BREAKING NEWS

UPDATE 8:51 PM; Reports that Saddam Hussein has suffered a minor stroke and could die before his trial are apparently not the case as reported here from the Daily Mirror. The Iraq government says Hussein has a prostate infection and will not take a biopsy.

“A letter demanding their doctor be given access to the former dictator was yesterday sent by Jordanian lawyer Mohammed al-Rashdan to Salem Chalebi, the head of the Iraqi prosecuting authorities.

Mr al-Rashdan said: “Our information is that he’s in very poor health. We understand from the International Committee of the Red Cross that our client has had a brain scan to discover how badly he has been affected by the stroke. We believe he could die because of his health problems.” 9:03 A.M.

THE POLITICAL SLAM

EDWARDS ON STAGE

TERESA SHOVES IT

BOSTON: JULY 29 — “Hope is on the way” and so am I.

The nail biting suspense is over. The two Johns have been nominated by the Democrats in convention, and I am grateful not to have to again penetrate the high security prison that the Fleet Center has become. (Isn’t Fleet also the name of an enema?) This convention may be the ultimate ‘Last Hurrah!’

Last night, I watched the parade, at the podium with occasional shock and awe of the speechifying that lit up the new Boston Garden. Tomorrow, I will watch “THE SPEECH” from my living room at home because the platform in Boston is really just a set designed to “introduce”/show off/sell the new improved John Kerry and new Democrats to a nation the Party hopes will tune in.

One by one last night, the big names took turns at what felt like a political slam, modeled on those poetry slams, with speaker after speaker competing to outdo the one who came before. There was Jesse still keeping hope alive, not with his old flamboyance but with the self-assured style of a heavyweight champion of charisma. This may be his final turn in the ring. His son and state mate Obama are moving in as he is moving on. Soon he may just be introduced at these affairs like George McGovern and Mondale, and yes, finally last night, ( saved from the Siberia of Looserville), Mike Dukakis.

DENNIS CALLS FOR COURAGE

Next came the passion of Dennis Kucinich calling for “Courage America,” and noting that the Democratic Party has a center, right and left as he appealed to old principles and ongoing struggle. His campaign on the left had come to its final moment in the sun of the big lights in Baaston. He gave it all he had — and it was clear how he had grown on the campaign trail, and how more polished he had become. He made mincemeat of Dean.

I missed Bill Richardson’s message in Spanish or the studied earnestness of several female office holders. I waited for Al Sharpton, and he did not disappoint with several clever spasms of distinctive wordsmanship and a humorous comparisons between 40 acres and a mule and the Democratic Donkey.

KERRYS ARMY OF SOME

What surprised was the presence of so many Generals and Admirals on stage, especially General Shalikashvili, he with 5 stars, who had become a self-professed “new democrat” a great touch and very touching. This exercise was lobbed like a direct hit into the heart of PPF — Bush Pentagon Fever. It showed that Kerry could go mano a mano with the militaristic minion in Washington. He has his war cabinet too.

EDWARDS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

And then, with great fanfare amidst a sea of signs and song came John the younger with that boyish smile and exaggerated wave of the hands and fists in air, You could see why he is such a slick trial lawyer as he used those Southern wiles of his to charm the hall and the viewers at home with his compelling call for “One America.”

Edwards showed off the reasons he was selected with a stunning version of his stump speech on “Two Americas,” hitting every message point with style and grace. He was upbeat, positive and yet firm on issues that ranged from veteran benefits to tax breaks for working Americans to a Bush like warning to seek and destroy Al Qaeda. It was as if he had come from Central Casting as the idea running mate and new “best friend” for Kerry.

YOUNG VOTERS CHEER

There were cheers at the 33 club on Stanhope Street where I watched this official start of the campaign with grass roots activists and young voters who clapped along with the hyped up crowd on the inside. It was clear that it was the new energy in that bar that may make the difference, not the cast of the faithful. The part was honoring grass roots groups like ACORN and the NAACP and others that were registering millions of first time voters

Afterwards in the Men’s Room, I overheard a young man tell a friend that Edwards is a posing as a populist when he is really a centrist. He got it but he also realized he had nowhere else to go. The satirist Barry Crimmins makes the case in the Boston Phoenix for holding your nose and doing the Kerry, a dance of built around a compromising position. He sums up the view that is at the unspoken heart of the Convention.

