Tuesday, March 15, 2011

How many more anniversaries?

It really is something to scan across the pathetic nonsense that passes for media in the United States. Eight years ago today, they couldn't shut about Iraq. Whether they were the majority press opinion (trying to the get the US into Iraq) or the minority (trying to stop a war). Today, they can't even be bothered.

The beggar media that depends on donations because they never learned how to earn for their craft? The Progressive can't be bothered. This is the week, by the way, that Matthew Rothschild decides the person he MUST interview is sports rambler Dave Zirin. The week of the eighth anniversary of the Iraq War and that's what he offers.

At the (beggar) Nation magazine, we find Libya, nuclear, NFL, Vermont, food stamps, everything but Iraq. Remember Katrina vanden Heuvel's grand standing on the Iraq War? Maybe you remember the cover featuring her editorial asserting that the magazine would support no candidate who didn't work for an end to the Iraq War?

How much you wanna guess she really, really hopes you've forgotten that cover?

At Democracy Now? The Iraq War was nothing but a big p.r. for Amy Goodman. She pretended to give a damn, set herself up as the voice of the left against the Iraq War (she's still booked in some MSM outlets as that) and then she moved on -- as she forever does -- to other stories. Even though the Iraq War didn't end. She's grand standed on the illegal war how many times now? Don't worry, if pattern holds, she will do a tiny, brief story on Friday about the protests.

On Friday.

Because that is the UPFJ way since Democrats came into power. Prior to that, UPFJ wanted a central demonstration in DC. After Dems came into power, no more DC, it might embarrass the Democratic Party.

So on Friday, Goody'll show up with a pathetic little insulting segment that will not inform or educate. People who might have gone to DC for the protest? It'll be too late for the majority of Americans. Friday is too late for most to plan to be in DC on Saturday.

Goody used to preach the need to get the word out. But, as with her appeareance on Sally Jesse, it was always about get the word out on her.

In the corporate media? The New York Times has nothing to brag about. The paper most responsible for selling the Iraq War, the paper that gave to wall to wall coverage to sell the illegal war now can't be bothered.

McClatchy Newspapers?

It's hilarious the way they like to pretend they did a damn thing. They didn't. That was Knight-Ridder. When Knight-Ridder was sold, it became just how obvious the tone is set at the top as the same journalists floundered and floundered and became staples of the MSM chat and chew circuits and proved they could be airheads just like everyone else. If Knight-Ridder still owned those papers, you damn well better believe this week would be about Iraq. You damn well better believe that Knight-Ridder wouldn't have stopped filing daily violence reports on Iraq back in December. You damn well better believe that they'd have a US staff member present in Iraq. (McClatchy doesn't trust their Iraqi correspondents -- their award winning correspondents -- to write copy by themselves except at a blog. On those rare occassions when McClatchy files an Iraq story, they either grab a Christian Science Monitor reporter to steer it or use one of their own employees -- Roy Gutman, Hannah Allem, etc -- who are not in Iraq.)

But don't worry. As more and more ads go unsold, as more and more subscriptions are cancelled, McClatchy will do a p.r. offensive claiming they did this and they did that and they are to be trusted because . . . years before they existed, Knight-Ridder did some real work on the Iraq War.

As you note how little your own media outlet of choice is doing today, ask yourself how many more anniversaries it will take before the Iraq War is over?

And grasp that the anniversaries of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK and D-Day get more attention than the anniversary of an ongoing war.

With or without a media heads up, there will be protests in the US next weekend. A.N.S.W.E.R. and March Forward! and others will be taking part in these action:

March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq today remains occupied by 50,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries.

The war in Afghanistan is raging. The U.S. is invading and bombing Pakistan. The U.S. is financing endless atrocities against the people of Palestine, relentlessly threatening Iran and bringing Korea to the brink of a new war.

While the United States will spend $1 trillion for war, occupation and weapons in 2011, 30 million people in the United States remain unemployed or severely underemployed, and cuts in education, housing and healthcare are imposing a huge toll on the people.

Actions of civil resistance are spreading.

On Dec. 16, 2010, a veterans-led civil resistance at the White House played an important role in bringing the anti-war movement from protest to resistance. Enduring hours of heavy snow, 131 veterans and other anti-war activists lined the White House fence and were arrested. Some of those arrested will be going to trial, which will be scheduled soon in Washington, D.C.

Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.

Protest and resistance actions will take place in cities and towns across the United States. Scores of organizations are coming together. Demonstrations are scheduled for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and more.


Time permitting today, I will return to this topic and probably burn at least one fat ass in the MSM, one little 'hero' at least whose grand standed more than enough. I think I'll go with Fat Boy, but most likely will decide while dictating the snapshot. (Time not permitting today, I'll try to hit it later this week.)

The following community sites -- plus FSRN, Jane Fonda, Antiwar.com and ACLU Blog of Rights -- updated last night and this morning:



We'll close with this from David Swanson's "War Is Illegal -- Even In Libya" (War Is A Crime):

It's a simple point, but an important one, and one that gets overlooked. Whether or not you think a particular war is moral and good, the fact remains that war is illegal. Actual defense by a country when attacked is legal, but that only occurs once another country has actually attacked, and it must not be used as a loophole to excuse wider war that is not employed in actual defense.
Needless to say, a strong moral argument can be made for preferring the rule of law to the law of rulers. If those in power can do anything they like, most of us will not like what they do. Some laws are so unjust that when they are imposed on ordinary people, they should be violated. But allowing those in charge of a government to engage in massive violence and killing in defiance of the law is to sanction all lesser abuses as well, since no greater abuse is imaginable. It's understandable that proponents of war would rather ignore or "re-interpret" the law than properly change the law through the legislative process, but it is not morally defensible.
For much of U.S. history, it was reasonable for citizens to believe, and often they did believe, that the U.S. Constitution banned aggressive war. Congress declared the 1846-1848 War on Mexico to have been "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the president of the United States." Congress had issued a declaration of war, but the House believed the president had lied to them. (President Woodrow Wilson would later send troops to war with Mexico without a declaration.) It does not seem to be the lying that Congress viewed as unconstitutional in the 1840s, but rather the launching of an unnecessary or aggressive war.
As Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair in March 2003, "Aggression is a crime under customary international law which automatically forms part of domestic law," and therefore, "international aggression is a crime recognized by the common law which can be prosecuted in the U.K. courts." U.S. law evolved from English common law, and the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes precedents and traditions based on it. U.S. law in the 1840s was closer to its roots in English common law than is U.S. law today, and statutory law was less developed in general, so it was natural for Congress to take the position that launching an unnecessary war was unconstitutional without needing to be more specific.



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