Jeff Cohen -- full disclosure: he used to be my boss and is a friend -- makes some very valid and important points in "Iraq Winter Soldier Hearings: Victory for Independent Media."
But there is another way of looking at this.
The fact that the mainstream paid so little attention to Winter Soldier -- as well countless other worthy stories -- is itself a failure of independent media to propel those stories into the mainstream.
Jeff writes that "these Iraq veterans had little but scorn for U.S. corporate media whose journalistic failures helped sell the war five years ago, and whose sanitized coverage helps sell the troop 'surge' today. But thanks to the Internet and the growing capacity of independent TV, radio and web outlets, a significant minority of Americans had access to these proceedings. And the archived hearings are now available to anyone anytime with computer access."
But only if you already know about it for the most part.
The great success of Fox News Channel is not that it has done what it has done, but that it has influenced the "mainstream" as it has.
And in that sense, independent media has totally failed.
To take the example at hand, what we did not see in the last several weeks was independent media asking questions about Winter Soldier at the White House press conferences, or at the Pentagon or State Department. Had they done so, the administration spokesperson's words would likely have led to more attention to Winter Soldier than all the work of all the people who labored on it for months. A serious debate between the veterans speaking out at Winter Soldier and the administration and its allies may well have ensued. This would have likely led to a dramatically different dynamic around the fifth anniversary of the war.
But no one asked at the news conferences, so none of that happened.
As it is, Winter Soldier likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on, and it was a very important, historic event, but it so far has not reached beyond those who likely already agreed with much of what was said. Web activism and other worthwhile efforts might build on what was done, but the lack of challenging government officials at the crucial time makes a world of difference.
People in independent media who complain about the lack of coverage of Winter Soldier and other important stories by mainstream U.S. media really have to look at the mirror as well.
Early in this decade I was among many who spent a great deal of time and effort to "save" Pacifica. After that battle was "won," I repeatedly urged the Pacifica board, then executive director Dan Coughlin, board chair Leslie Cagan (now of United for Peace and Justice) and Democracy Now host Amy Goodman to have reporters at news conferences in Washington. It never happened.
I publicly criticized Pacifica for this failure almost two years ago in "Can Pacifica Live Up to Its Promise?" Still, virtually nothing has changed. (Free Speech Radio News, aired on Pacifica stations, has a reporter on Capitol Hill, very rarely at any executive functions.)
Pacifica at one point actually canceled a program by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, who at the time was getting into the White House to ask questions. His questions were posted on Common Dreams, but were not broadcast anywhere. (Ron Pinchback, the manager of WPFW, at one point assured me that Mokhiber's show would not be canceled after it was repeatedly pre-empted, shortly thereafter, it was canceled.)
This indicates that the problem is not so much one of resources, but of journalistic integrity and political will.
Now Pacifica will reportedly be bringing on a new executive director shortly, Nicole Sawaya. Will she do what is needed? Will Pacifica listener members demand it?
Other institutions have similarly failed. The Nation magazine's "Washington Correspondent" (John Nichols) is based in Wisconsin. Similarly, The Progressive magazine had an editor based in D.C., (Ruth Conniff) but she moved (also to Wisconsin) several years ago and was not replaced by anyone. Last year Mother Jones magazine proclaimed in an email heralding the re-opening of its Washington office (the office was closed about a decade ago): "This Changes Everything." They have some informative blog postings, but that's hardly going to "change everything."
Nor is the failure limited to U.S.-based independent media. Al-Jazeera (both Arabic and English) has scores of staffers in Washington, but not one gets into the White House to ask a tough question. Al-Jazeera reporters in Afghanistan and Iraq have braved U.S. missiles, but Al-Jazeera reporters in Washington have not braved White House news conferences.
Similarly, the BBC and CBC and tons of other media from around the world simply report out of Washington, but do not really change the landscape.
It should be obvious that many of these journalists and outlets have done good work -- I'm pointing to a broad, institutional -- really, perhaps cultural -- failure.