“Some of my lefty pals won’t forgive you (for voting for the war) ? Nevertheless I refuse to join the circular firing squad. I know how face a political reality myself, and if there were an occasion for compromise, this is it. I don’t value my moral purity more than the lives of countless innocents,” he writes in a piece that gives voice to the feelings of activists like my old friend Tom Hayden, who marched through from the hell of Mississippi to the hell of Hanoi and walked with me past that protest pen into the Fleet Center,

GHOSTS OF VIETNAM

Hayden, of Chicago 7 protest fame, was not only disgusted with it but equally upset that no one in power seemed to give a shit about its presence. Tom is backing Kerry and as uncomfortable as I was that his anti-war record has been disappeared from view. It has taken only thirty plus years for his testimony about war crimes to be buried even as you can bet the right will continue to beat him over the head.

Protest is clearly out of fashion. Many of those who in years past rallied outside in Atlantic City and Chicago and Miami were now inside. Mississippi has seated its freedom democrats. Unity is this year’s message. These folks want to win and not just be “right.”

TV BALANCE

When I got back to my dads, he was pissed that the right was already having its say in the TV coverage on CNN and the like where Republicans were commenting on the convention for “balance” but no one of the comrades of the old John or his critics today were given airtime.

“The Republicans will get their turn, ” he said. “Why do the TV guys want to hear themselves talk more than allow the party that is having this party be heard.”

Let us praise the TV Gods for C-SPAN.(Houston’s Jackie Newberry says the same: “I have been watching the convention on C-Span. I watched retired Gen Shalikashvili who made a point of saying that he was a new Democrat. He served in the Vietnam War and in the Gulf War. He had a lot of things to say about war and what a country owed to the service people they sent to war. I switched to CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX. They were all talking heads…none were showing the speaker. Most of the speakers who had worthy things to say could never be heard by people watching the networks because the networks felt their deciphering and interpretation was more important that what the viewer could see and hear for themselves. Thanks for C-Span. Too bad a lot of people don’t have access to it.”

MANAGED POLITICS AND ELECTOTAINMENT

And so we come back again the sad truth that this convention is a convention in any recognizable sense in name only, It is in TIME’s phrase all “electotainment. ” The convention as a form is dead because the party is dead, only it doesn’t know it. And democracy could follow.

Everything is managed. Even the old floor demonstrations have given way to college kids in the back halls organizing and schlepping in pre-selected pre-made signs brought in and out of the hall on schedule. I watched their supervisors oversee the process to keep this train running on time. No detail has been left to spontaneity.

The same was true for most of the speeches where the obligatory how I grew up in adversity and why I am voting for Kerry had a sound alike feel. A unit of the DNC speech police reviewed every word before it could be uttered.

So yes, this was show but a show that at least touched on the crisis in this country as opposed to most of the other shows that are there to divert attention way from it. The logic of TV as an entertainment media dictated. Only on the other shows, you know who the sponsors are because you see their wears. At this event, most of the real sponsors, and funders and special interests went unreported on.

FOR REAL ISSUES, GO ELSEWHERE

Throughout the day, the real issues and concerns were being discussed, largely uncovered in hotel room, restaurants, clubs and conference centers. The centrist DLC was having financial meetings. ( I was happy to hear they are not in good shape) Foreign policy discussion were being held off the record for the elite and on open panels for critics like at a “Take Back America” conference that featured a debate about how and when to get our of Iraq.

I watched former Ambassador Joe Wilson lash out at the Administration for lying about him and the Nations’s Katrina van den Heuval making the case for withdrawal and a new foreign policy. These activists were not only on the margins of the Convention but, physically, not even in Boston but a hotel across the river in Cambridge. I was happy to get to see Barbara Lee, the Berkley Congresswoman who alone on the hill challenged the Patriot act when many of her colleagues signed it without bothering to read it.

