When General Motors reigned, the cry was, "As General Motors goes, so goes
the Nation"!
And the Nation did go the way of General Motors.
And today I fear that the cry is, "As Michigan goes, so goes the other 49
states."
I wish it were not so, but the Monster has found that it can eat out its own
underbelly and still appear to be growing bigger and more dominating. Like
any vicious cancer, it is fooling itself. The very act of feeding itself,
will bring its early death.
Which is not good news for any of us left behind on the rotting bones.
Carl Jarvis(the Cheerful One!)
----- Original Message -----
From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
It does boil down to people and to dedicated watchdogs Carl. No doubt about
it.
We've been sorely betrayed by people with self interest at heart along with
a dictator of a Governor.
But, RSA folks ignore the obvious even in their own findings.
They just slap the hands of the culprits who misappropriate millions and
then allow new culprits to do worse in my experience here.
Effectively I see this state and other distressed states taking these funds
and then using them for other purposes which some might call money
laundering.
Well, I call it money laundering in fact.
It isn't just VR and IL dollars either.
These so-called libertarian, anti-government types like we have here are all
too happy to take the fed dollars and then run.
Problem with the feds is they don't enforce their own regulations ensuring
that federal dollars are used for the purposes intended in many cases.
Problem with local advocates is generally they dont even ask questions about
openess, transparency and accountability.
Meanwhile back at the ranch so many dedicated people in the field try to do
their jobs with dwindling resources as best they can.
Scofflaw states abound even in the public record of RSA monitoring, and I
have openly called for de-funding of VR programs here in Michigan as a
conditionality of compliance and to send a message to other scofflaw states.
But then again I wish the feds would rigorously enforce the ADA or even
apply 504 and 508 to itself.
Worse I wish the feds would actually jail some of the scofflaw banksters who
blew up the global economy.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@gmail.com>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
> Joe,
> Your experiences with Michigan's Blind VR services is at one end of the
> scale. Here in Washington state, we are toward the opposite end. While
> our
> services can stand some shaking up, the staff does make efforts to hear
> the
> consumers and produce programs that do meet people's needs. We have had a
> good relationship with the Feds over the years, even after the closing of
> Region Ten. The review teams from DC. have been thorough and
> knowledgeable,
> and have generated good recommendations for improving our services. And
> for
> the most part, the Department has had a good record of following up.
> This is not to whitewash the agency or the Feds, but we are doing well
> under rather lack luster leadership. But at least that leadership has
> understanding of the people it is serving. Just not enough guts to push
> for
> improvements and needed state dollars.
> We do have an active SRC. Sue Ammeter is currently the Chair, and comes
> in
> with years of experience on the Human Rights Commission and the King
> County
> Equal Opportunity(not sure of the actual name of the agency). She has
> also
> been our WCB president on several occasions, and is our current Advocacy
> Chair.
> We have several ACB members on the SRC, and the NFB seems to have
> abandoned
> their responsibility as Watchdogs of Blind Services.
>
> Carl Jarvis
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
> To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 4:18 AM
> Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
> Knee jerk response here:
>
> As bad as RSA has been I ddon't know if it would hurt to shake it up.
> Currently it is broken and broken badly. Monitoring of both VR and IL
> services have been a sick joke.
>
> I also don't think reserving 15 percent for transition services is a bad
> thing either so long as over all grants will be expanded.
>
> On tthe flip side we all know over all grants won't be expanded.
>
> And simply moving a function of an agency to another agency doesn't fix it
> either. That would be moving deck chairs on the /Titanic unless other
> reforms take place.
>
> Joe
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "ted chittenden" <tchittenden@cox.net>
> To: "blind-democracy" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 1:28 AM
> Subject: Fwd: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
>> Hi to all.
>>
>> The note by Melanie Brunson below is self-explanatory and deserves your
>> full attention.
>> --
>> Ted Chittenden
>>
>> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
>>
>> To: azcb-chat@yahoogroups.com
>> From: Barbara McDonald <mrsmcdee@q.com>
>> Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:27:28 -0700
>> Subject: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
>> Act
>>
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: "Melanie Brunson" <mbrunson@acb.org>
>>> Date: July 25, 2013 3:34:51 PM PDT
>>> To: <rehab-issues@acb.org>
>>> Cc: leadership@acb.org
>>> Subject: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab Act
>>> Reply-To: mbrunson@acb.org
>>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Late yesterday afternoon, Senators Harkin of Iowa and Alexander of
>>> Tennessee introduced a bill to reauthorize the Workforce Investment
>>> Act, which includes the Rehabilitation Act. There are some
>>> significant (and troubling) changes proposed in this legislation.
>>> For starters, it requires that all rehab agencies set aside 15
>>> percent of their budget to provide transition services. It also
>>> splits up the functions of currently carried out by RSA so they can
>>> be moved to other federal agencies. The RSA would be renamed to
>>> focus on employment only and moved to the Dept. of Labor.
>>> Independent Living programs would be administered by the Community
>>> Living Administration at the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
>>> Please stay tuned for more. I have a suspicion that I will find
>>> more interesting developments to report to you as I go through the
>>> text in detail. However, I wanted to alert you to the fact that
>>> the bill has been introduced. The HELP Committee is planning to
>>> mark it up on July 31, so I plan to write a comprehensive set of
>>> comments before then. I will share them with you when they are
>>> completed.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson, Esq.
>>>
>>> Executive Director
>>>
>>> American Council of the Blind
>>>
>>> 2200 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 650
>>>
>>> Arlington, VA 22201
>>>
>>> (T) 202-467-5081
>>>
>>> (T) 800-424-8666
>>>
>>> (F) 703-465-5085
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> leadership mailing list
>>> leadership@acb.org
>>> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/leadership
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Saturday, July 27, 2013
As General Motor Goes
When General Motors reigned, the cry was, "As General Motors goes, so goes
the Nation"!
And the Nation did go the way of General Motors.
And today I fear that the cry is, "As Michigan goes, so goes the other 49
states."
I wish it were not so, but the Monster has found that it can eat out its own
underbelly and still appear to be growing bigger and more dominating. Like
any vicious cancer, it is fooling itself. The very act of feeding itself,
will bring its early death.
Which is not good news for any of us left behind on the rotting bones.
Carl Jarvis(the Cheerful One!)
----- Original Message -----
From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
It does boil down to people and to dedicated watchdogs Carl. No doubt about
it.
We've been sorely betrayed by people with self interest at heart along with
a dictator of a Governor.
But, RSA folks ignore the obvious even in their own findings.
They just slap the hands of the culprits who misappropriate millions and
then allow new culprits to do worse in my experience here.
Effectively I see this state and other distressed states taking these funds
and then using them for other purposes which some might call money
laundering.
Well, I call it money laundering in fact.
It isn't just VR and IL dollars either.
These so-called libertarian, anti-government types like we have here are all
too happy to take the fed dollars and then run.
Problem with the feds is they don't enforce their own regulations ensuring
that federal dollars are used for the purposes intended in many cases.
Problem with local advocates is generally they dont even ask questions about
openess, transparency and accountability.
Meanwhile back at the ranch so many dedicated people in the field try to do
their jobs with dwindling resources as best they can.
Scofflaw states abound even in the public record of RSA monitoring, and I
have openly called for de-funding of VR programs here in Michigan as a
conditionality of compliance and to send a message to other scofflaw states.
But then again I wish the feds would rigorously enforce the ADA or even
apply 504 and 508 to itself.
Worse I wish the feds would actually jail some of the scofflaw banksters who
blew up the global economy.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@gmail.com>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
> Joe,
> Your experiences with Michigan's Blind VR services is at one end of the
> scale. Here in Washington state, we are toward the opposite end. While
> our
> services can stand some shaking up, the staff does make efforts to hear
> the
> consumers and produce programs that do meet people's needs. We have had a
> good relationship with the Feds over the years, even after the closing of
> Region Ten. The review teams from DC. have been thorough and
> knowledgeable,
> and have generated good recommendations for improving our services. And
> for
> the most part, the Department has had a good record of following up.
> This is not to whitewash the agency or the Feds, but we are doing well
> under rather lack luster leadership. But at least that leadership has
> understanding of the people it is serving. Just not enough guts to push
> for
> improvements and needed state dollars.
> We do have an active SRC. Sue Ammeter is currently the Chair, and comes
> in
> with years of experience on the Human Rights Commission and the King
> County
> Equal Opportunity(not sure of the actual name of the agency). She has
> also
> been our WCB president on several occasions, and is our current Advocacy
> Chair.
> We have several ACB members on the SRC, and the NFB seems to have
> abandoned
> their responsibility as Watchdogs of Blind Services.
>
> Carl Jarvis
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
> To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 4:18 AM
> Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
> Knee jerk response here:
>
> As bad as RSA has been I ddon't know if it would hurt to shake it up.
> Currently it is broken and broken badly. Monitoring of both VR and IL
> services have been a sick joke.
>
> I also don't think reserving 15 percent for transition services is a bad
> thing either so long as over all grants will be expanded.
>
> On tthe flip side we all know over all grants won't be expanded.
>
> And simply moving a function of an agency to another agency doesn't fix it
> either. That would be moving deck chairs on the /Titanic unless other
> reforms take place.
>
> Joe
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "ted chittenden" <tchittenden@cox.net>
> To: "blind-democracy" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 1:28 AM
> Subject: Fwd: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
>> Hi to all.
>>
>> The note by Melanie Brunson below is self-explanatory and deserves your
>> full attention.
>> --
>> Ted Chittenden
>>
>> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
>>
>> To: azcb-chat@yahoogroups.com
>> From: Barbara McDonald <mrsmcdee@q.com>
>> Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:27:28 -0700
>> Subject: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
>> Act
>>
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: "Melanie Brunson" <mbrunson@acb.org>
>>> Date: July 25, 2013 3:34:51 PM PDT
>>> To: <rehab-issues@acb.org>
>>> Cc: leadership@acb.org
>>> Subject: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab Act
>>> Reply-To: mbrunson@acb.org
>>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Late yesterday afternoon, Senators Harkin of Iowa and Alexander of
>>> Tennessee introduced a bill to reauthorize the Workforce Investment
>>> Act, which includes the Rehabilitation Act. There are some
>>> significant (and troubling) changes proposed in this legislation.
>>> For starters, it requires that all rehab agencies set aside 15
>>> percent of their budget to provide transition services. It also
>>> splits up the functions of currently carried out by RSA so they can
>>> be moved to other federal agencies. The RSA would be renamed to
>>> focus on employment only and moved to the Dept. of Labor.
>>> Independent Living programs would be administered by the Community
>>> Living Administration at the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
>>> Please stay tuned for more. I have a suspicion that I will find
>>> more interesting developments to report to you as I go through the
>>> text in detail. However, I wanted to alert you to the fact that
>>> the bill has been introduced. The HELP Committee is planning to
>>> mark it up on July 31, so I plan to write a comprehensive set of
>>> comments before then. I will share them with you when they are
>>> completed.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson, Esq.
>>>
>>> Executive Director
>>>
>>> American Council of the Blind
>>>
>>> 2200 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 650
>>>
>>> Arlington, VA 22201
>>>
>>> (T) 202-467-5081
>>>
>>> (T) 800-424-8666
>>>
>>> (F) 703-465-5085
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> leadership mailing list
>>> leadership@acb.org
>>> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/leadership
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
the Nation"!
And the Nation did go the way of General Motors.
And today I fear that the cry is, "As Michigan goes, so goes the other 49
states."
I wish it were not so, but the Monster has found that it can eat out its own
underbelly and still appear to be growing bigger and more dominating. Like
any vicious cancer, it is fooling itself. The very act of feeding itself,
will bring its early death.
Which is not good news for any of us left behind on the rotting bones.
Carl Jarvis(the Cheerful One!)
----- Original Message -----
From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
It does boil down to people and to dedicated watchdogs Carl. No doubt about
it.
We've been sorely betrayed by people with self interest at heart along with
a dictator of a Governor.
But, RSA folks ignore the obvious even in their own findings.
They just slap the hands of the culprits who misappropriate millions and
then allow new culprits to do worse in my experience here.
Effectively I see this state and other distressed states taking these funds
and then using them for other purposes which some might call money
laundering.
Well, I call it money laundering in fact.
It isn't just VR and IL dollars either.
These so-called libertarian, anti-government types like we have here are all
too happy to take the fed dollars and then run.
Problem with the feds is they don't enforce their own regulations ensuring
that federal dollars are used for the purposes intended in many cases.
Problem with local advocates is generally they dont even ask questions about
openess, transparency and accountability.
Meanwhile back at the ranch so many dedicated people in the field try to do
their jobs with dwindling resources as best they can.
Scofflaw states abound even in the public record of RSA monitoring, and I
have openly called for de-funding of VR programs here in Michigan as a
conditionality of compliance and to send a message to other scofflaw states.
But then again I wish the feds would rigorously enforce the ADA or even
apply 504 and 508 to itself.
Worse I wish the feds would actually jail some of the scofflaw banksters who
blew up the global economy.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@gmail.com>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
> Joe,
> Your experiences with Michigan's Blind VR services is at one end of the
> scale. Here in Washington state, we are toward the opposite end. While
> our
> services can stand some shaking up, the staff does make efforts to hear
> the
> consumers and produce programs that do meet people's needs. We have had a
> good relationship with the Feds over the years, even after the closing of
> Region Ten. The review teams from DC. have been thorough and
> knowledgeable,
> and have generated good recommendations for improving our services. And
> for
> the most part, the Department has had a good record of following up.
> This is not to whitewash the agency or the Feds, but we are doing well
> under rather lack luster leadership. But at least that leadership has
> understanding of the people it is serving. Just not enough guts to push
> for
> improvements and needed state dollars.
> We do have an active SRC. Sue Ammeter is currently the Chair, and comes
> in
> with years of experience on the Human Rights Commission and the King
> County
> Equal Opportunity(not sure of the actual name of the agency). She has
> also
> been our WCB president on several occasions, and is our current Advocacy
> Chair.
> We have several ACB members on the SRC, and the NFB seems to have
> abandoned
> their responsibility as Watchdogs of Blind Services.
>
> Carl Jarvis
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
> To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 4:18 AM
> Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
> Knee jerk response here:
>
> As bad as RSA has been I ddon't know if it would hurt to shake it up.
