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Aljazeera coverage: The revolution will be televised, and also manipulated

In the final days of the Libyan conflict, as NATO conducted a nonstop bombing campaign, an Aljazeera Arabic television correspondent’s actions raised more than eyebrows. They also raised serious questions regarding the journalistic responsibility of Arab media – or in fact any media - during times of conflict.

Using a handheld transceiver, the journalist aired live communication between a Libyan commander and his troops in a Tripoli neighborhood targeted by a massive air assault. Millions of people listened, as surely did NATO military intelligence, to sensitive information disclosed by an overpowered, largely defeated army. The Doha-based news anchor sought further elaboration, and the reporter readily provided all the details he knew.

Did Abdel-Azim Mohammed, a journalist reputed for his gutsy reports from Iraq’s Fallujah, violate the rules of journalism by transmitting information that could aid one party against another, and worse, cost human lives?

A tale of 2 countries

“…they cannot forgive us, who are there in front of their noses and who have made a socialist revolution before the very nose of the United States!”
“…no pueden perdonarnos, que estemos ahí en sus narices ¡y que hayamos hecho una Revolución socialista en las propias narices de Estados Unidos!”
Fidel Castro, April 16, 1961

“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.”
English book of Common Prayer, 1662

After 53 years, we ask. Did the Cuban revolution accomplish its goals? Likewise, what happened to the U.S., which has relentlessly tried to block Cuba’s revolutionary path?

After the January 1959 revolutionary victory Washington’s elite understood that in Fidel Castro they might face serious rebelliousness to the accepted and enforced notion: Washington rules this hemisphere.

In 1954, Washington punished President Jacobo Arbenz for nationalizing United Fruit company property in Guatemala (a U.S.-backed coup d’état), to again dramatize how the U.S. treated disobedience.

Occupy and big unions

I want to thank the ‘Free Press’ & Tom Over for the coverage of the Occupy movement. However, while I admire & respect Tom’s hard work in covering the movement, there was a formulation in his latest piece that I feel needs to be examined.

The article spoke of Occupy activists being afraid of “being taken over by big unions and the Democratic Party.” While I’d make no attempt to discuss the motives of that, or any other, political party, as a life-long member, activist & leader of the United Steelworker’s Union, I can absolutely assure you that no one, from national AFL-CIO President Trumka, to state, local unionists, all the way down to rank & file unionists here in Columbus, has any approach directed at “taking over” this wonderful new movement. As a leader, organizer of, the local Steelworker’s Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), we invited and were very happy to have numerous Occupy activists attend our annual Christmas dinner. We were overjoyed to offer a good meal and friendship to these activists, even asking them to address the steelworkers and friends present.

"Retirement Heist" shows hows they stole the pensions

‘Retirement Heist,’ by Wall Street Journal reporter Ellen Schultz, is certainly one of the most important books published in the past few decades. For the past three decades, we’ve been inundated with hysterical announcements from the corporations that they faced a “crisis” due to “runaway pension and health care costs.”

These undue burdens were bringing the entire economic system down, they said. American companies, we were told by a corporate owned media, just couldn’t compete with “unfair competition,” all because of outrageous “entitlements.” Ellen Schultz has shown, with meticulous research, how financial institutions, corporations, were able to use accounting tricks, rulings by corporate controlled government oversight bodies, ridiculous tax incentives, deception and outright lies to literally destroy the structure of retirement security that took decades of struggle by America’s working people to put in place.

The New South Is Legacy Of Martin Luther King

New Hampshire’s primary grabs headlines today, but if history is any guide, the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary will play a far greater role in determining the Republican winner.

Of that state’s population, 28 percent are African American, and could be a major factor in the primary. But Republican candidates have made little effort to reach out to the black community. Republican South Carolina voters are likely to be nearly as white as they were in Iowa and New Hampshire. All the Republican candidates will pay tribute to Dr. King on his birthday next week, but they seem oblivious to one of his greatest contributions: the creation of the New South.

American Electric Power Target of Symbolic Citizen's Arrest

Tom McNabb, Occupy the Corporations, Columbus Ohio Whether or not it’s an environmentally unfriendly use of plastic, activists just might cordon off as a crime scene the energy giant’s downtown headquarters, as the Columbus site for Occupy the Corporations. That's a national day of action on Sat. Jan 21, a day after organizers here carry out the Columbus contingent of Occupy the Courts by protesting against corporate personhood at the federal courthouse at Long and Marconi. Yellow tape or not, organizers here, such as Tom McNabb, have their sites set on AEP.

“Their corruption (involves) repeated violations of environmental protection laws (as well as ) spending money they get from tax rebates from us as citizens, on lobbying legislators to cut the legs out from under the rules of the fixes they’ve agreed to.”

Corporate Personhood worse, ending it easier than you think

Don't take it from me. Take it from the book being published today that will mainstream the movement to end corporate personhood: "Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do, And What You Can Do About It," by Jeff Clements with foreword by Bill Moyers.

Clements traces the development of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood back long before the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision two years ago this month, in particular to President Richard Nixon's appointment of Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court in 1972. Led by Powell's radical new conception of corporate rights, Clements shows, the court began striking down laws that protected living breathing persons' rights in areas including the environment, tobacco, public health, food, drugs, financial regulation, and elections.

Six Problems with New Hampshire Elections

SIX PROBLEMS UNIQUE TO 2012 NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTIONS:
1. Removed safeguards for its same-day registration system.
2. Ignores the law on ballot-stuffing safeguards
3. Breaks the chain of custody
4. Conceals vote-counting from the public, in violation of Article 32 of its own Constitution
5. Removed candidate recount rights (2009)
6. Made it illegal for public citizens or members of the press to examine the ballots after the election is over (2003)

TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO
1. Get involved with Protect the Count NH or Watch the Vote 2012 (links below)
2. Monitor the trap doors

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT NEW HAMPSHIRE'S FIRST-IN-NATION PRIMARY?

Tell Ohio Legislators: Stop Fracking in Ohio

On New Years Eve, a 4.3 magnitude earthquake hit Youngstown, OH. Despite there never being a recorded earthquake before, this was the 11th earthquake in Youngstown this year alone. Why the change? In 2011, D&L Energy began disposing of over 200,000 gallons a day of toxic frack water from Pennsylvania and Ohio (or enough to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool every 2 to 3 days) by injecting it underground. Not surprisingly, by 2011 this toxic mixture had forced its way into a previously unknown fault and presto chango, earthquakes in Youngstown.

Preliminary reports from seismology experts from Columbia University say that even if they permanently stop this injection well, the earthquakes are probably going to continue for up to a year. But the chances of Gov. Kasich and the ODNR permanently stopping injection wells is about as possible as, well, an earthquake in Youngstown before this year.

Midnight in Paris

Dear Harvey,
I am a friend of Bob. I met you at a Free Press et. al conference pre-last presidential election. While I have admired your work for years, it took your article on Shakespeare and Co to move me to contact you.

I, too, left a part of me that still inspirits the streets of Paris. As I read the first few paragraphs of your article, I thought immediately of my own experience (not as grand as yours) and, of the recent Woody Allen film. How delighted I was to read on and find your reference to "Midnight in Paris." And, what a beautiful symmetry was felt in your remembrance of your first stay and the juxtaposition of your last return; the kindness of the gentleman who let you stay and then the kindness of your message to him, now upstairs where you had been.

I remember years ago seeing a documentary about the first owner of S&Co along with her lesbian lover. I also remember the simple act of kindness that was extended to James Joyce when no one would publish his novel Ulysses. The owner said, "Would you like me to publish your book, James?" It was so sweet, so unassuming, so considerate.

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