Your Letters on Galloway

Jack Schultz writes from Canada:

“Seeing how George Galloway handled himself with Charlie Rose tonight was heartening. Charlie was certainly not prepared to hear such plain speech… I thought I’d check the web for reaction. I googled George Galloway. All the reaction seemed to come from British, Scottish, Irish, Indian, but no American media response. I went to the NY Times. It wasn’t a prominent story. I searched for it and found it in the International section. It’s author, Judith Miller.”

Eric Olson sends along his piece on Galloway’s testimony:

“My, what a busy, disturbing, but not entirely horrible week. I have to bug you all with my third message in as many days. Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman galls me to such a degree, I feel like sharing some of British MP George Galloway’s powerful defense of himself, and incredibly pointed anti-war remarks before Coleman’s little phony hatchet job called the Subcommittee on Investigations. Galloway performs an excellent public service with a good, swift spanking of the insufferable jackass”

http://deepblade.net/journal/2005/05/galloway-versus-coleman.html

ANOTHER VICTIM OF OVERZEALOUS AIRPORT SECURITY

LaRita Smith read one of the letters we posted about an Iranian woman being hassled at JFK airport:

“IN JACKSON MISSISSIPPI at Medgar Evers International Airport. I GOT THE SAME, BUT WORSE TREATMENT BY A BIG FAT STALWART SECURITY GUARD WOMAN ORDERING ME IN A BOOMING VOICE TO COMPLY WITH ABRUPT ORDERS TO GET OFF MY BUTT AND KEEP ON STANDING (LONGER, TOO LONG FOR MY TIRED FEET AFTER I HAD SPENT THE DAY GETTING READY FOR THE PEACE MARCH)AND ADDED COMMANDS EVEN AS I WAS COMPLYING. SHE WAS ROUGH WITH THE WAND, AND I WAS MUCH TOO PHYSICALLY TIRED TO RESIST OR COMPLAIN TO MISSING SUPERIORS — SO STRICKEN ITEMPORARILY LOST THE BASKET CONTAINING VALUABLES. THESE WOMEN TAKE PERSONALFRUSTRATIONS OUT ON STRANGERS: ELDERLY WOMEN OF A DIFFERENT COLOR. RACE, AGE.

“I AM AN ARCHETYPE AT 81. ( I AM OF NATIVE AMERICAN DESCENT) WHAT WOULD I SUFFER IF I LOOKED ARABIC? OR WORE A JORDANIAN DRESS? MORE, OR LESS? I SUPPOSE I SHOULD NOT GO TO THE FILM FESTIVAL AT POTSDAM AFTER ALL WITH VIDEOMOVIE SAFER IN BAGHDAD IF I AM ADMITTED, IN AUGUST. MANY MANY PEOPLE WHOSE ANCESTORS WERE DEPRIVED OF THEIR RIGHTS TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGOAND WHO NOW WEAR BADGES OF AUTHORITY AND DRIVE BIG AUTOMOBILES AND ARE NEWLY RICH ON SALARIES THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE MAY NOW GET THEIR REVENGE AND KICKS ON PEOPLE WHO NEVER OFFENDED THEM NOR WANTED ANYTHING FOR THEM BUT THE BEST.”

“I’M SO MAD, I COULD SPIT”

Nancy Morgan from Lutz, Florida, here:

“I’m so mad, I could spit! This administration has managed, again, to pull off the big lie, and the mainstream media are supporting it! I’m referring to the latest Newsweek piece on the Koran desecration in our prison camps. As Mediachannel.org and www.rawstory.org report, there have been numerous reports starting in 2002 all the way up to 2005 about this abuse! It happened! So, this new ‘blame the media’ campaign for starting riots in Afghanistan and tarnishing our image in the world worked again, just like in the case of Dan Rather! People calling in the C-Span program Washington Journal believe this bogus story that the administration is pumping out! General Meyers has already said that his generals in the field say that, indeed, it is not the Newsweek story that started the riots, but a local issue. That little bit of truth is hardly mentioned in the mainstream media! Below is a letter that I just sent to a columnist at the St. Pete Times in response to his cowardly piece in this morning’s edition where he piles on. See www.sptimes.com and go to Phillip Gailey’s column today, May 17th.

“Dear Mr. Gailey,
“You have fallen for the bait — again. You issued an apology concerning your reporting on the Newsweek story of the desecration of the Koran by U.S. guards in military prisons housing Islamist detainees. You weakly said, however, that there is evidence of this practice, albeit by released prisoners, and not by government officials, as if the released detainees had no credibility, and government officials do? How about General Meyers’ statement last week that his generals in the field in Afghanistan have told him that the riots were not related to the Newsweek story at all, but were the result of an on-the-ground program that people were angry at? Also, those stories told by former detainees and corroborated by others, and reported throughout 2002 all the way up to May 2, 2005 in outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, U.K. Guardian, and The Daily Mirror all tell of Koran desecration by U.S. interrogators! What has happened here, just like happened with Dan Rather and 60 Minutes, is that this administration and its backers have managed to pull off another ‘blame the media’ campaign with the help of media people like yourself who are very willing to take this administrations word for truth without doing the investigative work that good journalism requires. Your piece should have been on the threat to the media by this administration. Killing the messenger is a tactic that they have used successfully to silence detractors. Your own mail, as you have indicated, was full of accusations that you are putting our troops in danger, you are unpatriotic, and you have contributed to the damage of our reputation in the world? That is the kind of intimidation that the right-wing engages in, and you fell for it. Mr. Gailey, I’m ashamed of you, and I’m ashamed of the mainstream media for cowering in the face of this blatant intimidation. As it turns out, Newsweek got it right, as did Dan Rather. Our reputation in the world is damaged not by the truth, but by the lies of our government and the actions of the Bush administration that condones and supports the violence done to our supposed enemies without regard to the rule of law or any other sane policy that ensures that the United States is accountable for its actions in the world. That is the real story. Do your job, sir. Be a journalist, not a stenographer.”

Dahr Jamail responds to my piece on the Media Reform Conference:

“Thanks man, and thanks for passing this along. Wish I could’ve been there. Keep up the fantastic work.”

NAZI E-MAILS LIKE LOCUSTS

We had a meltdown of our Mediachannel server last week. No, I think I know why. This appeared in Editor and Publisher:

“NEW YORK — A new variant of the Sober spam worm is being blamed for the deluge of German spam messages carrying right-wing or neo-Nazi messages flooding in-boxes around the world this week. Once the attachment is opened, the worm uses its own e-mail engine to send itself to addresses harvested from the infected computer.

“Some messages link to right-wing German sites. This be linked to the 60th anniversary commemorations of the end of World War II in Europe.”

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000921316

GOOD NEWS FROM SERBIA

My partner Rory O’Connor’s film on ethnic cleansing years ago in Bosnia will finally air — in Serbia. “Yellow Wasps” will be aired on B92.TV in prime time, at 9 PM, on Monday, May 23. Veran Matic writes: “I’ll let you know about the reception afterwards.”

Thanks for tuning in. I will be posting tomorrow and then off for a week. Hint: The East is Red — or used to be.

To join the conversation, write: dissector@mediachannel.org