> Currently it is broken and broken badly. Monitoring of both VR and IL
> services have been a sick joke.
>
> I also don't think reserving 15 percent for transition services is a bad
> thing either so long as over all grants will be expanded.
>
> On tthe flip side we all know over all grants won't be expanded.
>
> And simply moving a function of an agency to another agency doesn't fix it
> either. That would be moving deck chairs on the /Titanic unless other
> reforms take place.
>
> Joe
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "ted chittenden" <tchittenden@cox.net>
> To: "blind-democracy" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 1:28 AM
> Subject: Fwd: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
>> Hi to all.
>>
>> The note by Melanie Brunson below is self-explanatory and deserves your
>> full attention.
>> --
>> Ted Chittenden
>>
>> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
>>
>> To: azcb-chat@yahoogroups.com
>> From: Barbara McDonald <mrsmcdee@q.com>
>> Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:27:28 -0700
>> Subject: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
>> Act
>>
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: "Melanie Brunson" <mbrunson@acb.org>
>>> Date: July 25, 2013 3:34:51 PM PDT
>>> To: <rehab-issues@acb.org>
>>> Cc: leadership@acb.org
>>> Subject: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab Act
>>> Reply-To: mbrunson@acb.org
>>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Late yesterday afternoon, Senators Harkin of Iowa and Alexander of
>>> Tennessee introduced a bill to reauthorize the Workforce Investment
>>> Act, which includes the Rehabilitation Act. There are some
>>> significant (and troubling) changes proposed in this legislation.
>>> For starters, it requires that all rehab agencies set aside 15
>>> percent of their budget to provide transition services. It also
>>> splits up the functions of currently carried out by RSA so they can
>>> be moved to other federal agencies. The RSA would be renamed to
>>> focus on employment only and moved to the Dept. of Labor.
>>> Independent Living programs would be administered by the Community
>>> Living Administration at the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
>>> Please stay tuned for more. I have a suspicion that I will find
>>> more interesting developments to report to you as I go through the
>>> text in detail. However, I wanted to alert you to the fact that
>>> the bill has been introduced. The HELP Committee is planning to
>>> mark it up on July 31, so I plan to write a comprehensive set of
>>> comments before then. I will share them with you when they are
>>> completed.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson, Esq.
>>>
>>> Executive Director
>>>
>>> American Council of the Blind
>>>
>>> 2200 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 650
>>>
>>> Arlington, VA 22201
>>>
>>> (T) 202-467-5081
>>>
>>> (T) 800-424-8666
>>>
>>> (F) 703-465-5085
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> leadership mailing list
>>> leadership@acb.org
>>> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/leadership
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab Act
Joe,
When General Motors reigned, the cry was, "As General Motors goes, so goes
the Nation"!
And the Nation did go the way of General Motors.
And today I fear that the cry is, "As Michigan goes, so goes the other 49
states."
I wish it were not so, but the Monster has found that it can eat out its own
underbelly and still appear to be growing bigger and more dominating. Like
any vicious cancer, it is fooling itself. The very act of feeding itself,
will bring its early death.
Which is not good news for any of us left behind on the rotting bones.
Carl Jarvis(the Cheerful One!)
----- Original Message -----
From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
It does boil down to people and to dedicated watchdogs Carl. No doubt about
it.
We've been sorely betrayed by people with self interest at heart along with
a dictator of a Governor.
But, RSA folks ignore the obvious even in their own findings.
They just slap the hands of the culprits who misappropriate millions and
then allow new culprits to do worse in my experience here.
Effectively I see this state and other distressed states taking these funds
and then using them for other purposes which some might call money
launderring.
Well, I call it money laundering in fact.
It isn't just VR and IL dollars either.
These so-called libertarian, anti-government types like we have here are all
too happy to take the fed dollars and then run.
Problem with the feds is they don't enforce their own regulations ensuring
that federal dollars are used for the purposes intended in many cases.
Problem with local advocates is generally they dont even ask questions about
openess, transparency and accountability.
Meanwhile back at the ranch so many dedicated people in the field try to do
their jobs with dwindling resources as best they can.
Scofflaw states abound even in the public record of RSA monitoring, and I
have openly called for de-funding of VR programs here in Michigan as a
conditionality of compliance and to send a message to other scofflaw states.
But then again I wish the feds would rigorously enforce the ADA or even
apply 504 and 508 to itself.
Worse I wish the feds would actually jail some of the scofflaw banksters who
blew up the global economy.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@gmail.com>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
> Joe,
> Your experiences with Michigan's Blind VR services is at one end of the
> scale. Here in Washington state, we are toward the opposite end. While
> our
> services can stand some shaking up, the staff does make efforts to hear
> the
> consumers and produce programs that do meet people's needs. We have had a
> good relationship with the Feds over the years, even after the closing of
> Region Ten. The review teams from DC. have been thorough and
> knowledgeable,
> and have generated good recommendations for improving our services. And
> for
> the most part, the Department has had a good record of following up.
> This is not to whitewash the agency or the Feds, but we are doing well
> under rather lack luster leadership. But at least that leadership has
> understanding of the people it is serving. Just not enough guts to push
> for
> improvements and needed state dollars.
> We do have an active SRC. Sue Ammeter is currently the Chair, and comes
> in
> with years of experience on the Human Rights Commission and the King
> County
> Equal Opportunity(not sure of the actual name of the agency). She has
> also
> been our WCB president on several occasions, and is our current Advocacy
> Chair.
> We have several ACB members on the SRC, and the NFB seems to have
> abandoned
> their responsibility as Watchdogs of Blind Services.
>
> Carl Jarvis
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
> To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 4:18 AM
> Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
> Knee jerk response here:
>
> As bad as RSA has been I ddon't know if it would hurt to shake it up.
> Currently it is broken and broken badly. Monitoring of both VR and IL
> services have been a sick joke.
>
> I also don't think reserving 15 percent for transition services is a bad
> thing either so long as over all grants will be expanded.
>
> On tthe flip side we all know over all grants won't be expanded.
>
> And simply moving a function of an agency to another agency doesn't fix it
> either. That would be moving deck chairs on the /Titanic unless other
> reforms take place.
>
> Joe
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "ted chittenden" <tchittenden@cox.net>
> To: "blind-democracy" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 1:28 AM
> Subject: Fwd: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
>> Hi to all.
>>
>> The note by Melanie Brunson below is self-explanatory and deserves your
>> full attention.
>> --
>> Ted Chittenden
>>
>> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
>>
>> To: azcb-chat@yahoogroups.com
>> From: Barbara McDonald <mrsmcdee@q.com>
>> Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:27:28 -0700
>> Subject: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
>> Act
>>
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: "Melanie Brunson" <mbrunson@acb.org>
>>> Date: July 25, 2013 3:34:51 PM PDT
>>> To: <rehab-issues@acb.org>
>>> Cc: leadership@acb.org
>>> Subject: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab Act
>>> Reply-To: mbrunson@acb.org
>>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Late yesterday afternoon, Senators Harkin of Iowa and Alexander of
>>> Tennessee introduced a bill to reauthorize the Workforce Investment
>>> Act, which includes the Rehabilitation Act. There are some
>>> significant (and troubling) changes proposed in this legislation.
>>> For starters, it requires that all rehab agencies set aside 15
>>> percent of their budget to provide transition services. It also
>>> splits up the functions of currently carried out by RSA so they can
>>> be moved to other federal agencies. The RSA would be renamed to
>>> focus on employment only and moved to the Dept. of Labor.
>>> Independent Living programs would be administered by the Community
>>> Living Administration at the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
>>> Please stay tuned for more. I have a suspicion that I will find
>>> more interesting developments to report to you as I go through the
>>> text in detail. However, I wanted to alert you to the fact that
>>> the bill has been introduced. The HELP Committee is planning to
>>> mark it up on July 31, so I plan to write a comprehensive set of
>>> comments before then. I will share them with you when they are
>>> completed.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson, Esq.
>>>
>>> Executive Director
>>>
>>> American Council of the Blind
>>>
>>> 2200 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 650
>>>
>>> Arlington, VA 22201
>>>
>>> (T) 202-467-5081
>>>
>>> (T) 800-424-8666
>>>
>>> (F) 703-465-5085
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> leadership mailing list
>>> leadership@acb.org
>>> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/leadership
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
When General Motors reigned, the cry was, "As General Motors goes, so goes
the Nation"!
And the Nation did go the way of General Motors.
And today I fear that the cry is, "As Michigan goes, so goes the other 49
states."
I wish it were not so, but the Monster has found that it can eat out its own
underbelly and still appear to be growing bigger and more dominating. Like
any vicious cancer, it is fooling itself. The very act of feeding itself,
will bring its early death.
Which is not good news for any of us left behind on the rotting bones.
Carl Jarvis(the Cheerful One!)
----- Original Message -----
From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
It does boil down to people and to dedicated watchdogs Carl. No doubt about
it.
We've been sorely betrayed by people with self interest at heart along with
a dictator of a Governor.
But, RSA folks ignore the obvious even in their own findings.
They just slap the hands of the culprits who misappropriate millions and
then allow new culprits to do worse in my experience here.
Effectively I see this state and other distressed states taking these funds
and then using them for other purposes which some might call money
launderring.
Well, I call it money laundering in fact.
It isn't just VR and IL dollars either.
These so-called libertarian, anti-government types like we have here are all
too happy to take the fed dollars and then run.
Problem with the feds is they don't enforce their own regulations ensuring
that federal dollars are used for the purposes intended in many cases.
Problem with local advocates is generally they dont even ask questions about
openess, transparency and accountability.
Meanwhile back at the ranch so many dedicated people in the field try to do
their jobs with dwindling resources as best they can.
Scofflaw states abound even in the public record of RSA monitoring, and I
have openly called for de-funding of VR programs here in Michigan as a
conditionality of compliance and to send a message to other scofflaw states.
But then again I wish the feds would rigorously enforce the ADA or even
apply 504 and 508 to itself.
Worse I wish the feds would actually jail some of the scofflaw banksters who
blew up the global economy.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@gmail.com>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
Act
> Joe,
> Your experiences with Michigan's Blind VR services is at one end of the
> scale. Here in Washington state, we are toward the opposite end. While
> our
> services can stand some shaking up, the staff does make efforts to hear
> the
> consumers and produce programs that do meet people's needs. We have had a
> good relationship with the Feds over the years, even after the closing of
> Region Ten. The review teams from DC. have been thorough and
> knowledgeable,
> and have generated good recommendations for improving our services. And
> for
> the most part, the Department has had a good record of following up.
> This is not to whitewash the agency or the Feds, but we are doing well
> under rather lack luster leadership. But at least that leadership has
> understanding of the people it is serving. Just not enough guts to push
> for
> improvements and needed state dollars.
> We do have an active SRC. Sue Ammeter is currently the Chair, and comes
> in
> with years of experience on the Human Rights Commission and the King
> County
> Equal Opportunity(not sure of the actual name of the agency). She has
> also
> been our WCB president on several occasions, and is our current Advocacy
> Chair.
> We have several ACB members on the SRC, and the NFB seems to have
> abandoned
> their responsibility as Watchdogs of Blind Services.
>
> Carl Jarvis
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz@comcast.net>
> To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 4:18 AM
> Subject: Re: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
> Knee jerk response here:
>
> As bad as RSA has been I ddon't know if it would hurt to shake it up.
> Currently it is broken and broken badly. Monitoring of both VR and IL
> services have been a sick joke.
>
> I also don't think reserving 15 percent for transition services is a bad
> thing either so long as over all grants will be expanded.
>
> On tthe flip side we all know over all grants won't be expanded.
>
> And simply moving a function of an agency to another agency doesn't fix it
> either. That would be moving deck chairs on the /Titanic unless other
> reforms take place.
>
> Joe
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "ted chittenden" <tchittenden@cox.net>
> To: "blind-democracy" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 1:28 AM
> Subject: Fwd: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize
> Rehab
> Act
>
>
>> Hi to all.
>>
>> The note by Melanie Brunson below is self-explanatory and deserves your
>> full attention.
>> --
>> Ted Chittenden
>>
>> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
>>
>> To: azcb-chat@yahoogroups.com
>> From: Barbara McDonald <mrsmcdee@q.com>
>> Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:27:28 -0700
>> Subject: [azcb-chat] Fwd: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab
>> Act
>>
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: "Melanie Brunson" <mbrunson@acb.org>
>>> Date: July 25, 2013 3:34:51 PM PDT
>>> To: <rehab-issues@acb.org>
>>> Cc: leadership@acb.org
>>> Subject: [leadership] Senate Bill to Reauthorize Rehab Act
>>> Reply-To: mbrunson@acb.org
>>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Late yesterday afternoon, Senators Harkin of Iowa and Alexander of
>>> Tennessee introduced a bill to reauthorize the Workforce Investment
>>> Act, which includes the Rehabilitation Act. There are some
>>> significant (and troubling) changes proposed in this legislation.
>>> For starters, it requires that all rehab agencies set aside 15
>>> percent of their budget to provide transition services. It also
>>> splits up the functions of currently carried out by RSA so they can
>>> be moved to other federal agencies. The RSA would be renamed to
>>> focus on employment only and moved to the Dept. of Labor.
>>> Independent Living programs would be administered by the Community
>>> Living Administration at the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
>>> Please stay tuned for more. I have a suspicion that I will find
>>> more interesting developments to report to you as I go through the
>>> text in detail. However, I wanted to alert you to the fact that
>>> the bill has been introduced. The HELP Committee is planning to
>>> mark it up on July 31, so I plan to write a comprehensive set of
>>> comments before then. I will share them with you when they are
>>> completed.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Melanie Brunson, Esq.
>>>
>>> Executive Director
>>>
>>> American Council of the Blind
>>>
>>> 2200 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 650
>>>
>>> Arlington, VA 22201
>>>
>>> (T) 202-467-5081
>>>
>>> (T) 800-424-8666
>>>
>>> (F) 703-465-5085
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> leadership mailing list
>>> leadership@acb.org
>>> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/leadership
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist' for Leaking Archives
Subject: Re: In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist'
for Leaking Archives
Lies and rumors abound. So what if Manning talked to Assange?
