EMAIL TO YOUR NEWS DISSECTOR

Tom Nusbaumer, a journalist and a onetime marine back in the Vietnam days, called me today just as I was writing an angry letter that will do no good protesting The IFC Channel’s refusal to run my film IN DEBT WE TRUST (after agreeing to do so.)

Regular IFC viewers can see how one more cable outlet has begun going down hill (ie. and down market) with a new programming thrust.

Tom could tell how discouraged I was. He wrote afterwards:

good talking to you. i feel for you, it’s a damn struggle that never stops.

when in iraq i was with some marines and we were QRT (quick response team) to an VBIEB (vehicle borne IED) and there were body parts all over the fucking place. it was chaos. screaming, horror. 15 were dead, 2 babies, 35 plus wounded — marines were picking up hands and legs … so i can’t stop. we may not win Danny, but we can’t stop.

keep going, man.

in respect,
tom

(SPEAKING OF CABLE: THE HISTORY CHANNEL FEELS ITS NAME IS TOO LONG FOR ITS VIEWERS TO REMEMBER. SO IT IS SHORTENING IT TO JUST “HISTORY.” (The WAY FEDERAL EXPRESS BECAME JUST FEDEX.)

BUT WILL IT THEN TRADE MARK OR COPYRIGHT THAT NAME, SO THAT EVERY HISTORY DEPARTMENT IN THE WORLD HAS TO PAY THEM A LICENSE FEE?

IF THAT PROVES TOO HARD FOR VIEWERS TO REMEMBER, THEY CAN ALWAYS SHORTEN IT TO H. (THAT MAY BE TAKEN BY THE HEROIN INDUSTRY!) MAYBE PBS SHOULD BECOME JUST P….IMAGAINE THE COPY-CATTING TO COME…TALK ABOUT DUMBING DOWN….

On to the blog.

DYLAN WINS PULITZER, MOYERS WINS RIDENHOUR
WALL STREET FIGHTING BACK AGAINST FED “REFORMS”
PETRAEUS SPINS TODAY: WILL HE HAVE A NEW WAR PRETEXT?

We begin today with some congratulations to media award winners. The Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday and went as they usually to do predictable big time mainstream media outlets—6 to the Washington Post, Another 2 to the NY Times.

Yawn.

But this year, something new was added—an “honorary” Pulitzer to singer Bob Dylan who the judges honored for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

Needless to say, there was no official comment on the songs that Dylan wrote based on the news—on World War 2, Masters of War, Ballad of Hattie Carrol, Hurricane Carter—and so many others that delved into current events with so much more clarity and depth than most journalists ever show. It was Dylan who also sang famously in response to inane questions from a reporter from Time Magazine, “something is happening, and you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?”

Dylan came to public notice at age 20 when reviewer Bob Shelton of the NY Times covered his show in Greenwich Village, so he owed a lot to to the press even though he later transcended it At a time when journalists have lost so much respect this recognition may do more for the credibility of the Pulitzer Prizes than for Dylan who has all the recognition anyone can want.

If he wants to make a statement about the decline of the media, he might want to give it back. Now that would send some ripples into the mediasphere.

In fact, several years ago, Gary Schapiro wrote a piece in the New York Sun titled “Does Bob Dylan Deserve the Pulitzer?” That was in 2004.

The article was about a classical music seminar: “I don’t think Bob Dylan needs a Pulitzer Prize,” said a classical music critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman. Greg Sandow of NewMusicBox.com concurred, but argued that the prize needs Dylan.”

How right he was.

MOYERS WINS RIDENHOUR COURAGE AWARD

Another award winner announced today was the winner or the Ridenhour prize., named after Ron Ridenhour, the soldier-journalist who actually broke the Mylai Massacre, and funded not by a media luminary but by Randy Fertel of New Orleans, one of the supporters of my film WMD. The Nation’s Ham Fish wrote to tell us about it:

“Bill Moyers is the recipient of the 2008 Ridenhour Courage Prize, given in recognition of his fierce embrace of the public interest, his advocacy of media pluralism, and the unyielding moral voice he has contributed to our national discourse.

“The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.”

A PULITZER FOR DELUSION TO JOHN MCCAIN FOR HIS QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The United States is “no longer staring into the abyss of defeat” in Iraq

A PULITZER FOR BEST SUM UP OF THE WAR FOR EXPLAINING THAT HIS UNIT’S RAID ON SADR CITY WAS TO FLUSH OUT “KNUCKLEHEADS” ABC DESCRIBED THEN FOLKS THERE AS ANTI-AMERICAN AS IF TO JUSTIFY THE BLOODY RAID.

SADR HIMSELF, NOW NO DOUBT, THEIR “KNUCLEHEAD IN CHIEF” CALLS FOR DIALOGIUE. HE IS CALLED A “RADICAL” BY THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNING WASHINGTON POST. HOW RADICAL…..

WP BAGHDAD - Aides to Muqtada al-Sadr called Monday for dialogue to resolve a violent standoff with the Iraqi government, saying that the radical Shiite cleric would disband his militia if senior religious leaders order himto.

