Every year I await the arrival of Project Censored's Top 25 Censored Stories. I like to get the book version even though the basic stories are online. There's a fair amount of extra material in the book version not available online, making it worth the price in my opinion.

Their number one story was "Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation". These figures are consistently glossed over by the American press. I was shocked by this:

"...an Associated Press poll conducted in February 2007, which asked a representative sample of US residents how many Iraqis had died as a result of the war. The average respondent thought the number was under 10,000, about 2 percent of the actual total at that time."

The whole "we don't do body counts" attitude by the US military seems clearly designed to trivialize and marginalize the Iraqi dead and displaced.

Interviewers from the Lancet report of October 2006 (Censored 2006, #2) asked Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died. Of deaths for which families were certain of the perpetrator, 56 percent were attributable to US forces or their allies. Schwartz suggests that if a low pro rata share of half the unattributed deaths were caused by US forces, a total of approximately 80 percent of Iraqi deaths are directly US perpetrated.

Even with the lower confirmed figures, by the end of 2006, an average of 5,000 Iraqis had been killed every month by US forces since the beginning of the occupation. However, the rate of fatalities in 2006 was twice as high as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or over 300 Iraqis every day. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.

Labels: Iraq War, news, war

Now I give lie to my previous post where I called for a cessation of Palin bashing. I sincerely think that she's not a very good focus for critical examination leading up to the election. Her flaws and lacks in relation to the VP position are myriad and are being hashed out quite thoroughly in the public arena. I think it serves little good purpose to continue to thrash her beliefs, views, skills, etc.

Yet... I still shamefully feel the urge. As a target, she's stunningly easy to find fault with. While there are some false stories floating around, there's still plenty of substance. Pharyngula has a nice post from a scientific perspective on some of Palin's beliefs.

Related is an opinion piece by Chris Hedges: "For Palin, It’s a (Christian) Man’s World". I think some of Mr. Hedges' points are a bit off, not the least being taking a starkly black and white absolutist view of Ms. Palin's denomination while accusing them of exactly that. Then again, Hedges has much greater knowledge of the subject matter than I can possibly lay claim to. I do know that Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism shouldn't be dismissed casually. It is a very serious religious movement with strong fascistic elements. If Palin is involved in a denomination affiliated with Dominionism, that is quite disturbing.

Here's a quote from the current Wikipedia article on Christian Rconstructionism:

While many Christians believe that biblical law is a guide to morality and public ethics, when interpreted in faith, Reconstructionism is unique in advocating that civil law should be derived from and limited by biblical law. For example, they support the recriminalization of acts of abortion and homosexuality, but also oppose confiscatory taxation, conscription, and most aspects of the welfare state. Protection of property and life needs grounding in biblical law, according to Reconstructionism, or the state set free from the restraint of God's law will take what it wishes at a whim. Accordingly, Reconstructionists advocate biblically derived measures of restitution, a definite limit upon the powers of taxation, and a gold standard or equivalent fixed unit for currency. (all emphasis mine.)

Normally, of course, what a candidate believes religiously is not particularly relevant to their election and ability to serve in office. However, when the beliefs explicitly call for bringing civil law into line with Biblical law, then there is a problem for everyone. Even most Christians wouldn't want the imposition of Biblical law which includes slavery among its tenets. Read the Old Testament; the laws and punishments would horrify the vast majority of Americans. The quote above is a little evasive. Re-criminalization of abortion and homosexuality means execution for the perpetrators of these acts, not mere jail time. At least it means that if you're going to strictly follow those Biblical laws.

I have no idea what goes on the the heart and mind of Sarah Palin. I don't know enough to predict what she would do in the Vice-Presidency. Most of the info I've seen indicates she is much like George W. Bush in her certainty levels: Act first and let others deal with the fallout. A decider, not necessarily a thinker.

Personally, I think we've had enough of that kind of leadership style in the last eight years. Between McCain's quick-to-anger moods and Palin's breezy don't-let-facts-get-in-the-way-of-decisions approach, I'm not eager to see the results of their administration.

Labels: news, Presidential race 2008, republicans, Sarah Palin

Project Censored's Junk Food News and News Abuse for 2006 contains the following:

3. After the “Brangelina” roller coaster of 2005 and the frenzy of rumor and innuendo it sparked, hadn’t we heard enough about the private lives of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? The answer, it would seem, was no. On May 27, 2006, the day of their baby Shiloh’s birth, the media went into paparazzi overdrive to obtain photos of the “most beautiful baby in the world.” They weren’t as interested, however, in another set of photos released that day. These photos depicted US Marines killing Iraqi civilians ‘execution-style.’ The unearthed photographs, taken by a Marine intelligence team, convinced military investigators that a single unit had killed as many as 24 unarmed Iraqis in an insurgent stronghold after a roadside bomb had killed an American in November of 2005. While this shocking story did eventually break the surface of mainstream coverage, it never attained the depth or breadth of coverage so eagerly showered on Brad and Angelina.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, “Photos Indicate Civilians Slain Execution-Style: An official involved in an investigation of Camp Pendleton Marines’ actions in an Iraqi town cites ‘a total breakdown in morality,’” May 27, 2006; Perry, Tony and Barnes, Julian E. Lasseter, Tom. Knight Ridder Newswire “Iranian-Backed Militia Groups Take Control of Much of Southern Iraq,”May 27, 2006. **Wikipedia used of the date of birth.

Labels: news, pop culture

As a compare and contrast example: On Google News, there are currently 4,258 stories on the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Number of stories on the problems with voting machines in California and Florida, 253.

Not that I'm drawing a value judgment on the relative importance of the two. But I am.

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Listening to: "Sinners Inc." by Rob Zombie
via FoxyTunes

Labels: crisis, news, voting

At this sad juncture, would I be amiss or callus in recalling that investment in highway infrastructure maintenance has been considered inadequate since the 1980s? Dear old Pres Reagan espoused shrinking government and this included infrastructure. Warnings about the results (and specifically, bridge collapses) have regularly popped up over at least the last fifteen years, perhaps longer.

This Washington Post article references the current debate.

Addendum: Guilty for not providing supporting documentation for my claim about the longstanding neglect of our infrastructure, I was glad to come across the following from 2005:

Can you pinpoint when the U.S.’s infrastructure began to fall into decline?
The first report on the infrastructure that I remember was during the Reagan administration in the late 1980s. That’s the baseline for where we are. And by that time the decline had already started: we were not receiving the needed funding to replace worn-out and obsolete equipment.

(tip of the mouse to Agitprop.)

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Now playing: "When I'm Gone" by Ochs, Phil
via FoxyTunes

Labels: crisis, news

During the breaking coverage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse on CNN, I was astonished by the low level of the news anchors' commentary. Admittedly, it was Nancy Grace at first for a couple of hours before being replaced by Wolf Blitzer.

Ms. Grace tends toward the histrionic and melodramatic in her presentation most of the time so this is not a huge surprise. Yet I was reminded of sports "color" announcers during both Grace and Blitzer's presentation. Or newspaper sub-headlines in 19th century US:


The lurid tone permeated the comments, prompting me to call it "Drama based around a true and unfolding event."

This is the circus of 24 hour news, bloated with puffery, shallow, vastly filled with information only an entertainment medium would call "news." The Fourth Estate of TV news is a barren place, a dustbowl pretending to vibrancy with displays of flash and glitter.

Labels: journalism, news