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Category Archives: National News/Commentary
Smoke and mirrors
Iraq 3.0
by Sheldon Richman
One gets the feeling that even the White House realizes the mess it’s made of Iraq. The other day the newspapers reported that the Bush administration has scaled back its objectives rather substantially. We might call it Iraq 3.0. First the plan was to create a democratic paradise which, domino-like, would spread freedom throughout the Middle East. When that didn’t work, the administration shifted to simply bringing some kind of order to Iraq, reconciling the three largest groups – Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurd.
That hasn’t gone too well either. The nearly two dozen political objectives that the military “surge” was intended to accomplish have largely gone unachieved. The violence level may have fallen (one never knows how temporary such things are), but there are many possible explanations for that. One horrifying explanation is that enough ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and emigration have occurred that less violence is “necessary” in the eyes of the various militias. That presumably is not the sort of peace President Bush had in mind.
So now the strategists in Washington have retooled. The New York Times says, “The Bush administration has lowered its expectations of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenue and holding regional elections. Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that some progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the intensified military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.”
Stage magicians call this “misdirection.” If you can’t have the audience look here, you must do something to make them look over there. Voilà!
Workers picket AT&T over job losses
Donna Dewitt and Linda Carnes join the picket.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) held an informational picket today in front of the AT&T Building in downtown Columbia over problems in the workplace.
In December 2006, the merger of BellSouth with AT&T made it the largest telecommunication company in the world.
“It is now apparent the new AT&T is not interested in continuing the previous relationship we had with BellSouth,” says Deborah Brown, President CWA Local 3706. “We have lost over 300 jobs in South Carolina in less than one year. In our residential Consumer Service Center, our Sales Associates are denied Family Medical Leave time. They are disciplined every day and terminated for unrealistic sales quotas. The Consumer Service Center has become a revolving door to the unemployment line. There is no respect for the employees – our members – and this must stop.”
District 3 includes: South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, and Alabama. AT&T has removed a total of 1,519 jobs in the district in less than a year.
B. Robbins
photos by Brett Bursey
1 love
The end of America?
Naomi Wolf thinks it could happen
by Don Hazen
AlterNet, Nov. 21
If you think we are living in scary times, your worst fears may be confirmed by reading Naomi Wolf‘s newest book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. In it, Wolf proves the old axiom that history does repeat itself. Or more accurately, history occurs in patterns, and in order to understand where our country is today and where it is headed, we need to read the history books.
Wolf began by diving into the early years leading up to fascist regimes, like the ones led by Hitler and Mussolini. And the patterns that she found in those, and others all over the world, made her hair stand on end. In “The End of America,” she lays out the 10 steps that dictators (or aspiring dictators) take in order to shut down an open society. “Each of those ten steps is now under way in the United States today,” she writes.
SC to use paperless e-voting in primaries
Here is a link to an article about the voting machines we use in SC, and their possible effect on our presidental primaries. Author Sean Flaherty works for Iowans for Voting Integrity, and the piece is posted on Vote Trust USA, a national network serving state-based organizations working for secure, accurate and transparent elections.
Brett Bursey
Lest we forget
The First Thanksgiving
From the Community Endeavor News, November 1995, as reprinted in Healing Global Wounds, Fall, 1996
The first official Thanksgiving wasn’t a festive gathering of Indians and Pilgrims, but rather a celebration of the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women and children, an anthropologist says. Due to age and illness his voice cracks as he talks about the holiday, but William B. Newell, 84, talks with force as he discusses Thanksgiving. Newell, a Penobscot, has degrees from two universities, and was the former chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut.
“Thanksgiving Day was first officially proclaimed by the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to commemorate the massacre of 700 men, women and children who were celebrating their annual green corn dance-Thanksgiving Day to them-in their own house,” Newell said.
“Gathered in this place of meeting they were attacked by mercenaries and Dutch and English. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth they were shot down. The rest were burned alive in the building,” he said.
Does he or doesn’t he?
The whispering campaign against Obama
by Kevin Alexander Gray, Columbia
I hope folk don’t think I am for a particular candidate cause I’m not. This time out I intend to vote in the Democrat primary but beyond that remains an open proposition. Obama is 3rd on my consideration list. Krugman’s article is just another reason to reconsider his position. Clinton is not on my list at all.
Oddly enough, I was speaking to someone from the midwest this past weekend. I believe it was after the Vegas debate. That person matter-of-factly mentioned that the bomb Clinton operatives may have sent to Novak was Obama’s alleged heroin use. I think the person mentioned it to me knowing that at times I can’t hold my water. I mentioned the call for its oddity to a family member but held passing on the gossip.
But low and behold by Sunday Obama on air was daring the Clinton people to put up or shut up. Then by Monday that sorry-ass Chris Matthews was talking about Obama’s drug use confession to a group of school kids. Matthews said that Obama confessed to drug use as a kid, “pot, cocaine, everything but heroin.”
Hillary haters play gender politics
Go Fish: Clinton Undaunted by “Gender Card” Allegations
By NOW President Kim Gandy
With a widening six-point lead separating her from Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton remains undaunted amidst media allegations that she has played the “gender card” during debates and public speaking engagements. Are Clinton’s opponents “piling on”? Of course they are — and they’d pile onto any candidate so far in the lead. Taking advantage of that fact isn’t playing the gender card, it’s playing the game.
Most notably slandered for comments made at her alma mater after the last debate, “In so many ways, this all-women’s college prepared me to compete in the all-boys’ club of presidential politics,” Clinton was attacked by pundits charging that the mere mention of the boys’ club was playing the victim. And when her campaign manager said, quite accurately, that the other candidates had “piled-on” Clinton at the last debate, the pundit-roar was deafening.
Obama’s SC strategy raises questions
Obama’s Big Gay and Black Problem
By Kevin Alexander Gray and Marshall Derks, Columbia
There’s a point in a campaign that’s behind in the polls when desperation sets in. That’s the time when trailing candidates try to throw the haymaker punch hoping for a knockout blow on the frontrunner. We are not at that point in this campaign season, but it’s getting close.
It’s no surprise that part of Barack Obama’s South Carolina primary strategy aims at black church-going voters. The church is the most organized part of the black community and churchgoers are reliable voters. In addition, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s hiring of local high-priced preacher-politician-businessman Darrell Jackson and her husband Bill’s clout with blacks puts additional pressure on Obama. The Illinois senator has to cut into Clinton’s black support as well as establishing his own African-American base.