I am beginning to fear for these people's lives, along with Snowden's. Once
the idea is firmly planted that they are Terrorists, not whistle blowers,
can the drones be far behind?
Oh the Prince of Peace sits on his Throne,
With the remote control in hand.
"We'll hunt down Terrorists near and far,
Even within our Land."
With steady eye and GPS, he tracks each culprit down,
And then he quickly hits Delete,
And grins like a hungry hound.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'S. Kashdan'" <skashdan@scn.org>; "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'"
<blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:47 AM
Subject: RE: In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist'
for Leaking Archives
No other article has mentioned Manning's alleged interactions with Assange,
at least, I haven't seen this before.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of S. Kashdan
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 11:24 PM
To: Blind Democracy List
Subject: In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist' for
Leaking Archives
In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist' for Leaking
Archives
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
The New York Times, July 25, 2013, 18:12
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/us/politics/closing-arguments-due-in-m...
FORT MEADE, Md.--A military prosecutor portrayed Pfc. Bradley Manning on
Thursday as an "anarchist" who, seeking to "make a splash," betrayed the
United States' trust when he leaked vast archives of secret documents to
WikiLeaks, lifting a veil on American diplomatic and military activities.
As closing arguments began in the high profile court-martial trial, the
prosecutor, Maj. Ashden Fein, focused squarely on the most contentious
charge that Private Manning is facing: that by giving the information to
WikiLeaks for publication on a Web site that the world could see, he is
guilty of "aiding the enemy."
That charge has never been brought in a leak case, and the theory behind it
could establish a precedent with implications for investigative journalism
in the Internet era. But Major Fein said it was justified in Private
Manning's
case. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence.
"Pfc. Manning was not a humanist; he was a hacker," Major Fein said, adding:
"He was not a whistle-blower. He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the
value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took
deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it."
Private Manning's defense lawyer, David E. Coombs, has portrayed him as a
well-intentioned and principled, if naive, protester who was motivated by a
desire to help society better understand the world, who wanted to prompt a
national debate and who was selective about which databases he released to
avoid causing harm. Mr. Coombs is set to deliver his closing arguments on
Friday.
While Major Fein made his arguments, reporters watched the trial on a
closed-circuit feed at the media center. Two military police officers in
camouflage fatigues and armed with holstered handguns paced behind each row
there, looking over the journalists' shoulders, which had not happened
during the trial. No explanation was given.
Major Fein spoke from late morning until nearly 6 p.m., going over each
batch of documents in detail and repeatedly returning to the theme of what
he said was Private Manning's recklessness and betrayal.
He argued that Private Manning's "wholesale and indiscriminate compromise of
hundreds of thousands of classified documents" for release in bulk by the
WikiLeaks staff, whom he called "essentially information anarchists," should
not be portrayed as an ordinary journalistic leak but as a bid for
"notoriety, although in a clandestine form."
Leaking to "established journalistic enterprises like The New York Times and
The Washington Post would be a crime," Major Fein said, but "that is not
what happened in this case and under these facts."
He added, "WikiLeaks was merely the platform which Pfc. Manning used to
ensure that all of the information was available to the world, including the
enemies of the United States."
Some of the files given to WikiLeaks by Private Manning, he emphasized, were
found in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and showed up in a
Qaeda propaganda video.
Private Manning has already pleaded guilty to a lesser version of the
charges he is facing. He has also confessed to providing WikiLeaks with two
videos of airstrikes in which civilians and journalists were killed; files
about detainees' being held without trial at the prison at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba; hundreds of thousands of incident reports from the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars; and about 250,000 diplomatic cables.
Given the volume of the documents Private Manning released, Major Fein said,
"there is no way he even knew what he was giving WikiLeaks."
Major Fein focused on Private Manning's training, when he was warned to
avoid posting secret information on the Internet, and zeroed in on one of
the few factual disputes in the case: the date Private Manning downloaded
and leaked an encrypted video of a botched airstrike in Afghanistan that
killed 100 to 150 civilians, many of them women and children.
Private Manning contends he did so in the spring of 2010. Major Fein argued
that a variety of circumstantial evidence indicated that Private Manning
instead downloaded it in late November 2009, less than two weeks after he
arrived in Iraq.
The timing is important because it speaks to the dueling portrayals of
Private Manning. The prosecution wants to show that he immediately seized
upon his opportunity to release classified information through WikiLeaks,
but the defense has argued that he only gradually decided to do so after
seeing things that troubled him.
Similarly, Major Fein pointed to evidence that he said showed that Private
Manning was also responsible for stealing a rare file he has denied
downloading, a list of 74,000 names and e-mail addresses of soldiers and
civilians deployed in Iraq. That dispute is important because the accusation
could undercut Private Manning's portrayal of himself as selecting only
information that could inspire socially valuable debate.
Major Fein also focused on Private Manning's chats with Julian Assange, the
WikiLeaks leader, based on logs recovered from his computer that have not
been made public. At one point, he said, Mr. Assange offered to get Private
Manning an encrypted cellphone to use in Iraq. At another, Private Manning
sought Mr. Assange's help in cracking an encrypted password for an anonymous
account on his classified computer, but the joint effort failed, Major Fein
said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 26, 2013
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly one of the charges
he is facing and that he has denied. He is accused of stealing a list of
e-mail addresses of soldiers deployed in Iraq, not with leaking that
database to WikiLeaks after he allegedly downloaded it.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 26, 2013, on page A14 of
the New York edition with the headline: In Closing Argument, Prosecutor
Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist' for Leaking Archives.
Tags: bradley manningWikileaksthe stateCategory: International
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_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
for Leaking Archives
Lies and rumors abound. So what if Manning talked to Assange?
I am beginning to fear for these people's lives, along with Snowden's. Once
the idea is firmly planted that they are Terrorists, not whistle blowers,
can the drones be far behind?
Oh the Prince of Peace sits on his Throne,
With the remote control in hand.
"We'll hunt down Terrorists near and far,
Even within our Land."
With steady eye and GPS, he tracks each culprit down,
And then he quickly hits Delete,
And grins like a hungry hound.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'S. Kashdan'" <skashdan@scn.org>; "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'"
<blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:47 AM
Subject: RE: In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist'
for Leaking Archives
No other article has mentioned Manning's alleged interactions with Assange,
at least, I haven't seen this before.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of S. Kashdan
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 11:24 PM
To: Blind Democracy List
Subject: In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist' for
Leaking Archives
In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist' for Leaking
Archives
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
The New York Times, July 25, 2013, 18:12
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/us/politics/closing-arguments-due-in-m...
FORT MEADE, Md.--A military prosecutor portrayed Pfc. Bradley Manning on
Thursday as an "anarchist" who, seeking to "make a splash," betrayed the
United States' trust when he leaked vast archives of secret documents to
WikiLeaks, lifting a veil on American diplomatic and military activities.
As closing arguments began in the high profile court-martial trial, the
prosecutor, Maj. Ashden Fein, focused squarely on the most contentious
charge that Private Manning is facing: that by giving the information to
WikiLeaks for publication on a Web site that the world could see, he is
guilty of "aiding the enemy."
That charge has never been brought in a leak case, and the theory behind it
could establish a precedent with implications for investigative journalism
in the Internet era. But Major Fein said it was justified in Private
Manning's
case. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence.
"Pfc. Manning was not a humanist; he was a hacker," Major Fein said, adding:
"He was not a whistle-blower. He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the
value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took
deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it."
Private Manning's defense lawyer, David E. Coombs, has portrayed him as a
well-intentioned and principled, if naive, protester who was motivated by a
desire to help society better understand the world, who wanted to prompt a
national debate and who was selective about which databases he released to
avoid causing harm. Mr. Coombs is set to deliver his closing arguments on
Friday.
While Major Fein made his arguments, reporters watched the trial on a
closed-circuit feed at the media center. Two military police officers in
camouflage fatigues and armed with holstered handguns paced behind each row
there, looking over the journalists' shoulders, which had not happened
during the trial. No explanation was given.
Major Fein spoke from late morning until nearly 6 p.m., going over each
batch of documents in detail and repeatedly returning to the theme of what
he said was Private Manning's recklessness and betrayal.
He argued that Private Manning's "wholesale and indiscriminate compromise of
hundreds of thousands of classified documents" for release in bulk by the
WikiLeaks staff, whom he called "essentially information anarchists," should
not be portrayed as an ordinary journalistic leak but as a bid for
"notoriety, although in a clandestine form."
Leaking to "established journalistic enterprises like The New York Times and
The Washington Post would be a crime," Major Fein said, but "that is not
what happened in this case and under these facts."
He added, "WikiLeaks was merely the platform which Pfc. Manning used to
ensure that all of the information was available to the world, including the
enemies of the United States."
Some of the files given to WikiLeaks by Private Manning, he emphasized, were
found in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and showed up in a
Qaeda propaganda video.
Private Manning has already pleaded guilty to a lesser version of the
charges he is facing. He has also confessed to providing WikiLeaks with two
videos of airstrikes in which civilians and journalists were killed; files
about detainees' being held without trial at the prison at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba; hundreds of thousands of incident reports from the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars; and about 250,000 diplomatic cables.
Given the volume of the documents Private Manning released, Major Fein said,
"there is no way he even knew what he was giving WikiLeaks."
Major Fein focused on Private Manning's training, when he was warned to
avoid posting secret information on the Internet, and zeroed in on one of
the few factual disputes in the case: the date Private Manning downloaded
and leaked an encrypted video of a botched airstrike in Afghanistan that
killed 100 to 150 civilians, many of them women and children.
Private Manning contends he did so in the spring of 2010. Major Fein argued
that a variety of circumstantial evidence indicated that Private Manning
instead downloaded it in late November 2009, less than two weeks after he
arrived in Iraq.
The timing is important because it speaks to the dueling portrayals of
Private Manning. The prosecution wants to show that he immediately seized
upon his opportunity to release classified information through WikiLeaks,
but the defense has argued that he only gradually decided to do so after
seeing things that troubled him.
Similarly, Major Fein pointed to evidence that he said showed that Private
Manning was also responsible for stealing a rare file he has denied
downloading, a list of 74,000 names and e-mail addresses of soldiers and
civilians deployed in Iraq. That dispute is important because the accusation
could undercut Private Manning's portrayal of himself as selecting only
information that could inspire socially valuable debate.
Major Fein also focused on Private Manning's chats with Julian Assange, the
WikiLeaks leader, based on logs recovered from his computer that have not
been made public. At one point, he said, Mr. Assange offered to get Private
Manning an encrypted cellphone to use in Iraq. At another, Private Manning
sought Mr. Assange's help in cracking an encrypted password for an anonymous
account on his classified computer, but the joint effort failed, Major Fein
said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 26, 2013
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly one of the charges
he is facing and that he has denied. He is accused of stealing a list of
e-mail addresses of soldiers deployed in Iraq, not with leaking that
database to WikiLeaks after he allegedly downloaded it.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 26, 2013, on page A14 of
the New York edition with the headline: In Closing Argument, Prosecutor
Casts Soldier as 'Anarchist' for Leaking Archives.
Tags: bradley manningWikileaksthe stateCategory: International
You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at
http://blogtrottr.com
If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe here:
http://blogtrottr.com/unsubscribe/bhx/vXfl2K
_______________________________________________
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http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
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Electing Anthony Weiner Isn't As Funny As It Sounds
Subject: Re: Electing Anthony Weiner Isn't As Funny As It Sounds
It's okay for us to vote into office the candidates backed by Wall Street.
The ones who screw us out of our property, money, dignity and future. But
God forbid that we vote for some pervert...oops, that would eliminate most
of their flunkies.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 7:19 AM
Subject: Electing Anthony Weiner Isn't As Funny As It Sounds
Taibbi writes: "I don't mean to sound like a prude, but what the hell do you
have to do to be disqualified from high-level politics in this country? When
someone told me a while back that Weiner was running for Mayor, I thought it
was a joke."
Matt Taibbi. (photo: Current TV)
Electing Anthony Weiner Isn't As Funny As It Sounds
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
26 July 13
Nathan's Fourth of July champ backs hot dog Anthony Weiner for mayor
Rim-shot! The event was the pre-Independence Day weigh-in for the annual
Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest, and improbably contending New York City
mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was there to secure the "endorsement" of
perennial dog-pounding champ Joey "Jaws" Chestnut. "Joey Chestnut obviously
has an affinity for Weiners," cracked the candidate, in a Twitter-ready
sound bite.
Chestnut's actual endorsement must have been made off-camera - I can't find
him quoted in any of the campaign stories - but we can take Weiner's word
for it, right? It's not like the guy's ever lied before. "I can no longer
say I don't have the support of any famous people," Weiner gushed, after
scoring the endorsement.
Now, weeks later, the inevitable has happened: yet another sexting scandal
has popped up involving Weiner and, surprise surprise, this one was still
live a good year after he resigned from Congress promising never to flap his
hose across the face of the Internet ever again. Predictably, a series of
really gross, genuinely Favre-ean dong shots showed up on some Scottsdale,
Arizona-based website called TheDirty.com.
It turns out that Weiner was pursuing his usual creepy Internet rubfest with
some poor sap of a woman from Princeton, Indiana (which the Daily News noted
is "one mouse click and 850 miles away from Weiner") using the nom-de-wank
of "Carlos Danger," a preposterous title destined to be adopted by a whole
generation of hackers and trolls justifiably tired of the whole "Emmanuel
Goldstein" meme.
I don't mean to sound like a prude, but what the hell do you have to do to
be disqualified from high-level politics in this country? When someone told
me a while back that Weiner was running for Mayor, I thought it was a joke.
This married politician sent unsolicited pictures of his penis to female
strangers on the Internet! It's not a crime, I guess because indecent
exposure laws haven't been updated for the cyber age, but basically, he's a
21st-century flasher who used the U.S. Congress as a raincoat. Then he got
caught, had to resign from Congress in what normally would be shame and
disgrace, only to turn around and start doing it all over again pretty much
immediately.
I'm not saying the guy can't have a career after what happened, but his
options should be pretty limited - a rodeo clown, maybe, or one of those
guys who hands out fliers for strip clubs in Times Square. In an absolute
best-case scenario, a guest panelist on some
gross-out/embarrassing-video-footage compilation show on cable like Manswers
or America's Dumbest Criminals.