I should say that I've regularly asked tough questions at the National Press Club where I'm based and that's gotten crucial information out. I've also spent some of my Sunday mornings doing Washington Stakeout -- asking questions to politicos as they leave the Sunday morning talk shows, to some good effect with virtually no resources, other than the help of a few friends. I have done some work with The Real News and hope this crucial project can do much of the work that is desperately needed.
There needs to be lots of independent media doing much more than "preaching to the choir." The most obvious thing to do is set up the structures to question and scrutinize officials. It will not only lead to a broader dialogue, but will force independent media to get to specifics, to not rely on demonizing Bush and sloganeering. This is the way to get to the truth: challenge, scrutinize, repeat.
Isn't that what real independent media should be?
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), Saturday on an Iowa radio station: "If he [Obama] is elected president and the radical Islamists, the Al Qaida and radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets, in greater numbers than they did on September 11. Because they will declare victory in this war on terror."Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill), Sunday on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer: "To suggest that somehow Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States would be celebrated in the Arab world or in the Islamic world as a moment of jubilation is fearmongering at its worst, and it's just horrible."
As bad as King's statement was, Jackson's is actually worse.
Many have claimed that the way out of this war is to "win hearts and minds."
However, this "debate" would indicate that what's really going on at the twin polls of the establishment is how not to win hearts and minds. It's now a scourge to have "the Arab world" or "the Islamic world" "celebrate" a given candidate. So it might be a badge of honor to piss off Arabs and Muslims. Great -- I'd thought that was the problem.
Jackson's view is a prescription for perpetual war.
I happen to think that any jubilation regarding Obama is misplaced -- and it might lead to false hope and global misunderstandings about the course of the conflicts -- but let's put that aside for the time being.
It is not "fearmongering" if Arabs or Muslims want a particular candidate. We're supposed to want a non-military end to the wars the U.S. is in. Muslim or Arab support would be a sign of hope that the non-stop war in Iraq and elsewhere might be over. That's supposed to be a good thing. Right?
Jackson stated King's comments are "Reckless, irresponsible, certainly divisive. ... And quite frankly, I think he owes the senator [Obama] an apology."
But it is Jackson who owes an apology.
He owes an apology to the over one billion people in the world who are Arab and/or Muslim. They deserve to have an opinion about the U.S. election without being shunned; quite the contrary, it should be welcomed.
Jackson also owes an apology to anyone in the U.S. -- no matter their religion or ethnicity -- who wants the perpetual war to end. By his logic, we want to be at constant war to the death.
The so-called neo-conservatives talk of the opinions of Arab and Muslim countries. Of course, they fabricate things, like claiming that the U.S. military will be greeted with flowers and sweets by Iraqis following the invasion -- but still, they seem cognizant of the notion that Arabs and Muslims have thoughts that should matter.
Judging by his words, so-called liberals like Jackson apparently do not -- though perhaps Jackson was prostrating himself before Late Edition's host, the pro-Israeli Wolf Blitzer.
No matter his motives, Jackson needs to apologize.
Today, the Washington Post lead editorial prominently quotes King: "'When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,' Dr. King said. 'This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.'"
The people behind the King Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. are planning on using that exact same quote from his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. If all goes as scheduled, come April, ground will be broken for a statue of King with the above inscription on it, frozen for the future.
The quote uses a financial analogy for justice; subpar for King in my view. Its substance will seem to many to be a validation of a corporate capitalist future for African Americans, quite acceptable to those atop the Washington Post as well as Verizon and other corporate backers of the MLK Memorial. And the quote is a plea for the United States to live up to its stated goals; it does not seek to radically alter the structure of the nation and of the world, as King sought to do. At minimum, other specific aspects of King must be given prominence.
Jared Ball has warned of the "assassination of the image and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr." Says Ball: "While his name is evoked each year, and at times of heightened political activity even more so, this reference comes specifically to recast a revolutionary into one comfortable with current and false notions of 'progress' or 'change.' Barak Obama borrows King's oratorical flare (attempts at least) with none of his politics; Hillary Clinton misuses his legacy to give undo credit to the executive branch for a movement's struggle for equality while simultaneously suggesting that King himself saw president Johnson's signing of Civil Rights legislation as completion of victory and liberation. He most certainly did not."
