Democracy Now! (always worth watching -- as Marcia points out):
Headlines for January 12, 2005
- Bush Taps Architect of Patriot Act to Head Homeland Security
- Rich Nations Consider Debt Relief For Tsunami
-Hit Nations
- U.S. Ends Fruitless WMD Search in Iraq
- UN: Only 8,500 Residents Return to Fallujah
- Iraqi: U.S. Torture At Abu Ghraib Worse Than Under Saddam
- Israel Considers Building 75
-foot Deep Moat On Gaza Border
Homeland Security Chief Nominee Chertoff Oversaw Detention of Hundreds of Arabs and Muslims After 9/11
President Bush nominated federal judge Michael Chertoff, a former prosecutor and architect of the USA Patriot Act, to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of Homeland Security. We speak with DC lawyer Elaine Cassel and political journalist Doug Ireland.
Elaine Cassel is a strong writer and I'm going to provide some other resources.
You can read some of her past columns at Find Law by going here http://writ.news.findlaw.com/cassel/ .
Cassel posts online at http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/ecassel/ .
In addition, I'll recommend her book, The War on Civil Liberties, a very strong and frightening (due to the times) book.
Bush Appoints Arch-Conservative Claude Allen As Chief Domestic Policy Adviser
President Bush appointed arch-conservative Claude Allen as his new chief domestic policy adviser. Journalist Doug Ireland describes Allen as "a notorious homophobe, a ferocious enemy of abortion and an opponent of safe-sex education who for years has been one of the AIDS community's principal enemies."
Unprecedented Security Preparations For Bush Inauguration
An unprecedented level of security is planned for George W. Bush's inauguration on Jan. 20, including six thousand police officers, 2,500 military personnel, and dozens of federal security agencies on patrol.
James Forman 1928-2005: Civil Rights Pioneer Dies At 76
Civil rights organizer James Forman has died at the age of 76. In the early 1960s he served as executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was seen as a major strategist within the civil rights movement. We hear a 1969 speech by James Forman and we speak with former field secretary for SNCC Robert Moses and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).
An obituary on James Forman can be found in today's New York Times (written b Douglas Martin).
James Forman Dies at 76; Was Pioneer in Civil Rights :
As executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1961 to 1966, Mr. Forman was at the barricades of the civil rights movement from Selma to Birmingham to the Mississippi Delta to the March on Washington. Few outside the movement knew the extent to which he choreographed the now-legendary demonstrations and campaigns.
Known by its initials SNCC, pronounced "snick," the group viewed itself as the shock troops of the civil rights movement. In many Southern towns, its field organizers were the first professional civil rights workers to arrive.
. . .
Julian Bond, the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said, "He really was the personality and the glue that held us all together."
Howard Dean:
Lizz Winstead is supporting Howard Dean for DNC chair (as she noted yesterday and today on Unfiltered). Among the reasons for this is because he's not selling out the reproductive rights of women.
Also endorsing Dean is Interesting Times:
Howard Dean has made it official, so I guess it is time for me to make it official.
I endorse Howard Dean for Chairman of the Democratic Party.
When this topic first came up in the days after the November election I expressed some skepticism about it. Not because I was against the Doctor being the Chair. I was skeptical because I had my suspicions that some members of the party might be dangling the chairmanship in front of Dean's eyes in order to take him out of the running for 2008. My fear was that Dean would be given the chair and then isolated, in effect promoted into obscurity.
What began to turn my thinking around was that Dean himself expressed some of these same concerns.
(http://interestingtimes.blogspot.com/2005/01/dean-for-dnc.html)
Remember today's Times' story on Indonesia (one you should round out with the Democracy Now! coverage linked to in this morning's entry)?
Here's The Guardian reporting on the same issue today:
A government statement said it would be "placed in a very difficult position" if any foreigner who came to Aceh was harmed, but Clive Williams, an Australian defence expert, told the Associated Press that the Indonesians wanted to conceal military corruption.
"The big problem with dealing with [the Indonesian military] in Aceh is that they're involved in a lot of corruption there, and the reason I think they don't want people to go to some areas is because they're involved in human rights abuses," he said. "Having a situation of martial law and then civil emergency has allowed them to get away with a lot."
Wary of Indonesia's sensitivities, US marines have scaled back their plans to send hundreds of troops ashore to build roads and clear rubble. Commanders have also agreed that their troops would not carry guns while on Indonesian soil, and that the majority of troops would return to ships stationed off the coast after each day's work.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1388815,00.html)
