Media

Iranian TV newsman arrested for reporting on IDF's entry into Gaza
By Jonathan Lis and Gili Izikovich | Haaretz

An Iranian television reporter was arrested by Israeli authorities on Monday for a dispatch which broadcast news of the Israel Defense Forces' entry into the Gaza Strip.

The journalist is alleged to have violated military censorship laws which forbade the news media from releasing information during the initial stages of the ground incursion.

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by Linda Milazzo

I don't believe in god. I never have. I don't believe in religions. I study them, but I don't practice them. I try to understand them to be sensitive to the beliefs and traditions of others, and to attempt to appreciate the motivations behind religious thought and deed. But they are irrelevant to living my life.

Long ago as a freshman at CUNY's Queens College I was introduced to Taoism. Taoism began in ancient China as a religion, then morphed into a dogma free/deity free philosophy. Since my late teens I've tried hard to apply MY understanding of my Tao to my life. I have the freedom to choose my own path and not judge the paths of others. But since I have freedom of opinion, I fall prey to judge. I try not to. But I do.

Through the Tao, I'm both a peacemaker and a warrior since Taoism couples with the art of self-defense. I understand my right to protect myself when needed, and to protect the defenseless when they need me. Since I'm by nature protective, it suits my sensibilities to aid the weak, where I fancy myself absurdly as inordinately strong.

By ADAM LIPTAK, NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON -- Just a month after Barack Obama takes office, he must tell the Supreme Court where he stands on one of the most aggressive legal claims made by the Bush administration -- that the president may order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime.

The new administration's brief, which is due Feb. 20, has the potential to hearten or infuriate Obama's supporters, many of whom are looking to him for stark disavowals of the Bush administration's legal positions on the detention and interrogation of so-called enemy combatants held at Navy facilities on the U.S. mainland or at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

BY JOSE PAGLIERY, Miami Herald
jpagliery@MiamiHerald.com

Thousands of work boots, bath slippers, tennis sneakers and beach sandals -- even roller blades, all inexplicably materialized, strewn upon the southbound lanes, disrupting traffic for hours.

A mountain of those thousands of used shoes is now somewhere in northern Miami-Dade County, and Florida Highway Patrol officials are distributing them to local and national nonprofits that promise to give them to the poor.

By David Swanson

"It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners."
— Albert Camus

Washington Post editorial writer Ruth Marcus has joined the side of the executioners and provided a clear example of how that is respectably done in our time and place.

Her recent column begins:

"Should Bush administration officials be put on trial for crimes such as authorizing torture?"

Nations Wary of Taking in Detainees
By Meraiah Foley and Mark McDonald, New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia - Australia said Friday it was unlikely to agree to U.S. requests to accept detainees from the prison at Guantánamo Bay as Washington moves to close the notorious camp. Britain also signaled reluctance to take in significant numbers of former Guantánamo prisoners and said on Friday that Washington had not asked it to do so.

[A U.S. flag flies above a razorwire-topped fence at the "Camp Six" detention facility at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in this December 10, 2008 file photo. (Reuters/Mandel Ngan/Pool)]A U.S. flag flies above a razorwire-topped fence at the "Camp Six" detention facility at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in this December 10, 2008 file photo. (Reuters/Mandel Ngan/Pool)
Australia's acting prime minister, Julia Gillard, said the Bush administration has twice approached Australia about taking prisoners from Guantánamo.

Go here.

By Dave Lindorff

The deafening silence from American government officials and from the US media regarding the criminal Israeli assault against civilians in Israel’s ghetto of Gaza, where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are trapped every bit as brutally as were the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, is beyond unconscionable.

` As Israeli shells and bombs and rockets rain down on university buildings, clearly marked ambulances, and homes, it has to be pointed out that much of the ammunition being used, as well as the planes that are delivering this death and mayhem, are provided by the United States and by American taxpayers—with no strings attached.

