The Automatik

This is a long article, but I urge you to read the entire thing. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and according to AlterNet. . .

. . . he gave this gave this keynote address on Wednesday, May 28, in Furman University’s Younts Conference Center. The address was part of protests by faculty and students over the South Carolina college’s decision to invite George W. Bush to give the May 31 commencement address.

When it was announced in May that Bush would deliver the commencement address, 222 students and faculty signed and posted on the school’s Web site a statement titled “We Object.” The statement cites the war in Iraq and the administration’s “obstructing progress on reducing greenhouse gases while favoring billions in tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies that are earning record profits.”

This address does not just cover the war in Iraq, environmental issues, or oil companies, but also. . .

. . . the dark and turbulent world of globalization where there are only masters and serfs, where the American dream will be no more than that—a dream, where those who work hard for a living can no longer earn a decent wage to sustain themselves or their families, whether in sweatshops in China or the decaying rust belt of Ohio, where democratic dissent is condemned as treason and ruthlessly silenced.

Please note that Mr. Hedges does not absolve the Democratic party from his accusations, but does find that the Republican party has committed particularly egregious sins at the hands of President Bush.

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I used to live in a country called America. It was not a perfect country, God knows, especially if you were African American or Native American or of Japanese descent in World War II, or poor or gay or a woman or an immigrant, but it was a country I loved and honored. This country gave me hope that it could be better. It paid its workers wages that were envied around the world. It made sure these workers, thanks to labor unions and champions of the working class in the Democratic Party and the press, had health benefits and pensions. It offered good public education. It honored basic democratic values and held in regard the rule of law, including international law and respect for human rights. It had social programs from Head Start to welfare to Social Security to take care of the weakest among us, the mentally ill, the elderly and the destitute. It had a system of government that, however flawed, was dedicated to protecting the interests of its citizens. It offered the possibility of democratic change. It had a media that was diverse and endowed with the integrity to give a voice to all segments of society, including those beyond our borders, to impart to us unpleasant truths, to challenge the powerful, to explain ourselves to ourselves.

Read the rest at AlterNet.org.

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Today’s Yahoo! Canada headline:

Dos and Don’ts of Summer Office Wardrobe

If your boss gazes at your cleavage, it’s a problem with your boss, NOT your cleavage. Once again, it’s OUR fault for having breasts which tempt men into sin.

And lest you think I’m overreacting, the opening paragraph of this article is directed solely at women and their clothing.
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I moved into a new place about a week ago so things around here have been a bit of a mess.

That is the excuse I am giving as to why I didn’t find out about this amazing event until today.

The ignorance in this would be laughable if it weren’t so staggering.

Let’s be clear: these people aren’t protesting against RU-486, also known as “the morning after pill” or chemically-induced abortions.

They are protesting against birth control pills because they kill babies. So what is it that birth control pills do exactly?
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Thanks to Resist Racism for posting this video.

It is powerful stuff. The whole thing is fantastic, but it gets really good around 5:30 and then gets even better. Stay for the end; it’s a whopper.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON RESIST RACISM.

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While the Internet is a great way to obtain fast access to a massive amount of information, it’s also a way to obtain access to a lot of ignorant, offensive, bigoted, and disgusting drivel. And those are just the comments on message boards.

Everyone has received forwarded emails which warn against the evils of cancer-causing underarm deodorant or sob stories about poor children suffering from diseases who need your help. These are readily and easily debunked by websites like Snopes.

But some of these forwards are more insidious and dangerous than mere urban legends. Those of us who know better than to believe everything we read delete them quickly and try to forget about them.

Yet we still continue to receive them. So rather than just ignoring them, I thought I’d go through one that came across my inbox recently and discuss exactly why it is insidious, dangerous, and wrong. Please note that I am including many words in this piece that are of an offensive, inflammatory nature. I do this not for shock value or because I like these words, but to show you the original email text in order to explain exactly what it is that I am addressing.
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From This Pop Life:

“The Oppression Olympics” refers to the idea that somehow, you can deny someone their suffering in order to posit your own. People who play the Oppression Olympics get so hung up on their own entitlement to being the Chosen Ones of Fucked Up History that they’re defensive that anyone else would try to lay claim to that legacy, even in what is clearly a show of solidarity.

Or as someone on the LiveJournal community Debunking White put it: “the I’m-oppressed-so-you-can’t-be game.”

Forget the Beijing Olympics and tune in instead to this year’s Democratic Presidential Nomination Badwill Games.

Gloria Steinem, in a recent debate with Melissa Harris-Lacewell, said the following:

“I think one learns a lot from parallels, and so it would be interesting to try to project what would have happened to Barack Obama in his life if he had been a female human being.”