But Mayor of New York City? I know the bar was set pretty low when Mike
Bloomberg bought the office outright in 2001, but we can't have sunk this
far. And it's not just that he's some poor guy who got caught jacking off on
the Internet. He's also increasingly tone-deaf and belligerently nuts in an
inappropriate-Thanksgiving-guest sort of way. Lawrence Downes of the Times
passed on this tidbit just a few weeks back:
Anthony Weiner strides onstage at Simon Baruch Middle School and grabs the
mic to talk to the good people of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village
Tenants Association. He takes his position beside, not behind, the lectern.
He has nothing to hide.
He wears a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, and pants that brightly
violate the boundary between orange and red. "I don't usually dress like
this," he says. He explains that he was just at a rally in Greenwich
Village, celebrating the Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage. Is he
really saying he hasn't had time to change out of his gay pants?
Weiner simply isn't a well man. His campaign strategy has been to act like
his scandal and downfall never happened, but you only need to catch his act
a few times to realize that the strategy is working precisely because Weiner
isn't acting. He genuinely doesn't think he did anything wrong and spends a
lot of time, as an unwell person would, slamming some nebulous "they" who he
is convinced are the real guilty parties in his personal melodrama. He talks
a lot about how his campaign is making those haters crazy, which - well,
you've all read Freud, or at least seen The Seven Percent Solution, you be
the judge, tell me this isn't a classic case of projection:
I'm running a campaign in a different way . . . and it makes them nuts . . .
. You know, someone once yelled out to Harry Truman at a campaign stop, he
yelled out, 'Give 'em hell, Harry.' And you now what he said? He said, 'I'm
just telling them the truth and it sounds like hell to them.' The very
evidence that I'm doing it right is how crazy I'm making them, and I'm not
gonna stop doing it.
As a pundit I know I'm supposed to enjoy political car-wreck spectacles like
this, but this Weiner candidacy is a very dark story. He's surging in the
polls mainly because the other candidates in the New York mayoral race are
so awful (Downes humorously called them talented but "collectively
uninspiring," like the Eagles) and because of the
I'll-do-absolutely-anything-to-get-in-the-newspapers factor that New Yorkers
always love and respect (just ask Joey Chestnut). But the endgame here is
that millions of New Yorkers might put a guy who needs a nice quiet decade
or two away from cameras and the Internet, maybe manning an ice station or
diving for abalone somewhere, into the least therapeutic job in America.
It's crazy. I bet there are thousands of New Yorkers out there right now who
wouldn't hire Anthony Weiner to condo-sit (and who wouldn't go near the
areas around their desktop computers afterward without a Haz-Mat suit), but
would gladly send him to live in Gracie Mansion. Believe me, I'm all for
funny, but this really isn't as funny as it sounds. This is one of those
ideas that sounds hilarious when you're high, but the next morning - not so
much. Can we not go there this time?
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Matt Taibbi. (photo: Current TV)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/electing-anthony-weiner-
isnt-as-funny-as-it-sounds-20130725 -
ixzz2aAQYwUHehttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/electing-an
thony-weiner-isnt-as-funny-as-it-sounds-20130725 - ixzz2aAQYwUHe
Electing Anthony Weiner Isn't As Funny As It Sounds
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
26 July 13
Nathan's Fourth of July champ backs hot dog Anthony Weiner for mayor
Rim-shot! The event was the pre-Independence Day weigh-in for the annual
Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest, and improbably contending New York City
mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was there to secure the "endorsement" of
perennial dog-pounding champ Joey "Jaws" Chestnut. "Joey Chestnut obviously
has an affinity for Weiners," cracked the candidate, in a Twitter-ready
sound bite.
Chestnut's actual endorsement must have been made off-camera - I can't find
him quoted in any of the campaign stories - but we can take Weiner's word
for it, right? It's not like the guy's ever lied before. "I can no longer
say I don't have the support of any famous people," Weiner gushed, after
scoring the endorsement.
Now, weeks later, the inevitable has happened: yet another sexting scandal
has popped up involving Weiner and, surprise surprise, this one was still
live a good year after he resigned from Congress promising never to flap his
hose across the face of the Internet ever again. Predictably, a series of
really gross, genuinely Favre-ean dong shots showed up on some Scottsdale,
Arizona-based website called TheDirty.com.
It turns out that Weiner was pursuing his usual creepy Internet rubfest with
some poor sap of a woman from Princeton, Indiana (which the Daily News noted
is "one mouse click and 850 miles away from Weiner") using the nom-de-wank
of "Carlos Danger," a preposterous title destined to be adopted by a whole
generation of hackers and trolls justifiably tired of the whole "Emmanuel
Goldstein" meme.
I don't mean to sound like a prude, but what the hell do you have to do to
be disqualified from high-level politics in this country? When someone told
me a while back that Weiner was running for Mayor, I thought it was a joke.
This married politician sent unsolicited pictures of his penis to female
strangers on the Internet! It's not a crime, I guess because indecent
exposure laws haven't been updated for the cyber age, but basically, he's a
21st-century flasher who used the U.S. Congress as a raincoat. Then he got
caught, had to resign from Congress in what normally would be shame and
disgrace, only to turn around and start doing it all over again pretty much
immediately.
I'm not saying the guy can't have a career after what happened, but his
options should be pretty limited - a rodeo clown, maybe, or one of those
guys who hands out fliers for strip clubs in Times Square. In an absolute
best-case scenario, a guest panelist on some
gross-out/embarrassing-video-footage compilation show on cable like Manswers
or America's Dumbest Criminals.
But Mayor of New York City? I know the bar was set pretty low when Mike
Bloomberg bought the office outright in 2001, but we can't have sunk this
far. And it's not just that he's some poor guy who got caught jacking off on
the Internet. He's also increasingly tone-deaf and belligerently nuts in an
inappropriate-Thanksgiving-guest sort of way. Lawrence Downes of the Times
passed on this tidbit just a few weeks back:
Anthony Weiner strides onstage at Simon Baruch Middle School and grabs the
mic to talk to the good people of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village
Tenants Association. He takes his position beside, not behind, the lectern.
He has nothing to hide.
He wears a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, and pants that brightly
violate the boundary between orange and red. "I don't usually dress like
this," he says. He explains that he was just at a rally in Greenwich
Village, celebrating the Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage. Is he
really saying he hasn't had time to change out of his gay pants?
Weiner simply isn't a well man. His campaign strategy has been to act like
his scandal and downfall never happened, but you only need to catch his act
a few times to realize that the strategy is working precisely because Weiner
isn't acting. He genuinely doesn't think he did anything wrong and spends a
lot of time, as an unwell person would, slamming some nebulous "they" who he
is convinced are the real guilty parties in his personal melodrama. He talks
a lot about how his campaign is making those haters crazy, which - well,
you've all read Freud, or at least seen The Seven Percent Solution, you be
the judge, tell me this isn't a classic case of projection:
I'm running a campaign in a different way . . . and it makes them nuts . . .
. You know, someone once yelled out to Harry Truman at a campaign stop, he
yelled out, 'Give 'em hell, Harry.' And you now what he said? He said, 'I'm
just telling them the truth and it sounds like hell to them.' The very
evidence that I'm doing it right is how crazy I'm making them, and I'm not
gonna stop doing it.
As a pundit I know I'm supposed to enjoy political car-wreck spectacles like
this, but this Weiner candidacy is a very dark story. He's surging in the
polls mainly because the other candidates in the New York mayoral race are
so awful (Downes humorously called them talented but "collectively
uninspiring," like the Eagles) and because of the
I'll-do-absolutely-anything-to-get-in-the-newspapers factor that New Yorkers
always love and respect (just ask Joey Chestnut). But the endgame here is
that millions of New Yorkers might put a guy who needs a nice quiet decade
or two away from cameras and the Internet, maybe manning an ice station or
diving for abalone somewhere, into the least therapeutic job in America.
It's crazy. I bet there are thousands of New Yorkers out there right now who
wouldn't hire Anthony Weiner to condo-sit (and who wouldn't go near the
areas around their desktop computers afterward without a Haz-Mat suit), but
would gladly send him to live in Gracie Mansion. Believe me, I'm all for
funny, but this really isn't as funny as it sounds. This is one of those
ideas that sounds hilarious when you're high, but the next morning - not so
much. Can we not go there this time?
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
It's okay for us to vote into office the candidates backed by Wall Street.
The ones who screw us out of our property, money, dignity and future. But
God forbid that we vote for some pervert...oops, that would eliminate most
of their flunkies.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2013 7:19 AM
Subject: Electing Anthony Weiner Isn't As Funny As It Sounds
Taibbi writes: "I don't mean to sound like a prude, but what the hell do you
have to do to be disqualified from high-level politics in this country? When
someone told me a while back that Weiner was running for Mayor, I thought it
was a joke."
Matt Taibbi. (photo: Current TV)
Electing Anthony Weiner Isn't As Funny As It Sounds
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
26 July 13
Nathan's Fourth of July champ backs hot dog Anthony Weiner for mayor
Rim-shot! The event was the pre-Independence Day weigh-in for the annual
Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest, and improbably contending New York City
mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was there to secure the "endorsement" of
perennial dog-pounding champ Joey "Jaws" Chestnut. "Joey Chestnut obviously
has an affinity for Weiners," cracked the candidate, in a Twitter-ready
sound bite.
Chestnut's actual endorsement must have been made off-camera - I can't find
him quoted in any of the campaign stories - but we can take Weiner's word
for it, right? It's not like the guy's ever lied before. "I can no longer
say I don't have the support of any famous people," Weiner gushed, after
scoring the endorsement.
Now, weeks later, the inevitable has happened: yet another sexting scandal
has popped up involving Weiner and, surprise surprise, this one was still
live a good year after he resigned from Congress promising never to flap his
hose across the face of the Internet ever again. Predictably, a series of
really gross, genuinely Favre-ean dong shots showed up on some Scottsdale,
Arizona-based website called TheDirty.com.
It turns out that Weiner was pursuing his usual creepy Internet rubfest with
some poor sap of a woman from Princeton, Indiana (which the Daily News noted
is "one mouse click and 850 miles away from Weiner") using the nom-de-wank
of "Carlos Danger," a preposterous title destined to be adopted by a whole
generation of hackers and trolls justifiably tired of the whole "Emmanuel
Goldstein" meme.
I don't mean to sound like a prude, but what the hell do you have to do to
be disqualified from high-level politics in this country? When someone told
me a while back that Weiner was running for Mayor, I thought it was a joke.
This married politician sent unsolicited pictures of his penis to female
strangers on the Internet! It's not a crime, I guess because indecent
exposure laws haven't been updated for the cyber age, but basically, he's a
21st-century flasher who used the U.S. Congress as a raincoat. Then he got
caught, had to resign from Congress in what normally would be shame and
disgrace, only to turn around and start doing it all over again pretty much
immediately.
I'm not saying the guy can't have a career after what happened, but his
options should be pretty limited - a rodeo clown, maybe, or one of those
guys who hands out fliers for strip clubs in Times Square. In an absolute
best-case scenario, a guest panelist on some
gross-out/embarrassing-video-footage compilation show on cable like Manswers
or America's Dumbest Criminals.
But Mayor of New York City? I know the bar was set pretty low when Mike
Bloomberg bought the office outright in 2001, but we can't have sunk this
far. And it's not just that he's some poor guy who got caught jacking off on
the Internet. He's also increasingly tone-deaf and belligerently nuts in an
inappropriate-Thanksgiving-guest sort of way. Lawrence Downes of the Times
passed on this tidbit just a few weeks back:
Anthony Weiner strides onstage at Simon Baruch Middle School and grabs the
mic to talk to the good people of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village
Tenants Association. He takes his position beside, not behind, the lectern.
He has nothing to hide.
He wears a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, and pants that brightly
violate the boundary between orange and red. "I don't usually dress like
this," he says. He explains that he was just at a rally in Greenwich
Village, celebrating the Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage. Is he
really saying he hasn't had time to change out of his gay pants?
Weiner simply isn't a well man. His campaign strategy has been to act like
his scandal and downfall never happened, but you only need to catch his act
a few times to realize that the strategy is working precisely because Weiner
isn't acting. He genuinely doesn't think he did anything wrong and spends a
lot of time, as an unwell person would, slamming some nebulous "they" who he
is convinced are the real guilty parties in his personal melodrama. He talks
a lot about how his campaign is making those haters crazy, which - well,
you've all read Freud, or at least seen The Seven Percent Solution, you be
the judge, tell me this isn't a classic case of projection:
I'm running a campaign in a different way . . . and it makes them nuts . . .
. You know, someone once yelled out to Harry Truman at a campaign stop, he
yelled out, 'Give 'em hell, Harry.' And you now what he said? He said, 'I'm
just telling them the truth and it sounds like hell to them.' The very
evidence that I'm doing it right is how crazy I'm making them, and I'm not
gonna stop doing it.
As a pundit I know I'm supposed to enjoy political car-wreck spectacles like
this, but this Weiner candidacy is a very dark story. He's surging in the
polls mainly because the other candidates in the New York mayoral race are
so awful (Downes humorously called them talented but "collectively
uninspiring," like the Eagles) and because of the
I'll-do-absolutely-anything-to-get-in-the-newspapers factor that New Yorkers
always love and respect (just ask Joey Chestnut). But the endgame here is
that millions of New Yorkers might put a guy who needs a nice quiet decade
or two away from cameras and the Internet, maybe manning an ice station or
diving for abalone somewhere, into the least therapeutic job in America.
It's crazy. I bet there are thousands of New Yorkers out there right now who
wouldn't hire Anthony Weiner to condo-sit (and who wouldn't go near the
areas around their desktop computers afterward without a Haz-Mat suit), but
would gladly send him to live in Gracie Mansion. Believe me, I'm all for
funny, but this really isn't as funny as it sounds. This is one of those
ideas that sounds hilarious when you're high, but the next morning - not so
much. Can we not go there this time?
