselves with more questions and fewer answers.
With the rising death toll and increasing fear that the U.S. lacks an effective plan for success in Iraq, lawmakers intend to address the question of how America got into the dangerous predicament in Iraq, and how it will get out.
Meanwhile (with thanks to Debra Galant for pointing us towards this story), published in a scores of newspapers belonging to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (including The Boston Phoenix, The Village Voice and Seattle Weekly), investigative reporter Jason Vest’s story on Iraq, Fables of the Reconstruction, reports on a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March which reveals that even those who support the current U.S. role in Iraq believe that the conditions are present which will sew the seeds of a coming civil war in the occupation of Iraq.
The memo describes corruption within the Iraqi Governing Council, resentments about the centralization of power in Baghdad, insufficient security in the Green Zone where CPA officials stay, and black-market sales of U.S.-supplied weapons by Iraqi police. As a CPA official writes, “Baghdadis have an uneasy sense that they are heading towards civil war.”

Surprise: Teens Have Little ‘Attachment’ to Newspapers

Media

TEENMAGAZINE

Is it any wonder that teenagers don’t read the daily newspaper, when there are so many alternatives to traditional print media available to them? And just as most savvy teenagers choose to build their own music playlists from songs downloaded from their favourite p2p network, and burn mixed mp3 CDs of their favourite artists, why wouldn’t they choose to receive the news of their choice from new media sources on the Net?
Editor and Publisher magazine reports that on Tuesday the Newspaper Association of American will release a study examining the ‘emotional attachment’ (or lack thereof) that teenagers have to newspapers. In part, the report says teenagers don’t want news that is ‘dumbed down’.
Vancouver’s Province newspaper should take note, and stop pandering to teens with their multi-page spreads of Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. Hint: take teens seriously, don’t talk down to them when reporting the news, provide more human interest stories on adolescents across the globe, report considerably more on the environment (a perennial concern of teens, as it should be for all of us), as well as on ‘new media’ and tech ‘gadgetry’, and cut the bullshit — teens know when they’re being lied to.

Only 13 Months Away: The Election Writ Will Be Dropped In B.C.

BC Politics

BUSHUSSABRAHAMLINCOLN

One of the most repressive governments in North America, the Gordon Campbell Liberals are easily on par with the most far right wing elements within the Bush administration in terms of the policies which both governments have chosen to enact since taking power in 2001.
Although Gordon Campbell lacks the power to send soldiers to their death in foreign lands, as President Bush is doing in his misadventure in Iraq, make no mistake there are just as many men, women and children dying in British Columbia, as are American soldiers in Iraq, as a consequence of the devastating attacks on the poor enacted by Campbell.
Whereas in the United States a well-funded free press (not to mention, a plethora of blogs), and a much more open system of government, investigates and reports every incidence of Bush administration wrong-doing, in British Columbia a media clearly in the pocket of the government (think CanWest Global) daily fails to report the human casualties of the disastrous anti-social policies enacted by the Liberals.
In fewer than 13 months, Gordon Campbell’s Liberals will go to the polls. VanRamblings will seek in the coming weeks and months to report on the many misadventures of the provincial Liberals, and the harm their policies have caused to all British Columbians, since they assumed power on May 16, 2001. In the meantime, The Tyee.ca’s Paul Ramsey poses 10 rather tepid questions to consider in the lead-up to the next provincial election.

Roger Ebert: “Stern Belongs on The Radio”

Media

HOWARDSTERN

While March 19th marked the one year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, it also marked another anniversary – the day the mainstream press addressed the blurring boundaries between Clear Channel Communications and the Bush administration.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, writing in the International Herald Tribune, examines the “close links” between George W. Bush and Clear Channel management (Clear Channel’s vice president Tom Hicks helped make G.W. a multimillionaire) and points out how “the absence of effective watchdogs” make this merger between the media and the government possible. “In the Clinton years the merest hint of impropriety quickly blew up into a huge scandal; these days, the scandalmongers are more likely to go after journalists who raise questions.”
One of the first casualties of this “close link” was controversial disc jockey Howard Stern. “As soon as I came out against Bush, that’s when my rights to free speech were taken away. It had nothing to do with indecency,” Howard Stern said on March 19, 2004. Clear Channel dropped Stern’s show from 8 of its stations, following the imposition of a $495,000 Federal Communications Commission fine.
Film critic Roger Ebert weighs in on the Stern controversy, in an essay published April 16th in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Like millions of Americans, I listen to Howard Stern on the radio in the mornings. I think he is smart, quick and funny … A listener to Stern will find that he expresses humanistic values, that he opposes hypocrisy, that he talks honestly about what a great many Americans do indeed think and say and do … I find it strange that so many Americans describe themselves as patriotic when their values are anti-democratic and totalitarian.

Ebert goes on to say that what offends him “is that the right wing, secure in its own right to offend, now wants to punish Stern to the point where he may be forced off the air.”