Friday, April 28, 2006

Other Items

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case, is expected to decide in the next two to three weeks whether to bring perjury charges against Karl Rove, the powerful adviser to President Bush, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.
With the completion of Mr. Rove's fifth appearance before the grand jury on Wednesday, Mr. Fitzgerald is now believed to have assembled all of the facts necessary to determine whether to seek an indictment of Mr. Rove or drop the case.
Lawyers in the case said Mr. Fitzgerald would spend the coming days reviewing the transcript of Mr. Rove's three hours of testimony on Wednesday and weigh it against his previous statements to the grand jury as well as the testimony of others, including a sworn statement that Mr. Rove's lawyer gave to the prosecutor earlier this year. The lawyers were granted anonymity so they could speak about the internal legal deliberations in Mr. Rove's case.

The above is from Elisabeth Bumiller and David Johnston's "Prosecutor Weighs Charges Against Rove in Leak Case" in this morning's New York Times. Amanda noted and noted the excerpt above. I'm about to follow over this morning (tired) so we'll just note a few items members are highlighting and call this an entry.


Cindy notes Molly Ivin's "The Great Bush Reclassification Project" (Truthdig via Common Dreams):


It's nice to know that the investigative reporter Jack Anderson is still under investigation, although seriously dead.
Anderson died last year, and for 19 years before his death he suffered from Parkinson's disease and was increasingly less active as a reporter. Now that he's safely deceased, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to go through nearly 200 boxes of his files to see if there are any classified documents in there. If it's classified, they want it back--even though Anderson was in the habit of printing anything he ever got that was of any interest.
This is apparently part of the Great Bush Reclassification Project, in which government information that has previously been declassified and offered for public consumption is now being reclassified as secret so nobody can find out about it. Those who saw government documents between declassification and reclassification are just going to have to forget what they saw. That, or some Man in Black will be sent around to zap your memory with a little thingamajig.
For some reason, the FBI thinks Jack Anderson, despite Parkinson's disease, had some papers involving two employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who have been criminally charged with receiving classified information. That case is a crock in itself, and to use it to dig through Anderson's archived stuff is just ludicrous.
Among Anderson's targets of old was the Federal Bureau of Investigation itself--gee, still worried he might have photos of J. Edgar Hoover in a dress after all these years?

From the war on the press, to resisting the war, we've got a highlight pointing out (rightly) that there are many forms of resistance. Ken notes Kenyon Farrow's "Not Showing Up: Blacks, Military Recruitment and the Antiwar Movement" (The Black Commentator):

In the face of poverty, prison, and unemployment, why is Black communities' collective "NO" to the military not considered an act of bravery and resistance by much of the Left? Part of the problem is that the white Left wants Blacks to act on its terms, in forms it deems appropriate or recognizes as resistance. Why can't Blacks determine for themselves what their resistance will look like?
"Activists define resistance in a very narrow way," says Kai Lumumba Barrow, a longtime organizer and Northeast Regional Coordinator for Critical Resistance. Barrow says that while marches, rallies, and sit-ins are the most coherent forms of resistance for many whites, Blacks have also resisted through armed struggle, cultural production, and more subtle tactics.
During slavery, those more subtle acts took the forms of work slow-downs, poisonings, and other militancy that did not involve public displays of resistance -- a dangerous way to show opposition. While some may debate whether or not Black people are in the same oppressive conditions where more subtle forms of resistance are necessary, the point is resistance is not a formula to be followed like a recipe. Those who are most affected by systems of oppression carry out daily acts of resistance that go unnoticed under the mainstream movement’s radar.
Moreover, lest we forget, when Black people do in fact rise up en masse, it is immediately criminalized -- usually by calling it a riot -- and is violently put down.