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Matt Taibbi. (photo: Current TV)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/electing-anthony-weiner-
isnt-as-funny-as-it-sounds-20130725 -
ixzz2aAQYwUHehttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/electing-an
thony-weiner-isnt-as-funny-as-it-sounds-20130725 - ixzz2aAQYwUHe
Electing Anthony Weiner Isn't As Funny As It Sounds
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
26 July 13
Nathan's Fourth of July champ backs hot dog Anthony Weiner for mayor
Rim-shot! The event was the pre-Independence Day weigh-in for the annual
Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest, and improbably contending New York City
mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was there to secure the "endorsement" of
perennial dog-pounding champ Joey "Jaws" Chestnut. "Joey Chestnut obviously
has an affinity for Weiners," cracked the candidate, in a Twitter-ready
sound bite.
Chestnut's actual endorsement must have been made off-camera - I can't find
him quoted in any of the campaign stories - but we can take Weiner's word
for it, right? It's not like the guy's ever lied before. "I can no longer
say I don't have the support of any famous people," Weiner gushed, after
scoring the endorsement.
Now, weeks later, the inevitable has happened: yet another sexting scandal
has popped up involving Weiner and, surprise surprise, this one was still
live a good year after he resigned from Congress promising never to flap his
hose across the face of the Internet ever again. Predictably, a series of
really gross, genuinely Favre-ean dong shots showed up on some Scottsdale,
Arizona-based website called TheDirty.com.
It turns out that Weiner was pursuing his usual creepy Internet rubfest with
some poor sap of a woman from Princeton, Indiana (which the Daily News noted
is "one mouse click and 850 miles away from Weiner") using the nom-de-wank
of "Carlos Danger," a preposterous title destined to be adopted by a whole
generation of hackers and trolls justifiably tired of the whole "Emmanuel
Goldstein" meme.
I don't mean to sound like a prude, but what the hell do you have to do to
be disqualified from high-level politics in this country? When someone told
me a while back that Weiner was running for Mayor, I thought it was a joke.
This married politician sent unsolicited pictures of his penis to female
strangers on the Internet! It's not a crime, I guess because indecent
exposure laws haven't been updated for the cyber age, but basically, he's a
21st-century flasher who used the U.S. Congress as a raincoat. Then he got
caught, had to resign from Congress in what normally would be shame and
disgrace, only to turn around and start doing it all over again pretty much
immediately.
I'm not saying the guy can't have a career after what happened, but his
options should be pretty limited - a rodeo clown, maybe, or one of those
guys who hands out fliers for strip clubs in Times Square. In an absolute
best-case scenario, a guest panelist on some
gross-out/embarrassing-video-footage compilation show on cable like Manswers
or America's Dumbest Criminals.
But Mayor of New York City? I know the bar was set pretty low when Mike
Bloomberg bought the office outright in 2001, but we can't have sunk this
far. And it's not just that he's some poor guy who got caught jacking off on
the Internet. He's also increasingly tone-deaf and belligerently nuts in an
inappropriate-Thanksgiving-guest sort of way. Lawrence Downes of the Times
passed on this tidbit just a few weeks back:
Anthony Weiner strides onstage at Simon Baruch Middle School and grabs the
mic to talk to the good people of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village
Tenants Association. He takes his position beside, not behind, the lectern.
He has nothing to hide.
He wears a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, and pants that brightly
violate the boundary between orange and red. "I don't usually dress like
this," he says. He explains that he was just at a rally in Greenwich
Village, celebrating the Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage. Is he
really saying he hasn't had time to change out of his gay pants?
Weiner simply isn't a well man. His campaign strategy has been to act like
his scandal and downfall never happened, but you only need to catch his act
a few times to realize that the strategy is working precisely because Weiner
isn't acting. He genuinely doesn't think he did anything wrong and spends a
lot of time, as an unwell person would, slamming some nebulous "they" who he
is convinced are the real guilty parties in his personal melodrama. He talks
a lot about how his campaign is making those haters crazy, which - well,
you've all read Freud, or at least seen The Seven Percent Solution, you be
the judge, tell me this isn't a classic case of projection:
I'm running a campaign in a different way . . . and it makes them nuts . . .
. You know, someone once yelled out to Harry Truman at a campaign stop, he
yelled out, 'Give 'em hell, Harry.' And you now what he said? He said, 'I'm
just telling them the truth and it sounds like hell to them.' The very
evidence that I'm doing it right is how crazy I'm making them, and I'm not
gonna stop doing it.
As a pundit I know I'm supposed to enjoy political car-wreck spectacles like
this, but this Weiner candidacy is a very dark story. He's surging in the
polls mainly because the other candidates in the New York mayoral race are
so awful (Downes humorously called them talented but "collectively
uninspiring," like the Eagles) and because of the
I'll-do-absolutely-anything-to-get-in-the-newspapers factor that New Yorkers
always love and respect (just ask Joey Chestnut). But the endgame here is
that millions of New Yorkers might put a guy who needs a nice quiet decade
or two away from cameras and the Internet, maybe manning an ice station or
diving for abalone somewhere, into the least therapeutic job in America.
It's crazy. I bet there are thousands of New Yorkers out there right now who
wouldn't hire Anthony Weiner to condo-sit (and who wouldn't go near the
areas around their desktop computers afterward without a Haz-Mat suit), but
would gladly send him to live in Gracie Mansion. Believe me, I'm all for
funny, but this really isn't as funny as it sounds. This is one of those
ideas that sounds hilarious when you're high, but the next morning - not so
much. Can we not go there this time?
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
Friday, July 26, 2013
Prince of Peace or Prince of Darkness?
Prince of Peace, or Prince of Darkness?
Could it be that our "Prince of Peace", is actually the Prince of Darkness?
*WE ARE KILLING INNOCENTS BY DRONE
*
**
*The Bureau of Investigative Journalism released a report
<http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/07/22/exclusive-leaked-pakistani-report-confirms-high-civilian-death-toll-in-cia-drone-strikes/>
showing that there is a high civilian death rate from drone bombings in
Pakistan. We have been saying this for years at /LUV News/, citing
reports from local police in Pakistan and other sources, even as top US
government officials have made denials that we feel must be outright
lies, since the evidence appears to us to be overwhelming and it's
difficult to believe that, with their massive spy operations, our
government leaders don't know the facts.
*
*On /CNN/ yesterday, Cornel West stated "[President Obama] said we must
never rationalize killing innocent people in the name of self-defense,
and then I thought about our drone policy, which makes us the George
Zimmerman of the world in terms of killing innocent folk in the name of
self-defense."*
***
"We do not inherit the land from
our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
Could it be that our "Prince of Peace", is actually the Prince of Darkness?
*WE ARE KILLING INNOCENTS BY DRONE
*
**
*The Bureau of Investigative Journalism released a report
<http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/07/22/exclusive-leaked-pakistani-report-confirms-high-civilian-death-toll-in-cia-drone-strikes/>
showing that there is a high civilian death rate from drone bombings in
Pakistan. We have been saying this for years at /LUV News/, citing
reports from local police in Pakistan and other sources, even as top US
government officials have made denials that we feel must be outright
lies, since the evidence appears to us to be overwhelming and it's
difficult to believe that, with their massive spy operations, our
government leaders don't know the facts.
*
*On /CNN/ yesterday, Cornel West stated "[President Obama] said we must
never rationalize killing innocent people in the name of self-defense,
and then I thought about our drone policy, which makes us the George
Zimmerman of the world in terms of killing innocent folk in the name of
self-defense."*
***
"We do not inherit the land from
our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
more from today's Luvnews, Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Subject: more from today's Luvnews, Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Remember the tons of money the tobacco industry poured into telling us that
their product was harmless...and even good for us?
Well, at least back then we could go outside and get a breath of fresh air.
Where are we going to go in order to breathe when the current efforts to
cover up the deadly climate changes prove to be lies?
Carl Jarvis
*DIRE WARNING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
*
**
*"Though scientists involved with an upcoming report by the UN's
scientific panel on climate change warn that a recently leaked portion
of the report is not a good measure of the group's ultimate findings,
former UN climate chief Yvo de Boer has said the conclusions of the
final report will 'scare the wits out of everybody'" begins a report
this morning from /Common Dreams/
<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/22-1>.*
***
"We do not inherit the land from
our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
Remember the tons of money the tobacco industry poured into telling us that
their product was harmless...and even good for us?
Well, at least back then we could go outside and get a breath of fresh air.
Where are we going to go in order to breathe when the current efforts to
cover up the deadly climate changes prove to be lies?
Carl Jarvis
*DIRE WARNING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
*
**
*"Though scientists involved with an upcoming report by the UN's
scientific panel on climate change warn that a recently leaked portion
of the report is not a good measure of the group's ultimate findings,
former UN climate chief Yvo de Boer has said the conclusions of the
final report will 'scare the wits out of everybody'" begins a report
this morning from /Common Dreams/
<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/22-1>.*
***
"We do not inherit the land from
our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
Time to drop out! from Luvnews, Tues. July 23, 2013
Subject: Time to drop out! from Luvnews, Tues. July 23, 2013
Excuse me while I find another demension to slip into while the
Demopublicans and Republicrats duke it out.
The thought of three long years of crap is more than I can bear. Think I'll
take up some sort of sport...Hmm...I know, Sex, That'll keep me happy.
Carl Jarvis
*The 2016 race for the presidency has already begun, with polls showing
that Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie are tied
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/312509-poll-clinton-christie-tied-in-iowa>
among Iowa voters. Mainstream media can't wait to make it a two party
race, giving free air time to candidates likely to draw hundreds of
millions of dollars from polluters, banksters and defense cheats, while
denying public interest candidates even minimal air time.
*
*If public interest candidates want to have a chance, minimally they
will have to begin earlier, since they get no air time in the controlled
mass media. Greens need to hold their convention no later than
December, 2015, and end their primary at least a month before that, so
that an all out public interest campaign can begin early enough to allow
the masses to discover there is an alternative to lesser evil voting.
By the time the Greens have had their conventions, most voters have
already made up their minds.*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"We do not inherit the land from
our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
Excuse me while I find another demension to slip into while the
Demopublicans and Republicrats duke it out.
The thought of three long years of crap is more than I can bear. Think I'll
take up some sort of sport...Hmm...I know, Sex, That'll keep me happy.
Carl Jarvis
*The 2016 race for the presidency has already begun, with polls showing
that Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie are tied
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/312509-poll-clinton-christie-tied-in-iowa>
among Iowa voters. Mainstream media can't wait to make it a two party
race, giving free air time to candidates likely to draw hundreds of
millions of dollars from polluters, banksters and defense cheats, while
denying public interest candidates even minimal air time.
*
*If public interest candidates want to have a chance, minimally they
will have to begin earlier, since they get no air time in the controlled
mass media. Greens need to hold their convention no later than
December, 2015, and end their primary at least a month before that, so
that an all out public interest campaign can begin early enough to allow
the masses to discover there is an alternative to lesser evil voting.
By the time the Greens have had their conventions, most voters have
already made up their minds.*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"We do not inherit the land from
our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
Farmworkers in Burlington, WA on strike, face eviction!
Subject: Re: Farmworkers in Burlington, WA on strike, face eviction!
Guest Workers? Remember, a Scab by any other name is still a Scab.
Take a long look at the demands by the workers and then ask yourself why
these corporate farmers can't find "Regular Americans" to hire on. And if
you've never visited one of these labor camps, go on out and tell me you'd
enjoy living under those conditions after a long day of back breaking labor.
Here's #6 again.
6. Mejor trato a los trabajadores, respeto, lugar limpio, cabinas con mejor
condiciones, no gritos ni amenazas. Demand not met
Better treatment of workers, respect, clean place to live, better maintained
conditions, no yelling or threats.
Pickers want to be treated with human dignity in the workplace and labor
camps. Substandard living accommodations, unsanitary facilities, and
racialized hostilities violate the migrant's human rights. Pickers should be
made whole, including but not limited to, maintenance and betterment of
labor camp by Sakuma Brothers Farms and that labor camp managers cease and
desist hostility and harassment as required by law.
----- Original Message -----
From: "S. Kashdan" <skashdan@scn.org>
To: "Blind Democracy List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 5:26 PM
Subject: Farmworkers in Burlington, WA on strike, face eviction!
Farmworkers in Burlington, WA on strike, face eviction!
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 16:04:37 -0700
Farmworkers in Burlington, WA are facing retaliation for their strike last
week - and being evicted from their homes in the labor camp so that
guestworkers can be brought in! Here is their call for support and their
list of demands:
Burlington, WA, July 22, 2013: Over two hundred Triqui and Mixteco
farmworkers authorized a second work stoppage at Sakuma Brothers Farms, Inc.
in protest of low piece rate wages and hostile working conditions. The
farmworkers contend that Sakuma Brothers Farms are engaging in retaliatory
actions over their six-day work stoppage last week. The latest of these is
the differential piece rate wages for blueberries that Sakuma Brothers Farms
set for the crew of the field supervisor who was transferred last week for
harassing workers. Farmworkers believe that at $8.50 per box, this
supervisor's crew is being favored over their crew which was offered a piece
rate of $3.50 per flat. Today, the Farmworker Rights Committee, which has
been negotiating on behalf of the workers, asked for a raise in piece rate
to $6.00 per flat.
(Note: Sakuma Brothers farms provide berries to Haagen Dazs ice cream
company.)
Carmen Juarez-Ventura, a seasoned picker at Sakuma Brothers Farm stated that
the differential treatment was "unjust," she maintained that, "we want to
work, but instead of raising our wage to make it fair, they keep lowering
it." Another seasoned picker, Aucencio Alvarez said "they shouldn't do that,
pay us so brutally low," he continued, "I feel disillusioned; we come from
so far, from California, only to be treated this way." Alvarez said he was
so discouraged that his family was thinking of not returning next year after
having worked for Sakuma Brothers Farm for seven years, he said he was tired
of always having to fight for a fair wage, the last work stoppage he
experienced occurred in 2011 and resulted in no gains. He is hopeful that
this work stoppage will result in an agreement.
ORIGINAL STRIKE COMMITTEE LIST OF GRIEVANCES
1. Que no corran a Federico Lopez. Demand Met July 13, 2013
For Federico Lopez not to be fired.
Federico Lopez was unjustly fired on July 10, 2013. This violates labor
regulations governing retaliation by employers over worker grievances.
Federico Lopez should be made whole, including being reinstated as a picker,
with restoration of any pay, and supervisors should cease and desist
retaliation as required by law.
2. Que nos suban más por libra, 70 centavos. Demand not met - Rate per box
raised to $4.00 a lb. then lowered to $3.50 a lb.