Moreover, King was a universal figure, not a nationalist one. His greatest influences were Jesus (a Palestinian Jew), Tolstoy (a pacifist Russian Christian novelist) and Gandhi (a leader of India from the Hindu tradition).
(Even some of the others honored prominently on the Mall -- Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, presidents all -- have their universal statements highlighted in monuments. Atop the Jefferson Memorial: Is etched: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.")
King offered damning indictments not only of racism, but of capitalism, of militarism -- and of nationalism and imperialism; this is most clear in his speeches against the Vietnam War in the last year of his life:
King came out most publicly against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967 at the Riverside Church in New York, exactly one year before his assassination. In that speech, he shows a palpable shame at having been rather quiet on the issue. Major media outlets immediately attacked him. The Washington Post patronized that "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." He was also criticized by groups like the NAACP.
While King in his own day was hurled derision for such stances, today, his statements are iced out of the record. We are offered a petrified King, not a flesh and blood man who cried upon reading the New York Times attack on him.
On April 30, 1967 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (a pulpit Obama just tried to fill), King replied to his critics:
I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. ... There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward [Selma, Ala. sheriff] Jim Clark!' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!' There is something wrong with that press! ..."To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. ...
"I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. ... When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. ... True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation."
Many people clearly didn't want to hear it; King, even more emphatically in his "The Drum Major Instinct" address -- part of which was used in his own eulogy -- again at Ebenezer Baptist on February 4, 1968.
I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy. And if something doesn't happen to stop this trend, I'm sorely afraid that we won't be here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years. (Yeah) If somebody doesn't bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around, because somebody's going to make the mistake through our senseless blunderings of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere. And then another one is going to drop. And don't let anybody fool you, this can happen within a matter of seconds. (Amen) They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away, and every building. And we can do the same thing to Russia and China.But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. "I must be first." "I must be supreme." "Our nation must rule the world." (Preach it) And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.
God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. (Preach it, preach it) God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.
Perennial presidential adviser and pundit David Gergen, after Obama won the Iowa caucus, noted that his speech was very nationalistic. Said Obama: "In lines that stretched around schools and churches, in small towns and in big cities, you came together as Democrats, Republicans and independents, to stand up and say that we are one nation. We are one people. And our time for change has come."
Is that really the message for our time? A retrenchment of nationalism -- and quite likely a facilitation of further neo-imperialism? As King was increasingly articulating, especially in the last year of his life, the message for our time is that that we are all one people -- not from the U.S., not from any other country. All humanity. Virtually no political figure in the U.S. today articulates anything approaching this (Kucinich perhaps does so occasionally.) But King did do so, and paid for it. Any monument to King that does not recognize that would be an insult to him and to the entire World.
...Highlights the lack of vibrant movements that could compel a president to do much of anything today...
As all the establishment candidates chant "change," "change," change," actual candidates who have actually advocated actual change are excluded from the debates and mocked in the media.
The people of New Hampshire and lauded by the pundits for their "independence" -- by voting for the the novel choices of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain -- who has called the media his base. It's like a slick salesman congratulating a naive customer on the wisdom of buying from him.
It would all be funny if the stakes were not so enormous.
ABC's Charlie Gibson at the debate on Saturday: "The next president of the United States may have to deal with a nuclear attack on an American city. I've read a lot about this in recent days. The best nuclear experts in the world say there's a 30 percent chance in the next 10 years. Some estimates are higher. Graham Allison, at Harvard, says it's over 50 percent. Senator Sam Nunn, in 2005, who knows a lot about this, posed two questions that stick in my mind. And I want to put them to you here.
"On the day after a nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would we wish we had done to prevent it? And what will we actually do on the day after?"
Some of us who are paying attention will have wished Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel were not excluded from that debate so they could outline how we need to change U.S. policy.
In terms of what will happen after a nuclear attack: probably some sort of martial law, possibly against anyone who would say something like the previous sentence.
See Noam Chomsky: We Must Act Now to Prevent Another Hiroshima -- or Worse.
But progressives are constantly told Kucinich, Gravel and Ron Paul are quirky, so don't support them. Be a player, not a citizen. Deal with the political game, don't try to prevent another Hiroshima. But remember to be surprised when we get there.