MICHAEL MOORE’S MESSAGE

Much more exciting was to watch the excitement that Michael Moore strirred when he came to call on the Florida delegation that was rallying behind a call to insure that the election this year is fair with all votes counted. He had been invited by Congresswoman Corinne Brown of Duvall County who was recently censured in Congress for saying that there had been a coup d’etat in 2000 and that the election was stolen after 27,000 votes in her precincts went uncounted. She first made this charge in my film COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY which is here for all to see (See: Globalvision.org)

There was a media riot when Michael walked in the room. He would soon be surrounded by rabid press corps that literally would not let him move as camera crews jostled for position nearly knocking the director over. He was the star of the morning in an event where show biz personalities get more attention than many pols. (Aside: It was pathetic to watch the red carpets and special lists ar the parties afterwards that showed how so many of the “democrats” wanted to be recognized as insiders and members of the elite classes, not the forgotten masses who are honored in their rhetoric.)

Anyway, Michael was forthright, insisting that 2000 will NOT be allowed to happen again promising to go to Florida before election day and bring his cameras. He later appealed to the Indy media community to bring theirs too since he only expects to have three and it’s a big state. Floridians noted that by November the game maybe over and that its crucial to be there by August 31 when a key primary will be held.

RIGHTS AT RISK

It took a while for police to restore order and end the pushing and shoving by soundbite hungry reporters. I did get to see Moore afterwards at a smaller press conference in which he graciously acknowledged my presence and the that of Greg Palast, the BBC journalist (also in Counting on Democracy) who has done the most to promote and advance the story of the voter purge in Florida. Corrine Brown was clutching Greg’s book as he held forth. Michael Moore went after the media for ignoring many of the points raised in his film. She was practically in tears as she recounted conversations with constituents in which they accused her of letting them down by not insisting their votes be counted.

I asked about why the media (and I guess the Convention itself) has not taken up the voting rights issues. None of the aggressive reporters had anything to say on that score. I watched Palast grill a journalist from the Miami Herald who was saying that they were focused on the recount story and overlooked the voter purge. See the Times for this story which is finally making news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html

The media failures of 2000 are still with us three years later. The lack of probing and deeper analysis was on display for all to see. There was more talk of a river on the Mekong than the dirty water that rockers sing about in the rivers of Boston.

HEADING OUT

I am heading out when others are heading in. Some protests are expected but so far they have been a bust to the chagrin of the security army in flak jackets that are spoiling for a fight and a chance to use their new riot gear and plast handcuffs. So far it has been quiet in the old West End.

Coming back to Boston has been a treat, a chance to see what has changed and how little has changed. I saw Kevin White, who had been Mayor during my glory days, and all the new buildings and improvements that has turned the town even more into “Two Bostons” as gentrification grew along with more corporate towers. The Brahmins are still in power with the poor here given little visibility in events staged in hotels they cannot afford to stay in.

And yet, and yet, I came away with the sense that the fight is on, the throw down is happening and politics this year is a battleground where anything can happen and probably will. And most of it will NOT be televised.

TAKE THIS JOURNO AND “SHOVE IT”

Joe Conason talks about that incident in which Teresa Heinz Kerry told a right wing journalist to shove it in his NY Observer column:

“BOSTON — For an intelligent, outspoken woman in politics who finds herself buffeted by the whims and moods of the national press corps, there is always a choice of descriptive phrases. When she chooses her words with caution, she may be “perfectly poised” but risks being dismissed as “overly scripted.” If she speaks her mind, she could be praised as “refreshingly candid,” but will more likely be denounced as “out of control.”

This is a rigged journalistic game, played most ferociously by reporters and pundits who are adhering studiously to their own predetermined narratives.

In the case of Teresa Heinz Kerry, many in the media determined that she was trouble long before they even had a glimpse of her. Smart and dedicated, wealthy and opinionated, globally conscious and foreign-born?Now the use of such direct language by a politician’s wife is no doubt shocking to the sensibilities of most journalists, especially the older male contingent.

“It’s one thing for the Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates to berate a reporter as an “asshole” when they think nobody is listening, as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did four years ago, or for the Vice President to growl “Go fuck yourself” on the Senate floor, as Mr. Cheney did a few weeks ago. Boys will be boys, even into late middle age, but girls must ever remain passive and demure.

http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp

SERVING THE MEDIA

On the media front, I noted that COMCAST has a booth at the convention. I heard that former Pentagon Flack Torie Clark is now representing Comcast. Jeff Chester writes to say she is not alone: “Today’s front-page W. Post article. Note that Tony Podesta is representing Comcast and that NAB feted Sen. Leahy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19546-2004Jul27.html

YOUR LETTERS

Wendi Meremak for Oregon blames the suppression of dissent on dirty tricks as it is aimed to “detain and diddle with Boston and conventioneers — cage them,tail them, impair their political attendance, and sabotagecommunications of events. The arbitrary ’security’ Gestapofrom Fleet Center to Falmouth is a dirty trick.