From World Can't Wait Hawaii

In the U.S.: 5,000 people in front of the White House; thousands in front of the Israeli Consulate; an estimated 10,000 in front of the Israeli Consulate in SF; thousands rallied in freezing whether in NYC. Other demonstrations happened in Anchorage, Phoenix, Modesto, Sacramento, San Jose, Santa Rosa, Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Dearborn, Ocala, Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Albuquerque, Seattle, and dozens of other cities and towns across the U.S.

Tens of thousands rallied in Lebanon, thousands in London, Paris, and Rome. More than 5,000 marched in Sydney. A brief scan of more than 800 pictures of demonstrations posted on Yahoo's photo site showed protests in almost every large city in the Middle East, as well as in Japan, Korea, Bulgaria, Malta, Greece, Spain, Mexico, Buenos Aires and other international cities and towns.

In Hawai`i:

By Dennis Loo

Yesterday the NYT's Bob Herbert wrote an Op-Ed ("Add Up the Damage") about Bush in which he called for "a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country."

The column received, by my reckoning, an exceptional response in online comments, about twice the norm for Op-Eds that I have seen, and recommendations for Editor's Selections multiple times greater than the norm.

The most recommended, by 1463 readers, was the following:

Mr. Herbert,

You wrote:

The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

WASHINGTON, DC – The Nation magazine has named Progressive Democrats of America its Most Valuable Political Group of 2008.

"Paul Wellstone's 'Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party' finally has a functional voice," wrote John Nichols in a roundup of the "Most Valuable Progressives of 2008."

Nichols stated that PDA has "over the past several years struggled mightily--and often effectively--to pull the party to the left on issues of war and peace, health-care reform, economic justice and presidential accountability." He noted the group's highly visible role in the Democratic national convention in August, where PDA successfully fought for more progressive platform positions on healthcare and trade and organized a series of well attended policy-related events.

This is from Peter Boylan, The Honolulu Advertiser

At 3:12 p.m. Obama could be seen by the pool putting on the ninth hole. After one practice swing, Obama took his putt from the tee-box side of the cup and twisted his body wildly in the direction of the cup after connecting with the ball. Obama missed, and moved to line up his next shot. He missed that from the backside of the hole but then tapped in immediately after his
shot fell short. Obama then drove his cart up to the snack bar located between the ninth hole and the 10th hole tee-box. He got out of the cart and walked up to a group of about 20 golfers who had gathered behind a barricade of green plastic chairs and agents with the U.S. Secret Service.

By Brian Stelter, New York Times

Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America's three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq.

"The war has gone on longer than a lot of news organizations' ability or appetite to cover it," said Jane Arraf, a former Baghdad bureau chief for CNN who has remained in Iraq as a contract reporter for The Christian Science Monitor.

Joseph Angotti, a former vice president of NBC News, said he could not recall any other time when all three major broadcast networks lacked correspondents in an active war zone that involved United States forces.

Except, of course, in Afghanistan, where about 30,000 Americans are stationed, and where until recently no American television network, broadcast or cable, maintained a full-time bureau.

CBS newsman's $70m lawsuit likely to deal Bush legacy a new blow
Christopher Goodwin | Guardian.co.uk home

As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, at least one unpleasant episode from his unpopular presidency is threatening to follow him into retirement.

A $70m lawsuit filed by Dan Rather, the veteran former newsreader for CBS Evening News, against his old network is reopening the debate over alleged favourable treatment that Bush received when he served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. Bush had hoped that this controversy had been dealt with once and for all during the 2004 election.

By David Swanson

Russ Baker's new book presents an account of the U.S. government that is both remarkably new and extensively documented. According to this account, George H. W. Bush, the father of the current president, devoted his career to secret intelligence work with the CIA many years before he became the CIA director, and the network of spies and petroleum plutocrats he began working with early on has played a powerful but hidden role in determining the direction of the U.S. government up to the current day.