AP: Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker reports to Congress today on Iraq’s progress.

AP tells us what he will say:

WASHINGTON - The four-star general in charge of Iraq wants more time in a war that is now in its sixth year. Democrats say he’s got until the November elections.

Gen. David Petraeus planned to testify Tuesday on the war for the first time in seven months. He was expected to tell two Senate committees that last year’s influx of 30,000 troops in Iraq had helped calm some of the sectarian violence but that to prevent a backslide in security, troops would likely be needed in large numbers through the end of the year.

Under his proposal, as many as 140,000 troops could be in Iraq when voters head to the polls this fall.

Note: The United States has spent more than $22 billion to build up Iraq’s security forces, but they are unable to quell the militias and the resistance…..The press accounts omits the resistance and calls them just “militias.”

(Anyone been watching JOHN ADAMS on HBO? This sounds like the way that the British occupation forces in Boston described the farmers who fought them…We live in a country that forgets its own history–and don’t rely on the channel called HISTORY to remind us).

Time to take a lesson from folks in the former MOTHER COUNTRY:

STOP THE WAR MOVEMENT COMMENTS IN LONDON:

“As hundreds of thousands of Iraqis came onto the streets in
towns and cities across the country to call for the
occupiers to leave, it was clear that the Iraqi government
had suffered a humiliating defeat, at which point the attack
was no longer a “defining moment” for Bush and his
administration. These protests showed that, despite the US
policy to foment communal tensions, the main division in
Iraqi society is between pro- and anti-occupation forces.
The widely popular cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has now called for
a million strong demonstration this week against the
occupation.”

ALSO FROM THE UK:

Researcher Sarah Meyer carefully tracks the sequence of events in connection with the fighting in Basra and asks if it is a prelude to an attack on Iran, It is essential to follow the chronologies here. Read this.

DOUGLAS FEITH: Pentagon Insider Tells 60 Minutes U.S. Attack On Iraq Was Anticipatory Self-Defense; Not 9/11 Retaliation. Add the term ASD to our lexicon of deceptive intitials–like WMD.

ROLE OF IRAN IN IRAQ: (VIA UNDERNEWS)

M K BHADRAKUMAR, ASIA TIMES By all accounts, Iran played a decisive role in hammering out the peace deal among the Shi’ite factions in Iraq. A bloody week of human killing on the Tigris River ended on Sunday. Details are sketchy, however, since they must come from non-Iranian sources. Tehran keeps silent about its role. . .

It appears that one of the most shadowy figures of the Iranian security establishment, General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps personally mediated in the intra-Iraqi Shi’ite negotiations. Suleimani is in charge of the IRGC’s operations abroad.

US military commanders routinely blame the Quds for all their woes in Iraq. The fact that the representatives of Da’wa and SIIC secretly traveled to Qom under the very nose of American and British intelligence and sought Quds mediation to broker a deal conveys a huge political message. Iran signals that security considerations rather than politics or religion prevailed.

But the politics of the deal are all too apparent. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who was camping in Basra and personally supervising the operations against the Mahdi Army, was not in the loop about the goings-on. As for US President George W Bush, he had just spoken praising Maliki for waging a “historic and decisive” battle against the Mahdi Army, which he said was “a defining moment” in the history of a “free Iraq”. Both Maliki and Bush look very foolish. . .

IRAN WANTS TO TALK

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org polls finds that although Iranians continue to view the United States negatively, they strongly support steps to improve US-Iran relations including direct talks, greater access for each others’ journalists, increased trade and more cultural, educational and athletic exchanges.

While majorities of Iranians think the United States threatens Iran and is hostile to Islam, these numbers have diminished over the past year. A growing number–now two out of three–believe it is possible for Islam and the West to find common ground.

“It appears that as the sense of threat has subsided, there has been some thawing of Iranian hostility and a greater readiness to enter into closer relations with the United States,” said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

WAR IS NOT BEING WON

MCAIN’S SON COMPARED TO PRINCE HARRY AT THE FRONT

NY SUN: Obama Adviser Calls for Troops To Stay in Iraq Through 2010

WASHINGTON — A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office… This is not the first time the opinion of an adviser to the Obama campaign has differed with the candidate’s stated Iraq policy.

ROBERT PARRY: US HAS GONE MAD

Ritter says White House preparing for war in Iran

British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes

DEATH BY PAPARRAZI

Will the media take any responsibility for its role in creating these celebrity circuses?

LONDON - A coroner’s jury has ruled that Princess Diana and boyfriend Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed through the reckless actions of their driver and the paparazzi in 1997.
The jury had been told that a verdict of unlawful killing would mean that they believed the reckless behavior of their driver and paparazzi amounted to manslaughter. It was the most serious verdict available to them Monday.

The couple died when their speeding car slammed into a concrete pillar while it was being chased by photographers in cars and on motorbikes.

NYT: Olympic Torch Run in Paris Halted as Protests Spread

Thousands of demonstrators massed to protest the relay, and the torch went out several times, forcing the police to place it on a bus.

China Meets with The International Olympic Committee Today.