“None of it made any thing safer, (mainly because there was no dangerto be ’safed’ from, but if there had been, what they did wouldn’t havedone it), and was not intended to. ‘Security’ thumbscrewsand invented inconvenieces intended to make, first, a painfulplace to be and a miserable time, and second, jammed communicationsso you can’t call for help and what’s going on in there no onecan look in on.

And this is the part I think you don’t suspect — how much INTENTorchestrates the federal terror war on USA politics. Bullypowerwants everyone too scared to talk back. So saying Bush’s lies makes hima liar is speech that must be muzzled?”

Andrea Cano the Western Regional Organizer for United Church of ChristWrites: “Great info, Danny, makes me feel I’m right there in the midst of all of thejuicy stuff. I look forward to your daily journal.”

From Switzerland a friend writes: I liked this from NYT online.

“- QUOTATION OF THE DAY -

“I’ll be candid with you. I had hoped to be back here this week under different circumstances, running for re-election. But you know the old saying: you win some, you lose some. And then there’s that little-known third category.” Al Gore.

He also like the Jib Jab This Land is Your Land animation that is rocketing around the Internet

ON WMD, THE FILM

Paul O Hanlon writes from Scotland: ” I’m so glad to hear that your documentary is at last up and running. I’d love to see it, is there anychance of a British showing or will it available on video/DVD soon? (YES. SOON!)

“I haven’t been to the United States since 2002. I saw you atGlobalvision’s old office at Broadway in February that year and I went to ananti-war demo in Washington DC in April 2002. Since the war on Iraq thoughI’m afraid my estimation of the US has gone way down. This sometimes getssilly, I’m ashamed to admit. Watching the Wimbledon finals recently I foundmyself childishly cheering on both Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova againsttheir American opponents Andy Roddick and Serena Williams. That’s not fairon committed campaigners like you of course and perhaps I should payattention to the placards American anti-war protesters at British demoscarry which say: “Don’t blame us, we didn’t elect him!”

“I enjoyed reading your report of the Democratic convention but thequestion must be asked: Will Kerry be any different? He and his running mateEdwards both voted for the war and for that $400 billion plus defensebudget. I was horrified to hear on BBC Radio 4’s `The World thisweekend`(Sunday 25th July) that Kerry’s likely secretary of state will benone other than the `Balkan Bulldozer` Richard Holbrooke. The man whoadvocates `bombs for peace` sounds even more hawkish than Colon Powell andwhat a pair he and the death squad man John Negroponte will make!”

Other letters on the film came from a military officer who wants to show it in a military class on information operations and two students at North Texas University who have arranged to screen it during orientation to 23000 students. Wow.

Liz Burbank writes from the left coast: “regarding the sports-war-TV symbiosis, let’s not forget the cause & effect role of capitalism’s male supremacist misogyny!”

Geo writes from NY: “i can’t even watch more then half a min of thedemo-cratic convention - its so surreal - so i wonder how it is for you -what’s the energy there and i can’t imagine and the implications of all this to the future of the future = and people are just sleep walking - playing their ritual mating dance party party games - so what i want to hear is how it really is - what people think about it and say about it - i was at the 84 democratic presidential soap opera and it was all about parties for the most part.”

PAUL FOOT, PRESENTE

From the Guardian, news of the funeral of British journo Paul Foot: “MPs, unionists, editors, actors, comedians and film directors joinactivists and writers in mourning great campaigner Paul Mackintosh Footwhose contribution to journalism included writing for ‘Private Eye’.People had gathered in their hundreds outside the crematorium in northLondon yesterday, where there were banners of the Socialist WorkersParty and the unions, of the anti-war and the anti-racism movements, allthe causes to which the journalist, revolutionary and campaigner PaulFoot had been so pivotal and with which he was so proud to be associatedbefore his untimely death at the age of sixty-six last week.”

http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,1270684,00.html

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