The Simpsons, created by presumed progressive Matt Groaning, is the latest media to mock Kucinich (at least for the next 7 minutes). Premise of the episode was that Springfield moves its primary to before New Hampshire, the candidates and media descend. The following exchange (roughly, I'm doing this from memory) takes place in Moe's Bar:
Principle Skinner: The media are not covering the issues, they're just declaring a front runner and going back to their mansions.
Someone else (Lenny or Homer I think): We should make the most ridiculous candidate the front runner.
Apu: Dennis Kucinich?
A two-foot Kucinich: Hey! I'm right here!
Homer: No, someone totally ridiculous.
They end up pushing Ralph Wiggum (the son of police chief Wiggum) who is known for spouting idiocies and picking his nose. Ralph actually ends up saying some politically decent things, sort of out of "Being There" -- "if we talk to other countries, then the only boom will be in our pants" and sweeps the nation with the motto "Vote Ralph! Pick a Winner!"
Take a look at CandidateChooser.org -- most people who have taken it actually agree with Kucinich on the issues -- but he's the nut ball.
An interesting piece by Max Obuszewski: "Largest Civil Disobedience Movement in U.S. History Is Underway".
Possible conclusions are:
- Civil disobedience is nearly useless
- There is a quiet revolution afoot
- The civil disobedience hasn't been done right
- It hasn't been properly highlighted
- The national leadership has failed to use this
- People are using these actions as a way of washing their hands of the situation without a real drive to change things ("not in my name")
- Corollary: People will stop these actions if it seems they might change something
- Others?
Poster cartoonist Mike Flugennock responds in the comments section to the article:
If this crap were actual "resistance" -- that is, direct, active interference with troop movements, shipments of war material, any other actions with serious impact on "business as usual" -- it might be worth mentioning. As it is, it's a bunch of people who got arrested at some contrived CD action, got toted off to jail, paid their fines, and were released, with no impact whatsoever on business, fascism and imperialism as usual.
Huckabee: "Let's understand what sin means -- sin means missing the mark," he responded. "Missing the mark can mean missing the mark in any area. We've all missed the mark. ... How we miss the mark is less important than we all miss the mark. The mark is that we have marriage -- men and women, they marry, they create children, and they train their replacements and you have a future generation then that creates their replacements and trains them. That's the mark. If we didn't have that as the ideal, we wouldn't have a civilization that was able to perpetuate."
Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry." Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."
The exchange between Jesus and his disciples shows how misunderstandings can show the soul. The disciples seem to think that pre-marital sex is fine while Jesus obviously doesn't. He places as an ideal being a "eunuch" -- not procreating. While Jesus indicates how God is revealed over time, Huckabee's "ideal" -- 2,000 years later -- is a retrograde of Jesus's. Talk about missing the mark.
Charles Krauthammer writes today: "The God of the Founders, the God on the coinage, the God for whom Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving day is the ineffable, ecumenical, nonsectarian Providence of the American civil religion whose relation to this blessed land is without appeal to any particular testament or ritual. Every mention of God in every inaugural address in American history refers to the deity in this kind of all-embracing, universal, nondenominational way. (The one exception: William Henry Harrison. He caught cold delivering that inaugural address. Thirty-one days later, he was dead. Draw your own conclusion.) I suspect that neither Jefferson's Providence nor Washington's Great Author nor Lincoln's Almighty would look kindly on the exploitation of religious differences for political gain. It is un-American. It is unfortunate that Romney has had to justify himself in response."
Some similarities to the Washington Post's own editorial: "'Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government,' Mr. Romney said. But not all Americans acknowledge that, and those who do not may be no less committed to the liberty that is the American ideal."
Mitt Romney: "Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government." From his speech today.
During a debate on May 16 of this year: "I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo."
Other precious lies and hypocrisies from today's speech: "We believe that every single human being is a child of God -- we are all part of the human family. The conviction of the inherent and inalienable worth of every life is still the most revolutionary political proposition ever advanced. John Adams put it that we are 'thrown into the world all equal and alike.'"
"America took nothing from that Century's terrible wars -- no land from Germany or Japan or Korea; no treasure; no oath of fealty."