But in her now-infamous New York Times Op-Ed piece she said that, “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.” She went on to ask why “the sex barrier [is] not taken as seriously as the racial one.” Steinem claims that she is “trying not to choose between race and gender.”

Here’s the thing, Ms. Steinem: you don’t have to.
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In light all of the recent outrage about Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, I would like to weigh in.

Until today, I had not seen the Reverend preaching, although I had heard snippets of what he had supposedly said.

Here is a clip of Wright talking about how “Hillary has never been called a n***er.”

And here is a montage of clips from Fox News.
(I have to laugh at the irony of Bill O’Reilly warning of “offensive” content.)

I’ve watched both of these and I must say, I don’t understand what everyone is so upset over. Then I have to remind myself that for a lot of white people, there is only one America and that’s the great melting pot that espouses freedom.

But for millions of people of color, America is anything but a representation of freedom. How can it be when America was founded on the enslavement of African-Americans? For everyone who would cry, “My family didn’t own slaves” or “Can’t they get over it already?” I will add the following:

Racism isn’t the guys in the white hoods burning crosses on your lawns. It is a systematic oppression that has been so woven into the fabric of life that many white people don’t even realize they benefit from it. And that is called white privilege. Owning slaves is just the beginning of it.

Keep in mind also that slavery was legal in America until 1865. Even after it had been abolished, African-Americans still did not enjoy the same benefits as white Americans under the law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race. Before that, separate water fountains for African-Americans and white people were the norm.

Think of it in numbers. For the first hundred years of America’s existence, slavery was legal. And then for another hundred years, discrimination based on race was allowed under the law. That’s two hundred years of oppression. It’s not something you just “get over.”

So Reverend Wright is understandably upset. And while I am not a religious person, I agree with his indignation and his anger and his passion about these issues. Reverend Wright is not lying when he says, “Hillary has never been called a n***er.” But that isn’t the only face of racism.

Tim Wise has a great article on this called “Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth: Of National Lies and Racial America.”

“But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.”

Please read the whole thing. And then, if you are a white person, think about it. Get mad, deny it, call me a racist, a traitor, or a bitch, but THINK ABOUT IT.

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Many news sites are reporting that a Pentagon study has confirmed there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

A March 10 McClatchy newspaper article on this subject is being quoted by other news sites. The original piece states:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

On March 12, the same website reported that:

The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.

Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won’t be posted on the Internet.

The March 12 2008 story from the ABC News “Rapid Report” reiterates the idea of the Pentagon not making the report available online, but provides a link to a nine-page extract from the report.

Page two of this report notes that it is a “redacted version of the original Iraqi Perspectives Report—Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, Volume I dated January 2007. Page ES-1 from the Executive Study states:

This study found no “smoking gun,” (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.

Other websites have provided links to a longer version of this report. ABC seems to be the first blog to provide a link to a 94-page—yet still redacted—version at 2:44 p.m. on March 13.

Websites like Hot Air and The Weekly Standard, find the claims of “no connection” misleading and provide links to the longer version of the report.

Hot Air reported on March 14 (with several subsequent updates) goes into great detail about the various connections between Saddam and al Qaeda such as the Army of Mohammed and Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, stating:

Nor was that Saddam’s only support for an AQ subsidiary. Saddam put money into Egypt’s Islamic Jihad. The IJ opposes the Hosni Mubarak regime for a number of reasons, but primarily because of Egypt’s shaky diplomatic relations with Israel. One leader of IJ that Westerners can easily name was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became Osama’s chief deputy and primary mouthpiece to the world.

Hot Air provides links to The Weekly Standard article, The National Review’s post on The Corner called “CONNECTED: Iraq and al Qaeda” and The New York Sun which calls its analysis, “Report Details Saddam’s Terrorist Ties.”

The New York Sun article again mentions Saddam’s connection to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and states:

The report concludes that instead Iraq’s relationship with Osama bin Laden’s organization was similar to the relationship between the rival Colombian cocaine cartels in the 1990s. Both were rivals in some sense for market share, but also allies when it came to expanding the size of the overall market.

Both Hot Air and The New York Sun article highlight the following passage from Extract 34:

One question remains regarding Iraq’s terrorism capability: Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against United States? Judging from examples of Saddam’s statements (Extract 34) before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes.

The Corner and The Weekly Standard print the abstract of the report from page 93:

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist-operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some way, a “de facto” link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

These four sites seem to find all of the above extracts to be proof of specific connections between Saddam and al Qaeda, stating the following:

The Weekly Standard: Really? Saddam Hussein “supported” a group that merged with al Qaeda in the late 1990s, run by al Qaeda’s #2, and the New York Times thinks this is not a link between Iraq and al Qaeda? How does that work?