There are three e-mails noting Margaret Kimberley's latest. It will be noted no later than Saturday morning. I'm holding it because that's a topic that may go up tonight. (Depending upon how many people in the community are posting tonight, I may do an entry, very late at night if I do one). There's a piece from CounterPunch and I think one other one that actually fits with the topic and, before Kimberley's latest went up, I'd already decided to make that the topic of a backup entry in case I had to post on Friday. Today's scheduled topics for Democracy Now!:

Preview of this weekend's major protests: Saturday's anti-war rally in New York; Sunday's protest in DC over the genocide in Sudan; and Monday's Boycott for Immigrant Rights.

And remember Amy Goodman is in Italy tomorrow:

* Amy Goodman in Rome, Italy:
Sat, Apr 29
*TIME: 5 PM
Lelio Basso Foundation

Saturday's the protest in NYC, as noted last night, if you can't be in NYC don't let that silence your voice. And if you're able to take part in Monday's protests for immigrant rights, please do so. I support the call of no purchasing on that day and of not going into work. If you're choosing the latter, remember that there can be retaliation in the work place. Do not use a sick day (we've seen people fired for that in the last few years) if you're going to be at a protest unless you're willing to risk it. (That's your call.) Whether you see the scapegoating as another attempt to dismantle the New Deal, as another attempt to find a rallying cry for the 2006 elections, as outright hideous . . . as all three and more, this is an issue that effects us all. In this morning's round-robin, the issues is covered from various angles and members have also highlighted events in their area, so check your inboxes for the gina & krista round-robin.

For more on the immigrants issue, Zach gives a heads up to a program on KPFA today (time given is Pacifica):

7:00 pm
Full Circle
email fullcircle@kpfa.org
Can you imagine a day without immigrants? What would we do without them? How would our lives change?
This week on Full Circle, we revisit the controversial immigration/civil rights issue. We'll bring you highlights of the immigration rights rally and listen to the voices of the activists as they march to the San Francisco federal building .
We'll bring you the sounds and the voices of last Sunday's immigrant rights rally this Friday, at 7pm, on Full Circle.


Danny Schechter's in Boston tomorrow and we'll note that (again) later today.
For now, we'll note "Danny and Rory Discuss When News Lies on C-Span - (Video)" (MediaChannel.org):

In case you missed it:
MediaChannel's Rory O Connor interviewed News Dissector Danny Schechter on C-SPAN's "Book TV." The discussion of Schechter's new book, "When News Lies: Media Complicity and the Iraq War" aired this past weekend and Monday morning. You can watch the first half here on MediaChannel.org.
UPDATE: Book TV will be airing an encore of this discussion on Saturday (4/29) at 10pm EST.


We'll go out with Marcus' highlight, Brian Conley's "Nuri Nuri on the Wall..." (Alive in Baghdad):

Who's the "realest" strongman of them all?
Saddam Hussein, known almost ubiquitously as Iraq's most famous strongman, was preceded by another. Jawad Al'Maliki, for all intents and purposes selected Prime Minister of Iraq, reverted to using his birth name today.
His name "Nuri" may not come from Iraq's original strongman, but it certainly rings reminiscent of Nuri Al'Said. Although I am wise enough not to look for a conspiracy around every corner, I find this "coincidence" very interesting.
When I mentioned it to my friend Angus, he rasied the question of whether it was just a coincidence, or something symbolic that most Iraqis might recognize.
I'm waiting to hear back from friends of mine in Iraq, whether the street is buzzing with any reponse to Maliki's decision. Until then, perhaps its a good time for a history lesson for my readers.
Nuri Al'Said was Iraq's Prime Minister during the signing of the controversial Anglo-Iraqi Treaty in 1930. According to Thabit Abdullah, an Iraqi historian, in his book, A Short History of Iraq;
"Under the forceful leadership of Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa'id, the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 was signed. It was to last 25 years and provided for the independence of Iraq within two years of its ratification.(p136)
Abdullah explains that Nuri al-Sa'id came to prominence due to his relationship with al-'Ahd, or the "Covenant Society." This was the secret society of Iraqi Arab officers whose direct influence led to the revolt against the Ottomans in the midst of Word War I.

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