A tale of two media

While journalists at the Republican National Convention continue their dutiful reporting of the proceedings – commenting on the speeches, looking for the typical delegate, opining about whether the choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for Vice-President will reel in disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters – a veritable police state has sprung up in the streets of St. Paul. But you won’t hear much about this in the mainstream press. After all, out in the streets, those who dare to document the activities of law enforcement are roughed up, slammed to the ground, detained or arrested and charged with a felony.

Additionally, as happened when Amy Goodman and two producers of Democracy Now! were arrested, their press credentials and credentials for the convention were confiscated by Secret Service officers and not returned. When Goodman later questioned the St. Paul police chief on how journalists covering street demonstrations could avoid arrest, he said they should “embed” with the police department. Access, of course, is everything to the mainstream media, where hobnobbing with replaces speaking truth to power. The need for access clearly informed the “embedded” coverage of the Iraq war and the Bush administration in general.

Meanwhile the surveillance state inaugurated after the 9-11 attacks is alive, well, and unscrutinized by the embedded media organizations, as groups opposed to current US policies were infiltrated and raided prior to the Republican Convention. These organizations include I Witness Video, which films police tactics during demonstrations and whose film footage was instrumental in charges being dropped against many of the demonstrators at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Law enforcement personnel raided the home where members of this organization were staying, searched their belongings, and detained them for three hours before releasing them without charges. Among the many tactics used by police and the FBI were the recruitment of moles to infiltrate groups of RNC protesters at such dangerous places as “vegan potlucks”.

The major media organizations are once again ignoring governmental overreach conducted in the name of national security. It appears that cowed by the specter of vegan terrorists, and just a week before the painful anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the corporate media would prefer to ignore civil rights violations rather than face accusations of being “with the enemy” and losing access to power.

Convention notes

The Democratic National convention has certainly had some stirring moments – Hillary Clinton exhorting her delegates to support Barack Obama; Melissa Ethridge serenading the crowd with a rendition of God Bless America that links those lyrics with peace an justice rather than nationalistic fervor; the nomination of Barack Obama by acclamation. In addition to urging party unity in her speech, Mrs Clinton also celebrated the eighty-eighth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment and reminded the delegates of the importance of taking a stand, even at the risk of imprisonment, as many did in their fight to secure the right to vote for women.

Meanwhile outside of the convention hall, Denver had put a large portion of it’s 50 million dollars in federal convention grant money to use securing the city from antiwar protesters who don’t necessarily agree with the Democratic Party’s talking point, repeated by speaker after speaker inside the Pepsi Center, about withdrawing “responsibly” from Iraq; nor do they necessarily believe that we should continue bombing Afghanistan, where just the other day more than ninety individuals, mostly women and children were were reportedly killed in US airstrikes. The Democrats now assembled in Denver were elected in 2006 to end the Iraq War and to bring the soldiers home, not to leave a military presence there to protect an oversized imperial embassy, or to train Iraqi troops, or to keep bases in the region, and yet throughout their speeches, this is what we are hearing – responsible withdrawal, force protection, training of Iraqi troops.

There has been no mention in convention speeches of the massive police, secret service, and national guard security apparatus justified because within the vast numbers of peaceful protesters there may be some anarchists intent on disrupting the proceedings. Still, Denver officials do admit that they are preparing for a worse case scenario, and, as the New York Times reports:

Intelligence analysts, however, have not reported a heightened threat from Islamic extremists or domestic threats from antigovernment groups or environmental militants like the kind that operate in many Western states, according to federal officials. “We just aren’t seeing a credible threat,” said James H. Davis, the F.B.I. agent in charge of the Denver office.

Perhaps it is too much to ask, during this necessary exercise in party unification, that mention be made of the principled men and women risking arrest and imprisonment to demand the immediate end to an illegal war. Meanwhile, the same law enforcement organizations ready to quell protest are also available to protect private parties from the news media as was the case when press attempted to enter a party that ATT hosted for the very same Democrats who had voted to immunize that corporation from prosecution for its part in the warrantless wiretapping of Americans. No surprise here, though; ATT is one of the major sponsors of the Democratic National Convention.

Accountability please

While the rehashing of old news is frowned upon in some circles, I think that a look back a few years is warranted here. Do you recall George W. Bush insisting during his 2003 State of the Union address that there were links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, this despite intelligence to the contrary? Remember his certainty about those connections, and the sixteen words about how the British had discovered that the Iraqis were seeking uranium from Africa, a statement that was removed and then returned to the speech? And who could forget George W. callously yucking it up at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in 2004, showing slides of himself searching under the oval office furniture for the elusive WMD as soldiers and civilians continued to die and lose limbs, brain function and sanity. Then time passed and those crafty weapons refused to make an appearance. Maybe you don’t remember, after all, we’ve all been busy trying to deal with the economic crisis engineered by Mr Bush’s administration for the benefit of his corporate buddies.

Well, journalist Ron Suskind is here to remind us. In his new book, The Way of the World, Suskind tells how despite the Bush administration’s public facade of certainty regarding the need to attack Iraq, administration officials still found it necessary to fabricate a document with all the necessary points covered. According to named CIA officials, Saddam Hussein’s former head of intelligence then copied the fabricated document, signed it, and relocated to Jordan with 5 million dollars. The document, created in 2003 but backdated to July 2001, describes how 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta trained in Iraq and mentions attempts by Iraq to import uranium from Niger. It conveniently covered the most incendiary statements from the State of the Union address. This fabrication later found its way to Iraq, into the hands of Ayad Allawi and then on to the British Press and presto, instant justification.

Add this to the catalog of despicable behavior attributable to the Bush administration. It may be too much to ask that our elected representatives hold Mr. Bush and his coterie accountable for their actions; they have after all overlooked so many reprehensible acts over the past seven and a half years. But perhaps once this gang leaves office we the people can find justice in the criminal courts for the offenses committed in our name.