We want a higher rate per pound, 70 cents.
Sakuma Brothers Farms set a piece rate wage at .30 cents per pound at the
beginning of the blueberry harvest, pickers are struggling to make the
minimum wage of $9.19 per hour at this rate in an 8 hour period. This
violates Washington state minimum wage requirements. Pickers should be made
whole, by being paid at least the equivalent of $9.19 an hour for their time
picking berries.
3. Quitar el scaner y poner tarjetas. Demand Not Met - management agreed to
review paycheck stubs
To remove scanners and use paper tickets.
Sakuma Brothers Farms has introduced electronic scanners in place of paper
tickets for documentation of pounds picked which calculates their wages.
This new system hampers the picker's ability to keep track of their
production and limits their ability to dispute inaccurate entries. This
violates workers rights to wage transparency. Pickers should be made whole
by returning to paper tickets and the removal of underage youth from checker
positions.
4. No más intimidación a los trabajadores. Demand not met
To cease intimidation of workers.
Pickers have experienced harassment based upon race and indigenous identity
in the workplace. This violates state laws against harassment and a hostile
workplace and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Sakuma Brothers
Farm policy against intimidation and violence in the workplace. Pickers
should be made whole, including but not limited to, enforcement of company
policy and Sakuma Brothers Farm should cease and desist racial and ethnic
harassment as required by law.
5. No queremos a ------ como mayordomo. Demand Met July 14, 2013
We want disrespectful supervisor removed as a crew boss.
Pickers have identified a specific crew boss supervisor as being unbearably
hostile. This violates state laws against harassment and a hostile workplace
and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Pickers should be made whole,
including but not limited to, the dismissal of said supervisor.
6. Mejor trato a los trabajadores, respeto, lugar limpio, cabinas con mejor
condiciones, no gritos ni amenazas. Demand not met
Better treatment of workers, respect, clean place to live, better maintained
conditions, no yelling or threats.
Pickers want to be treated with human dignity in the workplace and labor
camps. Substandard living accommodations, unsanitary facilities, and
racialized hostilities violate the migrant's human rights. Pickers should be
made whole, including but not limited to, maintenance and betterment of
labor camp by Sakuma Brothers Farms and that labor camp managers cease and
desist hostility and harassment as required by law.
7. No forzar a trabajar en tiempo de enfermedad. No tocar las puertas.
Demand not met
Not to be forced to work when they are sick. Not to knock on doors.
Pickers have been denied sick leave. This violates workers human rights.
Pickers should be made whole, including but not limited to; supervisors
cease and desist the practice of knocking on the door of sick workers to
force them to work.
8. No obligar a traer comprobantes por falta de trabajo. Demand not met
To not require proof for missing work.
Pickers have been unjustly required to provide professional documentation
for missing work. This violates workers right to privacy. Pickers should be
made whole by a discontinuation of the practice of requiring professional
documentation for absences.
9. No falta de respeto a los trabajadores. Demand not met
Do not disrespect workers.
Indigenous pickers are not treated with respect at Sakuma Brothers Farm.
This violates their human dignity and violates state anti-harassment and
anti-hostility laws. Workers should be made whole, including but not limited
to, the cease and desist of disrespectful and racist language such as
"oaxaquita," "indio," "estupido," and the use of stereotypes around inherent
"laziness," "drunkeness," or "dirtiness" of Triqui and Mixteco farmworkers
by Sakuma Brothers Farm executives, administrators, crop management, crew
bosses, checkers and co-workers via receiving mandatory sensitivity and
undoing racism training, and dismissal following failure to comply.
10. No intimidación por la parte de mayordomos. Demand not met
No intimidation by supervisors.
Pickers have experienced racialized and gendered harassment and hostility by
their supervisors, for example yelling and screaming at women in front of
their husbands. This violates state laws against harassment and hostile
workplaces and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as Sakuma
Brothers Farm policy against intimidation and violence in the workplace.
Workers should be made whole, including but not limited to, supervisors
ceasing and desisting harassment based on race and gender as required by law
and also receive mandatory effective sensitivity and undoing racism
training, and dismissal following failure to comply.
11. Si nos corren que nos paguen todo y pasajes por venir y de regreso.
Demand not met.
If we are fired we want our travel expenses to be paid round-trip.
Pickers are concerned that they will be fired for work stoppages,
complaints, grievances and demands for better wages. This violates the
workers good faith in negotiating their wages with their employer, their
freedom of association, and anti-retaliation labor law. Workers should be
made whole should they be fired for striking, by being reimbursed round-trip
cost of transportation required to migrate to work out of state that were
incurred in order to work for Sakuma Brothers Farms.
12. Porque no trajeron a trabajadores huespedes a la fresa? Demand not met.
Why didn't Sakuma Brothers Farm request guest workers for the strawberry
harvest?
Sakuma Brothers Farms has applied for H2A workers for the blueberry harvest
in August. Pickers want to know why the farm had not applied for H2A workers
for the strawberry harvest if there was a labor shortage. The pickers claim
that there is no labor shortage and that it is unfair that guest workers are
getting paid $12.00 per hour, while they are earning a maximum of $9.19 per
hour.
13. Que pagen overtime. Demand not met.
To be paid overtime.
Pickers routinely work over 40 hours a week without overtime compensation.
This violates state minimum wage and federal labor laws. Workers should be
made whole, by being paid overtime and restoration of any pay that is owed.
14. Problemas con childcare. Demand not met.
Problems with childcare.
Pickers have experienced problems with childcare. This interferes with their
ability to work as much as they are required. Workers should be made whole,
including but not limited to, adequate childcare or reasonable working
hours.
Other press coverage:
Indian Country Today:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/07/18/indigenous-mexican-farmworkers-and-health-effects-racism-150466#.UejE-mF_B1E.gmail
The Stranger Online:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/07/17/striking-haagen-dazs-berry-pickers-return-to-work
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/07/15/haagen-dazs-berry-pickers-strike-against-racism-and-meager-wages-in-skagit-county
Environmental Justice Food Blog:
http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2013/07/sakuma-brothers-unique-farm-worker.html
Spanish Language Coverage:
http://radiobilingue.org/programas/linea-abierta/paro-en-el-campo-ademas-napolitano-en-la-uc/
http://www.larazanw.com/article/20130719/NEWS03/130719956
For current updates and how you can support farmworker justice,
www.foodjustice.org and
www.facebook.com/community2community,www.facebook.com/c2caguiladelnorte
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
Guest Workers? Remember, a Scab by any other name is still a Scab.
Take a long look at the demands by the workers and then ask yourself why
these corporate farmers can't find "Regular Americans" to hire on. And if
you've never visited one of these labor camps, go on out and tell me you'd
enjoy living under those conditions after a long day of back breaking labor.
Here's #6 again.
6. Mejor trato a los trabajadores, respeto, lugar limpio, cabinas con mejor
condiciones, no gritos ni amenazas. Demand not met
Better treatment of workers, respect, clean place to live, better maintained
conditions, no yelling or threats.
Pickers want to be treated with human dignity in the workplace and labor
camps. Substandard living accommodations, unsanitary facilities, and
racialized hostilities violate the migrant's human rights. Pickers should be
made whole, including but not limited to, maintenance and betterment of
labor camp by Sakuma Brothers Farms and that labor camp managers cease and
desist hostility and harassment as required by law.
----- Original Message -----
From: "S. Kashdan" <skashdan@scn.org>
To: "Blind Democracy List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 5:26 PM
Subject: Farmworkers in Burlington, WA on strike, face eviction!
Farmworkers in Burlington, WA on strike, face eviction!
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 16:04:37 -0700
Farmworkers in Burlington, WA are facing retaliation for their strike last
week - and being evicted from their homes in the labor camp so that
guestworkers can be brought in! Here is their call for support and their
list of demands:
Burlington, WA, July 22, 2013: Over two hundred Triqui and Mixteco
farmworkers authorized a second work stoppage at Sakuma Brothers Farms, Inc.
in protest of low piece rate wages and hostile working conditions. The
farmworkers contend that Sakuma Brothers Farms are engaging in retaliatory
actions over their six-day work stoppage last week. The latest of these is
the differential piece rate wages for blueberries that Sakuma Brothers Farms
set for the crew of the field supervisor who was transferred last week for
harassing workers. Farmworkers believe that at $8.50 per box, this
supervisor's crew is being favored over their crew which was offered a piece
rate of $3.50 per flat. Today, the Farmworker Rights Committee, which has
been negotiating on behalf of the workers, asked for a raise in piece rate
to $6.00 per flat.
(Note: Sakuma Brothers farms provide berries to Haagen Dazs ice cream
company.)
Carmen Juarez-Ventura, a seasoned picker at Sakuma Brothers Farm stated that
the differential treatment was "unjust," she maintained that, "we want to
work, but instead of raising our wage to make it fair, they keep lowering
it." Another seasoned picker, Aucencio Alvarez said "they shouldn't do that,
pay us so brutally low," he continued, "I feel disillusioned; we come from
so far, from California, only to be treated this way." Alvarez said he was
so discouraged that his family was thinking of not returning next year after
having worked for Sakuma Brothers Farm for seven years, he said he was tired
of always having to fight for a fair wage, the last work stoppage he
experienced occurred in 2011 and resulted in no gains. He is hopeful that
this work stoppage will result in an agreement.
ORIGINAL STRIKE COMMITTEE LIST OF GRIEVANCES
1. Que no corran a Federico Lopez. Demand Met July 13, 2013
For Federico Lopez not to be fired.
Federico Lopez was unjustly fired on July 10, 2013. This violates labor
regulations governing retaliation by employers over worker grievances.
Federico Lopez should be made whole, including being reinstated as a picker,
with restoration of any pay, and supervisors should cease and desist
retaliation as required by law.
2. Que nos suban más por libra, 70 centavos. Demand not met - Rate per box
raised to $4.00 a lb. then lowered to $3.50 a lb.
We want a higher rate per pound, 70 cents.
Sakuma Brothers Farms set a piece rate wage at .30 cents per pound at the
beginning of the blueberry harvest, pickers are struggling to make the
minimum wage of $9.19 per hour at this rate in an 8 hour period. This
violates Washington state minimum wage requirements. Pickers should be made
whole, by being paid at least the equivalent of $9.19 an hour for their time
picking berries.
3. Quitar el scaner y poner tarjetas. Demand Not Met - management agreed to
review paycheck stubs
To remove scanners and use paper tickets.
Sakuma Brothers Farms has introduced electronic scanners in place of paper
tickets for documentation of pounds picked which calculates their wages.
This new system hampers the picker's ability to keep track of their
production and limits their ability to dispute inaccurate entries. This
violates workers rights to wage transparency. Pickers should be made whole
by returning to paper tickets and the removal of underage youth from checker
positions.
4. No más intimidación a los trabajadores. Demand not met
To cease intimidation of workers.
Pickers have experienced harassment based upon race and indigenous identity
in the workplace. This violates state laws against harassment and a hostile
workplace and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Sakuma Brothers
Farm policy against intimidation and violence in the workplace. Pickers
should be made whole, including but not limited to, enforcement of company
policy and Sakuma Brothers Farm should cease and desist racial and ethnic
harassment as required by law.
5. No queremos a ------ como mayordomo. Demand Met July 14, 2013
We want disrespectful supervisor removed as a crew boss.
Pickers have identified a specific crew boss supervisor as being unbearably
hostile. This violates state laws against harassment and a hostile workplace
and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Pickers should be made whole,
including but not limited to, the dismissal of said supervisor.
6. Mejor trato a los trabajadores, respeto, lugar limpio, cabinas con mejor
condiciones, no gritos ni amenazas. Demand not met
Better treatment of workers, respect, clean place to live, better maintained
conditions, no yelling or threats.
Pickers want to be treated with human dignity in the workplace and labor
camps. Substandard living accommodations, unsanitary facilities, and
racialized hostilities violate the migrant's human rights. Pickers should be
made whole, including but not limited to, maintenance and betterment of
labor camp by Sakuma Brothers Farms and that labor camp managers cease and
desist hostility and harassment as required by law.
7. No forzar a trabajar en tiempo de enfermedad. No tocar las puertas.
Demand not met
Not to be forced to work when they are sick. Not to knock on doors.
Pickers have been denied sick leave. This violates workers human rights.
Pickers should be made whole, including but not limited to; supervisors
cease and desist the practice of knocking on the door of sick workers to
force them to work.
8. No obligar a traer comprobantes por falta de trabajo. Demand not met
To not require proof for missing work.
Pickers have been unjustly required to provide professional documentation
for missing work. This violates workers right to privacy. Pickers should be
made whole by a discontinuation of the practice of requiring professional
documentation for absences.
9. No falta de respeto a los trabajadores. Demand not met
Do not disrespect workers.
Indigenous pickers are not treated with respect at Sakuma Brothers Farm.
This violates their human dignity and violates state anti-harassment and
anti-hostility laws. Workers should be made whole, including but not limited
to, the cease and desist of disrespectful and racist language such as
"oaxaquita," "indio," "estupido," and the use of stereotypes around inherent
"laziness," "drunkeness," or "dirtiness" of Triqui and Mixteco farmworkers
by Sakuma Brothers Farm executives, administrators, crop management, crew
bosses, checkers and co-workers via receiving mandatory sensitivity and
undoing racism training, and dismissal following failure to comply.
10. No intimidación por la parte de mayordomos. Demand not met
No intimidation by supervisors.
Pickers have experienced racialized and gendered harassment and hostility by
their supervisors, for example yelling and screaming at women in front of
their husbands. This violates state laws against harassment and hostile
workplaces and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as Sakuma
Brothers Farm policy against intimidation and violence in the workplace.
Workers should be made whole, including but not limited to, supervisors
ceasing and desisting harassment based on race and gender as required by law
and also receive mandatory effective sensitivity and undoing racism
training, and dismissal following failure to comply.
11. Si nos corren que nos paguen todo y pasajes por venir y de regreso.
Demand not met.
If we are fired we want our travel expenses to be paid round-trip.
Pickers are concerned that they will be fired for work stoppages,
complaints, grievances and demands for better wages. This violates the
workers good faith in negotiating their wages with their employer, their
freedom of association, and anti-retaliation labor law. Workers should be
made whole should they be fired for striking, by being reimbursed round-trip
cost of transportation required to migrate to work out of state that were
incurred in order to work for Sakuma Brothers Farms.
