Our priceless, priceless media - again

Here's the letter that the Asheville Citizen Times (ACT) would not publish:

UPDATE: I am taking the letter off the blog and submitting it to another newspaper.... will update later!

06/22/08 UPDATE: The Mountain Express did publish the letter, and here is the link. It got lots of comments, although it seems it is from a small group of people who like to argue with one another.

No flag big enough

by Susan Oehler in Vol. 14 / Iss. 47 on 06/18/2008

On the very same day as the earthquake in China, the president of that country was on the ground telling people who were trapped: “Hold on, the army is coming to rescue you.” The army was on the scene the same day also, and they were working on rescue operations. Now compare that to our president’s response to Katrina. I am sure that all Americans got the message from Katrina: You are on your own in a disaster, and your government will not help you.

But it is not the inept response to disasters that makes me think that Bush and Cheney need to be impeached. It is not even the erosion of our civil liberties that makes me think that way. It is their support of kidnapping, illegal detention without charges, rape, torture, extrajudicial murder, wars of aggression and ruinous occupations of other countries. It is all these things that cause me to feel that impeachment is the only moral choice. It is all these things that cause me to feel that there is no flag big enough to cover our shame.

As Ashcroft once said, “History will not judge this kindly.”
— Susan Oehler
Asheville

Earlier this year, a friend could not get an op-ed published in the Asheville Citizen Times. (I did put it on this blog.) He was told that ‘there is really no interest in impeachment’. Well, I sent off this bit of information to the Asheville Citizen Times [and added some more info for this blog in brackets]:

Did you know that another impeachment resolution passed at the Democratic Party 11th Congressional District last month? It will pass at the state convention on June 21st in New Bern too. And did you know who wrote and presented this impeachment petition? Max Haner, former chair of the Buncombe County Democratic Party. So much for the idea that "there's really no interest in impeachment".

That's just a line from the corporate media - rather like this one: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/06/1068013331454.html [FYI: This article says: The Los Angeles Times has ordered its journalists to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq as resistance fighters, saying the term romanticises them and evokes World War II-era heroism. An email circulated this week asked staff to instead use the terms insurgents or guerillas. An assistant managing editor, Melissa McCoy, said on Wednesday that the memo followed a discussion among top editors at the paper and was not sparked by reader complaints. McCoy said she considered the term resistance fighters an accurate description of Iraqis battling US troops, but said it also evoked World War II - specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. She was confident that Times reporters who used the term had no intention to romanticise the Iraqis who have killed more than 100 US soldiers since Washington declared the war all but over in May. The paper's Baghdad bureau had no objection to the change.]

That link is from 2003 - when the LA Times was told not to call the resistance in Iraq by it's true name. I imagine you were told the same thing.

Do you think doing what your corporate masters want will protect you from the now-present "lawless police state"? well, not so much: http://rawstory.com/rawreplay/?p=1162 Of course, citizen journalists are treated the same way, and it is very wrong, even if most of the corporate media is pretty darn useless.

Here's a story the corporate media missed, but the non-traditional media DID read the book and report on it [FYI: Bush was talking to Sanchez about how he wanted to KILL in Fallujah in 2004, and the link to the live webcast is titled “True Crimes – The Untold Story Behind the Devastation of Iraq”.]:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174938/kill_them_we_are_going_to_wipe_them_out_

In that review, Lt. Gen Sanchez tells us what bush was really saying. Now, we won't want that in the newspapers!!! but hey, it is becoming more and more irrelevant anyway, thanks to the intertubies..... look what will be broadcast live on the internet tomorrow night: http://ccrjustice.org/live-webcast-true-crimes You can bet I will watch that over the fake stuff on WLOS. And remember - TEH GOOGLE transcends time and space and never ever forgets anything!! Let's hear it for TEH GOOGLE!

The ACT journalist wrote back and said that he gets called all kinds of things when he does not publish something – but he gets too many op-eds to include them all. But they generally do publish all the LTEs they get – some on the webpage, if the paper gets too full. He also said I have an axe to grind, and have a lot in common with the Baptist preachers. Here’s my answer:

oh, you are so right I have an ax to grind.... as soon as I realized my country was thinking about starting up an illegal war of aggression, which could lead to a huge nasty war and millions of people dead, I picked up that ax and started to work. I also have an interest in keeping the US, with the US Constitution, intact too - but less so than stopping the entire Middle East from going up in flames from US aggression. But I didn't know that Baptist preachers were working to stop wars of aggression by the US or re-instating our US Constitution. They sure are quiet about that!

so, you didn't publish Kim' s commentary because of "lack of interest" from the general public, but because it is politically not likely to happen.

Well, the "name" that I would call you then is..... not representing the publics interests and concerns. oh well, at least we have our blogs.

And you are censoring my letter because ---- you think I am misrepresenting bush's handling of Katrina, and because I lumped "rape" in with all the other things that the wars our country started brought to Iraq. Can't say it was "lack of space" because you generally have enough space for all letters, right?

I wish you would inform people when you are rejecting their stuff.

Well, recently, I also emailed Aaron Brown. He is no longer with CNN, but now teaching “journalism”. Well, his idea of what journalism is anyway. He had mentioned (in an interview by Glenn Greenwald) that he wished he could call a ‘mulligan’ on some of his pre-Iraq war reporting. I sent him this:

Do you think any of those dead Iraqis would like to call a "mulligan"?

Everything McClelland said about our corporate media was true, and is still true. I see them as accessories to murder.

Well, I spelled ole Scottie’s name wrong. Big deal. Today, I sent him an article about depleted uranium and titled it “part of your legacy” and he remarked that he has discussed the mistakes he made in the run-up to the war, but he stated that my list of his mistakes is surely longer. He’s no doubt right about that. Here is my response:

I'm sure my list is quite a lot longer too.... but I bet the Iraqi people could come up with even more than I ever could. But the real question is - could we have started this exercise in mass murder and torture without our corporate media duping the American people? and why are the American people so easily duped anyway? How come they, like our corporate media, are so lacking in critical thinking skills? A good example of this lack of critical thinking skills was all over the US corporate media after Powell's speech at the UN in 03.

It was amazing to watch - TV "news" journalist after journalist unable to form or articulate any critical response to a big pile of horse shit. And this went on for YEARS - still going on, actually. No end in sight to the killing, torture, kidnapping, extra-judicial killings.... oh dear god, the list goes on and on........ with no end in sight. And a corporate media that is almost totally useless (with a few minor exceptions), and with our Pentagon Propaganda Program still going ahead full steam ahead. Well, I no longer am confused as to how Hitler did it.

Our so-called “media” in the USA is damn pitiful.

A MILLION DEAD, MAYBE MORE, NO END IN SIGHT. Oh, and all the injured ones, all the homeless ones, all the mentally tormented ones...... dear god, it is beyond belief.