Hot Air: So we have Saddam supporting at least two AQ subsidiaries, one of which had open aspirations to attack American interests, and evidence from these captured materials that Saddam planned to use his terrorist capabilities to conduct war on the United States. Perhaps in the world of the mainstream media the big news from this would be “no smoking gun” connection to an actual attack, but for the rest of us, it shows that Saddam needed to go — and the sooner, the better.

The Corner: Once you read [the report], you might ask yourself (if you didn’t already know where the New York Times and the rest of the MSM are coming from), how anyone could read it and conclude “no link.”

The Sun: The report also undercuts the claim made by many on the left and many at the CIA that Saddam, as a national socialist, was incapable of supporting or collaborating with the Islamist al Qaeda. The report concludes that instead Iraq’s relationship with Osama bin Laden’s organization was similar to the relationship between the rival Colombian cocaine cartels in the 1990s. Both were rivals in some sense for market share, but also allies when it came to expanding the size of the overall market.

The Sun also goes on to quote a “long time skeptic of the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq and a former CIA senior Iraq analyst, Judith Yaphe,” who says:

“I think the report indicates that Saddam was willing to work with almost any group be it nationalist or Islamic, that was willing to work for his objectives. But in the long term he did not trust many of the Islamist groups, especially those linked to Saudi Arabia or Iran.” She added, “He really did want to get anti-American operations going. The fact that they had little success shows in part their incompetence and unwilling surrogates.”

Additionally, they quote a “former Bush administration official who was a member of the counter-terrorism evaluation group that analyzed terror networks and links between terrorists and states, David Wurmser,” who says:

“This is the beginning of the process of exposing Saddam’s involvement in Islamic terror. But it is only the beginning. Time and declassification I’m sure will reveal yet more. Even so, this report is damning to those who doubted Saddam Hussein’s involvement with Jihadist terrorist groups. It devastates one of the central myths plaguing our government prior to 9-11, that a Jihadist group would not cooperate with a secular regime and vice versa.”

Yet these two quotes don’t include statements that either of these folks believe in specific coordination between Saddam and al Qaeda, only that there are specific connections between Saddam and terrorism.

In fact, the extract that The Corner and The Weekly Standard quote says that the documents “do not reveal direct coordination and assistance” between Saddam and al Qaeda, but that Saddam would “use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda” and that “Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims,” creating the “appearance of and, in some way, a ‘de facto’ link between the organizations.” (emphasis mine)

Let’s review exactly what many news sites are saying:

McClatchy: “no evidence of any operational links”
ThinkProgress: “no evidence of any operational links”
NPR: “no direct link”
Rolling Stone: “no pre war operational link”
CNN: “no connection between the two”
Tehran Times: “no link” and “no direct link”
The Raw Story: “no evidence of operational links”
Arab News: “no link” and “no direct link”
The Guardian: “no direct ties”
Fox News: “no link” and “no operational link”

Although the uses of the term “no link” does appear (CNN, Fox, Tehran Times, Arab News), three of the uses also include the terms “no direct link” and “no operational link.”

The extract seems to support their claims when it says, “no direct connection.” Furthermore, Hot Air et. al. charge the other media sites with putting out misleading information, but their own articles on the subject only manage to link Saddam with anti-American terrorist groups. Their own articles, despite quoting the 94-page report, cannot provide specific evidence that Saddam was in league with or collaborating with or directly supporting al Qaeda nor can they prove that he was a part of al Qaeda.

They talk about his connections to terrorism and anti-American sentiment. No one should be shocked that Saddam Hussein had connections to terrorism and no one should be shocked that terrorists with anti-American sentiment would share interests. No one should be shocked that Saddam Hussein had anti-Israeli sentiment (and this would certainly explain his support of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad).

The Iraq war was not initiated because Saddam was a terrorist or sympathized with America-haters. According to what Vice President Dick Cheney told Rush Limbaugh (full text on the White House website):

Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated — after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He’s the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in 2004, “I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”

President Bush said in 2002:

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

A July 9 2005 letter purported to be from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was released on October 11 2005 and only discusses “expel[ling] the Americans from Iraq”.

So why all the dissenting voices about there being connections between Saddam and al Qaeda?

Let’s look at Hot Air and The Weekly Standard’s position on political affairs.

Hot Air considers itself “the world’s first full-service conservative Internet broadcast network!” There are eleven “Right Channels” links on their right menu bar and only three “Left Channels” links, however, closer inspection reveals more conservative links in other categories, such as Olbermann Watch, Drudge Report, Fox News Radio, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, etc.