12. Porque no trajeron a trabajadores huespedes a la fresa? Demand not met.
Why didn't Sakuma Brothers Farm request guest workers for the strawberry
harvest?
Sakuma Brothers Farms has applied for H2A workers for the blueberry harvest
in August. Pickers want to know why the farm had not applied for H2A workers
for the strawberry harvest if there was a labor shortage. The pickers claim
that there is no labor shortage and that it is unfair that guest workers are
getting paid $12.00 per hour, while they are earning a maximum of $9.19 per
hour.
13. Que pagen overtime. Demand not met.
To be paid overtime.
Pickers routinely work over 40 hours a week without overtime compensation.
This violates state minimum wage and federal labor laws. Workers should be
made whole, by being paid overtime and restoration of any pay that is owed.
14. Problemas con childcare. Demand not met.
Problems with childcare.
Pickers have experienced problems with childcare. This interferes with their
ability to work as much as they are required. Workers should be made whole,
including but not limited to, adequate childcare or reasonable working
hours.
Other press coverage:
Indian Country Today:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/07/18/indigenous-mexican-farmworkers-and-health-effects-racism-150466#.UejE-mF_B1E.gmail
The Stranger Online:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/07/17/striking-haagen-dazs-berry-pickers-return-to-work
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/07/15/haagen-dazs-berry-pickers-strike-against-racism-and-meager-wages-in-skagit-county
Environmental Justice Food Blog:
http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2013/07/sakuma-brothers-unique-farm-worker.html
Spanish Language Coverage:
http://radiobilingue.org/programas/linea-abierta/paro-en-el-campo-ademas-napolitano-en-la-uc/
http://www.larazanw.com/article/20130719/NEWS03/130719956
For current updates and how you can support farmworker justice,
www.foodjustice.org and
www.facebook.com/community2community,www.facebook.com/c2caguiladelnorte
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
The Treason of the Mainstream Media
Subject: Re: The Treason of the Mainstream Media
The majority of Americans, the ones who receive their "eye on the world"
through the network channels, have been so insulated from what is happening
around the globe, that if they were exposed to the facts, they would
instantly go into deep denial, declaring it to be a Commie/Muslim plot to
undermine our Freedom.
It's hard for the average American to imagine having enough money, time and
influence to take over the mass media. But that is what has occurred.
Remember those carefree, fun loving days when we all chipped in to pay for
the Voice of America, cramming Truth through the Iron and Bamboo curtains?
We were shocked that a nation could keep their people from learning the
Truth. That would never happen in our Free Land, no siree!
And so, if you wonder from time to time whether we are getting the "real
news", you will need to ask the next question. If our news is being
controlled, are we really a Free Nation?
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 7:25 PM
Subject: The Treason of the Mainstream Media
Weissman writes: "Without leakers, the prime sources on national security
scoops, the mainstream media will shrivel. But I'm willing to bet that
courageous truth tellers will continue to provide information to Internet
sites willing to risk publishing it."
Glenn Greenwald tweeted: 'Who needs the government to try to criminalize
journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?' (photo: NBC)
The Treason of the Mainstream Media
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
23 July 13
For those who came of age politically with the Supreme Court's election of
George W. Bush, disdain for the mainstream media remains severe. Watching
all but a brave handful of the media fall into line to sell the Patriot Act,
the War on Terror, and Weapons of Mass destruction has left an open wound.
It has also left an entire generation with a keen understanding of how
government honchos like Dick Cheney or Barack Obama use the media to spread
the leaks they want to spread while decrying all others.
Forgive the personal comparison, but my own loss of virginity came in the
early 1960s and was far less dramatic. A former high school journalist with
the cherished nickname "Scoop," I slowly came to see The New York Times, our
national newspaper of record, systematically ignore much of the civil rights
struggle in the South, especially when it involved the more radical Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I saw the liberal San Francisco Chronicle
lead the redbaiting attacks against our Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.
And I discovered that my family icon, the American Civil Liberties Union,
cared more about the freedom of those who owned presses than of those
pressing for social change.
Don't get me wrong. My generation saw the heroic and inspiring as well. We
watched CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite question the Vietnam War, however
belatedly he dared to do it. We read "The Pentagon Papers" and applauded The
New York Times for publishing them. We followed Woodward and Bernstein
reporting on Watergate in The Washington Post. We saw the media challenge
the power of the FBI and the CIA. We saw the good. We saw the bad. We
developed "a balanced view" of the media, and by the time of the War on
Terror , most of us did not expect anything better - or anything worse.
How wrong we were! Never in our lifetime has most of the mainstream media
sunk as low as their concerted attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,
the whistleblowers Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, journalist Glenn
Greenwald, and the continuing revelations of our country's imperial
brutality and global surveillance. Shamelessly, the media giants have
further embedded themselves as lickspittles to those in power. Even more
treacherous, they have blatantly betrayed the most basic precepts of our
profession and put our freedom at risk.
Professor Yochai Benkler provided the details in his testimony at the
court-martial of Bradley Manning. The Israeli-born Benkler heads the Berkman
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and is a widely cited
expert on WikiLeaks and its evolving relationship with the mainstream media.
You can read him on our website here and here.
From early 2008, Benkler told the military tribunal, the mainstream media
portrayed WikiLeaks in a favorable light as "a new online journalistic
organization." Leading media groups went to court to defend it against an
injunction from the Swiss investment bank Julius Baer that would have shut
it down. Various newspapers publicly praised WikiLeaks for its
professionalism and its efforts to verify and authenticate the leaked
documents that it published. The highly respected Index on Censorship and
Amnesty International both gave WikiLeaks their "New Media Award."
Benkler traced this positive attitude into 2010, the year WikiLeaks and
mainstream media partners began publishing the revelations that Bradley
Manning admits to leaking. These included the horrifying video of a U.S.
Apache helicopter firing down on a Reuters camera team and nearby children
in the heart of Baghdad, military logs of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and exceedingly frank U.S. diplomatic cables from all over the world.
During this period, relations began to fray as journalists at The New York
Times and The Guardian fell out with Assange, who can be an extremely
difficult person. But the big change came only after the release of the
diplomatic cables, when U.S. government officials turned their big guns on
WikiLeaks.
"The response is hard to define as anything but shrill," Benkler testified.
Secretary of State Clinton described the release (in Benkler's words) as an
attack on the international community. Vice President Biden called Assange a
high tech terrorist. Congressman Steve King, the incoming chairman of the
Homeland Security Committee, called for Washington to define WikiLeaks as a
foreign terrorist organization. Senator Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, called for prosecution under the Espionage Act of
1917. And Senator Joseph Lieberman, chair of the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security, called for companies to stop providing services to
WikiLeaks.
How did the mainstream media respond? According to Benkler, they joined the
government's campaign to delegitimize WikiLeaks. Bob Beckel, on Fox News,
called Assange "a traitor" and told the government to illegally shoot the
son of a bitch. William Kristol, editor of the neocon flagship The Weekly
Standard, called for a serious effort to degrade and destroy WikiLeaks. Tom
Friedman, the star columnist of The New York Times, called WikiLeaks a major
threat to the world. Bill Keller, the managing editor of the NYT who had
profitably published the news that WikiLeaks gave him, now wrote an 8,000
word essay in which he described WikiLeaks as a secretive cabal of
anti-secrecy vigilantes and attacked Assange as badly smelling as though he
hadn't bathed.
Could the tonal shift have been colder? The government wanted to make
Assange and WikiLeaks public enemy number one, and our supposedly
independent press freely produced the propaganda that Washington wanted. The
Nazi Party's Der Stürmer or the Soviet Union's Pravda and Izvestiya could
not have been slimier, more disgusting, or less professional as journalists.
We have now seen similar mainstream media sleaze against the NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden and relative silence on the trial of Bradley
Manning. We have also seen personal attacks on journalist Glenn Greenwald,
notably from NBC's David Gregory, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, and
even an aging Carl Bernstein, who appears to have made his peace with the
dark side.
No doubt, the mainstreamers think they can maintain their access to official
newsmakers - and win official protection - by separating themselves from
those who are providing real news about the real world. But, as Benkler
shows, the government has already announced in Manning's court-martial that
they would consider an unauthorized leak to The New York Times exactly the
same as one to WikiLeaks. The Obama administration, and no doubt its
successors, Democratic or Republican, will treat all unauthorized leaks as
providing information to the enemy.
Without leakers, the prime sources on national security scoops, the
mainstream media will shrivel. But I'm willing to bet that courageous truth
tellers will continue to provide information to Internet sites willing to
risk publishing it. That's what journalists do, even if most of the
mainstream media would rather grovel for whatever scraps their masters are
willing to hand them.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money: How Global Banks,
Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Glenn Greenwald tweeted: 'Who needs the government to try to criminalize
journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?' (photo: NBC)
/opinion2/276-74/18547-focus-the-treason-of-the-mainstream-media/opinion2/27
6-74/18547-focus-the-treason-of-the-mainstream-media
The Treason of the Mainstream Media
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
23 July 13
or those who came of age politically with the Supreme Court's election of
George W. Bush, disdain for the mainstream media remains severe. Watching
all but a brave handful of the media fall into line to sell the Patriot Act,
the War on Terror, and Weapons of Mass destruction has left an open wound.
It has also left an entire generation with a keen understanding of how
government honchos like Dick Cheney or Barack Obama use the media to spread
the leaks they want to spread while decrying all others.
Forgive the personal comparison, but my own loss of virginity came in the
early 1960s and was far less dramatic. A former high school journalist with
the cherished nickname "Scoop," I slowly came to see The New York Times, our
national newspaper of record, systematically ignore much of the civil rights
struggle in the South, especially when it involved the more radical Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I saw the liberal San Francisco Chronicle
lead the redbaiting attacks against our Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.
And I discovered that my family icon, the American Civil Liberties Union,
cared more about the freedom of those who owned presses than of those
pressing for social change.
Don't get me wrong. My generation saw the heroic and inspiring as well. We
watched CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite question the Vietnam War, however
belatedly he dared to do it. We read "The Pentagon Papers" and applauded The
New York Times for publishing them. We followed Woodward and Bernstein
reporting on Watergate in The Washington Post. We saw the media challenge
the power of the FBI and the CIA. We saw the good. We saw the bad. We
developed "a balanced view" of the media, and by the time of the War on
Terror , most of us did not expect anything better - or anything worse.
How wrong we were! Never in our lifetime has most of the mainstream media
sunk as low as their concerted attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,
the whistleblowers Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, journalist Glenn
Greenwald, and the continuing revelations of our country's imperial
brutality and global surveillance. Shamelessly, the media giants have
further embedded themselves as lickspittles to those in power. Even more
treacherous, they have blatantly betrayed the most basic precepts of our
profession and put our freedom at risk.
Professor Yochai Benkler provided the details in his testimony at the
court-martial of Bradley Manning. The Israeli-born Benkler heads the Berkman
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and is a widely cited
expert on WikiLeaks and its evolving relationship with the mainstream media.
You can read him on our website here and here.
From early 2008, Benkler told the military tribunal, the mainstream media
portrayed WikiLeaks in a favorable light as "a new online journalistic
organization." Leading media groups went to court to defend it against an
injunction from the Swiss investment bank Julius Baer that would have shut
it down. Various newspapers publicly praised WikiLeaks for its
professionalism and its efforts to verify and authenticate the leaked
documents that it published. The highly respected Index on Censorship and
Amnesty International both gave WikiLeaks their "New Media Award."
Benkler traced this positive attitude into 2010, the year WikiLeaks and
mainstream media partners began publishing the revelations that Bradley
Manning admits to leaking. These included the horrifying video of a U.S.
Apache helicopter firing down on a Reuters camera team and nearby children
in the heart of Baghdad, military logs of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and exceedingly frank U.S. diplomatic cables from all over the world.
During this period, relations began to fray as journalists at The New York
Times and The Guardian fell out with Assange, who can be an extremely
difficult person. But the big change came only after the release of the
diplomatic cables, when U.S. government officials turned their big guns on
WikiLeaks.
"The response is hard to define as anything but shrill," Benkler testified.
Secretary of State Clinton described the release (in Benkler's words) as an
attack on the international community. Vice President Biden called Assange a
high tech terrorist. Congressman Steve King, the incoming chairman of the
Homeland Security Committee, called for Washington to define WikiLeaks as a
foreign terrorist organization. Senator Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, called for prosecution under the Espionage Act of
1917. And Senator Joseph Lieberman, chair of the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security, called for companies to stop providing services to
WikiLeaks.
How did the mainstream media respond? According to Benkler, they joined the
government's campaign to delegitimize WikiLeaks. Bob Beckel, on Fox News,
called Assange "a traitor" and told the government to illegally shoot the
son of a bitch. William Kristol, editor of the neocon flagship The Weekly
Standard, called for a serious effort to degrade and destroy WikiLeaks. Tom
Friedman, the star columnist of The New York Times, called WikiLeaks a major
threat to the world. Bill Keller, the managing editor of the NYT who had
profitably published the news that WikiLeaks gave him, now wrote an 8,000
word essay in which he described WikiLeaks as a secretive cabal of
anti-secrecy vigilantes and attacked Assange as badly smelling as though he
hadn't bathed.
Could the tonal shift have been colder? The government wanted to make
Assange and WikiLeaks public enemy number one, and our supposedly
independent press freely produced the propaganda that Washington wanted. The
Nazi Party's Der Stürmer or the Soviet Union's Pravda and Izvestiya could
not have been slimier, more disgusting, or less professional as journalists.
We have now seen similar mainstream media sleaze against the NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden and relative silence on the trial of Bradley
Manning. We have also seen personal attacks on journalist Glenn Greenwald,
notably from NBC's David Gregory, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, and
even an aging Carl Bernstein, who appears to have made his peace with the
dark side.
No doubt, the mainstreamers think they can maintain their access to official
newsmakers - and win official protection - by separating themselves from
those who are providing real news about the real world. But, as Benkler
shows, the government has already announced in Manning's court-martial that
they would consider an unauthorized leak to The New York Times exactly the
same as one to WikiLeaks. The Obama administration, and no doubt its
successors, Democratic or Republican, will treat all unauthorized leaks as
providing information to the enemy.