The Weekly Standard has an article called “Character is Destiny” about the Elliott Spitzer scandal in which it refers to “the liberal media.” Another article about the Pentagon report casually mentions its connections to the President, stating:

If you talk to people in the Bush administration, they know the truth about the report. They know that it makes the case convincingly for Saddam’s terror connections. But they’ll tell you (off the record) it’s too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, they’ll say.

The Weekly Standard does not indicate which people in the Bush administration they spoke with, nor how “we,” the readers, are considered part of the “you” in the statement, in other words, they do not detail could someone who is not in the journalism field could have access to those in the Bush administration. “We” don’t, therefore, “we” rely on the media to give us their sources.

Where is the full version of this report? Crooks and Liars has a 230-page report from the Iraqi Perspectives Project on their website.

A search of the report reveals not even one mention of al Qaeda. Clearly, this is NOT the same report. We need to see Phase 2, not Phase 1.

I don’t know if I can order the full report because I live in Canada (although I am an American citizen) but I will post a link to the full report once I find it online. Any American residents who want to order this report, can do so by going here.

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Geraldine Ferraro’s recent racist remarks are actually nothing new for her. In 1998, she made similar comments about Jesse Jackson:

“If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.”

And sadly, but again, unsurprisingly, these types of comments are not limited to Ferraro. John Edwards’ wife Elizabeth was quoted in the August 2007 issue of Esquire saying:

“We can’t make John black, we can’t make him a woman. Those things get you a lot of press, worth a certain amount of fundraising dollars.”

Only someone in complete denial of their own white privilege or the existence of racism would make such preposterous remarks. What is it that white people are not getting? Why is it that we refuse to see, to hear, to believe?

As a white person, I do not presume to speak for those who have experienced racism. So here are some words from people of color I’ve read recently, although to get the full effect you should read the entirety of each posting:

Jill Tubman, at Jack And Jill Politics writes:

“Being a black woman, I feel I have a perspective that I’d love to share with Geraldine. I’ve gotten few breaks BECAUSE of my race or gender. Instead, I have often received opportunities DESPITE my race (in particular) or gender.”

Resistance, at Resist Racism writes:

I’ve gotten into this argument any of a number of times with white people, almost always with the same dispiriting results. A white friend, after being wait-listed for grad school, complained that the selected cohort was 1/4 people of color and how they had taken “her” place. I pointed out that her assumption was predicated on the belief that she was more qualified than any of the students of color and was inherently racist. She didn’t complain about the white students who were admitted before her. She also seemed to have an underlying belief that she was entitled to a spot.

We went round and round on this, and finally I asked her whether or not it was true that I was academically more qualified than she was.

“Yes, but. . . ” she kept saying.

And Tamara K. Nopper writes of her recent experience on a Southwest Airlines flight:

Shortly after sitting down, an older white man sat in the seat next to mine. He then proceeded to spread his legs wide open as if, to quote a wise person I know, “he thought he had balls the size of pumpkins.” In response to the uninvited pressing, I requested room for my legs. The man then proceeded to imperiously point his finger to the floor to emphasize that his feet were within the boundary of his seats. He never addressed the fact that his legs were spread beyond them so as to invade my space and press up against my body. Instead, he said to me, “You’re a big girl.” Talking on my cell phone, I interrupted my conversation to calmly tell the man “Don’t fucking talk to me that way.”

With his right hand, the man reached across himself to grab my left arm. With my arm in his grip, he looked me in the eyes through his glasses and replied, “I’m going to slap you in your mouth.” I freed myself from him and then stood up. I called out to the steward at the front of the plane that I needed assistance since I had just been grabbed by the person sitting next to me. Hurriedly, the man bolted out of his seat, muttering that he would move. As he exited the row he made it a point to emphasize that I had cussed at him, neglecting the fact that he had made the comment that initiated our negative exchange.

I turned around to be met by a young, white woman steward named Crystal G. Webb. When I told her that I had been assaulted by the man who was now making a mad dash for a seat a few rows back, she began to laugh. As she bit her lip, a smirk escaped.

These stories are not isolated incidents. They are but a fraction of the hundreds, thousands, even millions of stories like them from around the world.

Why aren’t we more outraged about this sort of behavior? Why do we refuse to believe that racism is still alive and well?

When mainstream media reports on racism, it’s called “liberal bias.” When independent bloggers report on it, it’s not considered news because it doesn’t come from mainstream media.

What is the mainstream experience then, if it is not the voices of millions telling first hand accounts of the suffering they’ve endured due to racism?

We must see, we must hear, and we must believe.

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