Without leakers, the prime sources on national security scoops, the
mainstream media will shrivel. But I'm willing to bet that courageous truth
tellers will continue to provide information to Internet sites willing to
risk publishing it. That's what journalists do, even if most of the
mainstream media would rather grovel for whatever scraps their masters are
willing to hand them.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money: How Global Banks,
Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
The majority of Americans, the ones who receive their "eye on the world"
through the network channels, have been so insulated from what is happening
around the globe, that if they were exposed to the facts, they would
instantly go into deep denial, declaring it to be a Commie/Muslim plot to
undermine our Freedom.
It's hard for the average American to imagine having enough money, time and
influence to take over the mass media. But that is what has occurred.
Remember those carefree, fun loving days when we all chipped in to pay for
the Voice of America, cramming Truth through the Iron and Bamboo curtains?
We were shocked that a nation could keep their people from learning the
Truth. That would never happen in our Free Land, no siree!
And so, if you wonder from time to time whether we are getting the "real
news", you will need to ask the next question. If our news is being
controlled, are we really a Free Nation?
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 7:25 PM
Subject: The Treason of the Mainstream Media
Weissman writes: "Without leakers, the prime sources on national security
scoops, the mainstream media will shrivel. But I'm willing to bet that
courageous truth tellers will continue to provide information to Internet
sites willing to risk publishing it."
Glenn Greenwald tweeted: 'Who needs the government to try to criminalize
journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?' (photo: NBC)
The Treason of the Mainstream Media
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
23 July 13
For those who came of age politically with the Supreme Court's election of
George W. Bush, disdain for the mainstream media remains severe. Watching
all but a brave handful of the media fall into line to sell the Patriot Act,
the War on Terror, and Weapons of Mass destruction has left an open wound.
It has also left an entire generation with a keen understanding of how
government honchos like Dick Cheney or Barack Obama use the media to spread
the leaks they want to spread while decrying all others.
Forgive the personal comparison, but my own loss of virginity came in the
early 1960s and was far less dramatic. A former high school journalist with
the cherished nickname "Scoop," I slowly came to see The New York Times, our
national newspaper of record, systematically ignore much of the civil rights
struggle in the South, especially when it involved the more radical Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I saw the liberal San Francisco Chronicle
lead the redbaiting attacks against our Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.
And I discovered that my family icon, the American Civil Liberties Union,
cared more about the freedom of those who owned presses than of those
pressing for social change.
Don't get me wrong. My generation saw the heroic and inspiring as well. We
watched CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite question the Vietnam War, however
belatedly he dared to do it. We read "The Pentagon Papers" and applauded The
New York Times for publishing them. We followed Woodward and Bernstein
reporting on Watergate in The Washington Post. We saw the media challenge
the power of the FBI and the CIA. We saw the good. We saw the bad. We
developed "a balanced view" of the media, and by the time of the War on
Terror , most of us did not expect anything better - or anything worse.
How wrong we were! Never in our lifetime has most of the mainstream media
sunk as low as their concerted attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,
the whistleblowers Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, journalist Glenn
Greenwald, and the continuing revelations of our country's imperial
brutality and global surveillance. Shamelessly, the media giants have
further embedded themselves as lickspittles to those in power. Even more
treacherous, they have blatantly betrayed the most basic precepts of our
profession and put our freedom at risk.
Professor Yochai Benkler provided the details in his testimony at the
court-martial of Bradley Manning. The Israeli-born Benkler heads the Berkman
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and is a widely cited
expert on WikiLeaks and its evolving relationship with the mainstream media.
You can read him on our website here and here.
From early 2008, Benkler told the military tribunal, the mainstream media
portrayed WikiLeaks in a favorable light as "a new online journalistic
organization." Leading media groups went to court to defend it against an
injunction from the Swiss investment bank Julius Baer that would have shut
it down. Various newspapers publicly praised WikiLeaks for its
professionalism and its efforts to verify and authenticate the leaked
documents that it published. The highly respected Index on Censorship and
Amnesty International both gave WikiLeaks their "New Media Award."
Benkler traced this positive attitude into 2010, the year WikiLeaks and
mainstream media partners began publishing the revelations that Bradley
Manning admits to leaking. These included the horrifying video of a U.S.
Apache helicopter firing down on a Reuters camera team and nearby children
in the heart of Baghdad, military logs of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and exceedingly frank U.S. diplomatic cables from all over the world.
During this period, relations began to fray as journalists at The New York
Times and The Guardian fell out with Assange, who can be an extremely
difficult person. But the big change came only after the release of the
diplomatic cables, when U.S. government officials turned their big guns on
WikiLeaks.
"The response is hard to define as anything but shrill," Benkler testified.
Secretary of State Clinton described the release (in Benkler's words) as an
attack on the international community. Vice President Biden called Assange a
high tech terrorist. Congressman Steve King, the incoming chairman of the
Homeland Security Committee, called for Washington to define WikiLeaks as a
foreign terrorist organization. Senator Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, called for prosecution under the Espionage Act of
1917. And Senator Joseph Lieberman, chair of the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security, called for companies to stop providing services to
WikiLeaks.
How did the mainstream media respond? According to Benkler, they joined the
government's campaign to delegitimize WikiLeaks. Bob Beckel, on Fox News,
called Assange "a traitor" and told the government to illegally shoot the
son of a bitch. William Kristol, editor of the neocon flagship The Weekly
Standard, called for a serious effort to degrade and destroy WikiLeaks. Tom
Friedman, the star columnist of The New York Times, called WikiLeaks a major
threat to the world. Bill Keller, the managing editor of the NYT who had
profitably published the news that WikiLeaks gave him, now wrote an 8,000
word essay in which he described WikiLeaks as a secretive cabal of
anti-secrecy vigilantes and attacked Assange as badly smelling as though he
hadn't bathed.
Could the tonal shift have been colder? The government wanted to make
Assange and WikiLeaks public enemy number one, and our supposedly
independent press freely produced the propaganda that Washington wanted. The
Nazi Party's Der Stürmer or the Soviet Union's Pravda and Izvestiya could
not have been slimier, more disgusting, or less professional as journalists.
We have now seen similar mainstream media sleaze against the NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden and relative silence on the trial of Bradley
Manning. We have also seen personal attacks on journalist Glenn Greenwald,
notably from NBC's David Gregory, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, and
even an aging Carl Bernstein, who appears to have made his peace with the
dark side.
No doubt, the mainstreamers think they can maintain their access to official
newsmakers - and win official protection - by separating themselves from
those who are providing real news about the real world. But, as Benkler
shows, the government has already announced in Manning's court-martial that
they would consider an unauthorized leak to The New York Times exactly the
same as one to WikiLeaks. The Obama administration, and no doubt its
successors, Democratic or Republican, will treat all unauthorized leaks as
providing information to the enemy.
Without leakers, the prime sources on national security scoops, the
mainstream media will shrivel. But I'm willing to bet that courageous truth
tellers will continue to provide information to Internet sites willing to
risk publishing it. That's what journalists do, even if most of the
mainstream media would rather grovel for whatever scraps their masters are
willing to hand them.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money: How Global Banks,
Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Glenn Greenwald tweeted: 'Who needs the government to try to criminalize
journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?' (photo: NBC)
/opinion2/276-74/18547-focus-the-treason-of-the-mainstream-media/opinion2/27
6-74/18547-focus-the-treason-of-the-mainstream-media
The Treason of the Mainstream Media
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
23 July 13
or those who came of age politically with the Supreme Court's election of
George W. Bush, disdain for the mainstream media remains severe. Watching
all but a brave handful of the media fall into line to sell the Patriot Act,
the War on Terror, and Weapons of Mass destruction has left an open wound.
It has also left an entire generation with a keen understanding of how
government honchos like Dick Cheney or Barack Obama use the media to spread
the leaks they want to spread while decrying all others.
Forgive the personal comparison, but my own loss of virginity came in the
early 1960s and was far less dramatic. A former high school journalist with
the cherished nickname "Scoop," I slowly came to see The New York Times, our
national newspaper of record, systematically ignore much of the civil rights
struggle in the South, especially when it involved the more radical Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I saw the liberal San Francisco Chronicle
lead the redbaiting attacks against our Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.
And I discovered that my family icon, the American Civil Liberties Union,
cared more about the freedom of those who owned presses than of those
pressing for social change.
Don't get me wrong. My generation saw the heroic and inspiring as well. We
watched CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite question the Vietnam War, however
belatedly he dared to do it. We read "The Pentagon Papers" and applauded The
New York Times for publishing them. We followed Woodward and Bernstein
reporting on Watergate in The Washington Post. We saw the media challenge
the power of the FBI and the CIA. We saw the good. We saw the bad. We
developed "a balanced view" of the media, and by the time of the War on
Terror , most of us did not expect anything better - or anything worse.
How wrong we were! Never in our lifetime has most of the mainstream media
sunk as low as their concerted attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,
the whistleblowers Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, journalist Glenn
Greenwald, and the continuing revelations of our country's imperial
brutality and global surveillance. Shamelessly, the media giants have
further embedded themselves as lickspittles to those in power. Even more
treacherous, they have blatantly betrayed the most basic precepts of our
profession and put our freedom at risk.
Professor Yochai Benkler provided the details in his testimony at the
court-martial of Bradley Manning. The Israeli-born Benkler heads the Berkman
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and is a widely cited
expert on WikiLeaks and its evolving relationship with the mainstream media.
You can read him on our website here and here.
From early 2008, Benkler told the military tribunal, the mainstream media
portrayed WikiLeaks in a favorable light as "a new online journalistic
organization." Leading media groups went to court to defend it against an
injunction from the Swiss investment bank Julius Baer that would have shut
it down. Various newspapers publicly praised WikiLeaks for its
professionalism and its efforts to verify and authenticate the leaked
documents that it published. The highly respected Index on Censorship and
Amnesty International both gave WikiLeaks their "New Media Award."
Benkler traced this positive attitude into 2010, the year WikiLeaks and
mainstream media partners began publishing the revelations that Bradley
Manning admits to leaking. These included the horrifying video of a U.S.
Apache helicopter firing down on a Reuters camera team and nearby children
in the heart of Baghdad, military logs of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and exceedingly frank U.S. diplomatic cables from all over the world.
During this period, relations began to fray as journalists at The New York
Times and The Guardian fell out with Assange, who can be an extremely
difficult person. But the big change came only after the release of the
diplomatic cables, when U.S. government officials turned their big guns on
WikiLeaks.
"The response is hard to define as anything but shrill," Benkler testified.
Secretary of State Clinton described the release (in Benkler's words) as an
attack on the international community. Vice President Biden called Assange a
high tech terrorist. Congressman Steve King, the incoming chairman of the
Homeland Security Committee, called for Washington to define WikiLeaks as a
foreign terrorist organization. Senator Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, called for prosecution under the Espionage Act of
1917. And Senator Joseph Lieberman, chair of the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security, called for companies to stop providing services to
WikiLeaks.
How did the mainstream media respond? According to Benkler, they joined the
government's campaign to delegitimize WikiLeaks. Bob Beckel, on Fox News,
called Assange "a traitor" and told the government to illegally shoot the
son of a bitch. William Kristol, editor of the neocon flagship The Weekly
Standard, called for a serious effort to degrade and destroy WikiLeaks. Tom
Friedman, the star columnist of The New York Times, called WikiLeaks a major
threat to the world. Bill Keller, the managing editor of the NYT who had
profitably published the news that WikiLeaks gave him, now wrote an 8,000
word essay in which he described WikiLeaks as a secretive cabal of
anti-secrecy vigilantes and attacked Assange as badly smelling as though he
hadn't bathed.
Could the tonal shift have been colder? The government wanted to make
Assange and WikiLeaks public enemy number one, and our supposedly
independent press freely produced the propaganda that Washington wanted. The
Nazi Party's Der Stürmer or the Soviet Union's Pravda and Izvestiya could
not have been slimier, more disgusting, or less professional as journalists.
We have now seen similar mainstream media sleaze against the NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden and relative silence on the trial of Bradley
Manning. We have also seen personal attacks on journalist Glenn Greenwald,
notably from NBC's David Gregory, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, and
even an aging Carl Bernstein, who appears to have made his peace with the
dark side.
No doubt, the mainstreamers think they can maintain their access to official
newsmakers - and win official protection - by separating themselves from
those who are providing real news about the real world. But, as Benkler
shows, the government has already announced in Manning's court-martial that
they would consider an unauthorized leak to The New York Times exactly the
same as one to WikiLeaks. The Obama administration, and no doubt its
successors, Democratic or Republican, will treat all unauthorized leaks as
providing information to the enemy.
Without leakers, the prime sources on national security scoops, the
mainstream media will shrivel. But I'm willing to bet that courageous truth
tellers will continue to provide information to Internet sites willing to
risk publishing it. That's what journalists do, even if most of the
mainstream media would rather grovel for whatever scraps their masters are
willing to hand them.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money: How Global Banks,
Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
Big news on student loans
Subject: Re: Big news on student loans
Good news? We call holding the line on student loan interest as good news?
We treat our children like we treat Third World Nations, forcing them deep
into debt in order to receive what they need to barely survive.
Shame on us!
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "R. E. Driscoll Sr" <llocsirdsr@att.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 7:36 PM
Subject: Fwd: Big news on student loans
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Big news on student loans
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:01:39 -0500
From: Cecilia Muñoz, The White House <info@messages.whitehouse.gov>
Reply-To: info@messages.whitehouse.gov
To: llocsirdsr@att.net
Big news on student loans
The White House, Washington
Hi, everyone --
We've got some good news to share! Senators from both parties have come
up with a plan to reduce the interest rates on student loans. Once it
becomes law, rates on every single new college loan will come down
before the start of the school year.
Because of this agreement, 11 million borrowers will save money, and we
need help to make sure that everyone gets the details. The graphic below
breaks down all the facts, and gives parents, undergrads, and grad
students the information they need to know what they can expect in the
years ahead.
*Check it out, then share it to help spread the message.
<http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwNzIzLjIxNDAyNjkxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDcyMy4yMTQwMjY5MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODgxMDYwJmVtYWlsaWQ9bGxvY3NpcmRzckBhdHQubmV0JnVzZXJpZD1sbG9jc2lyZHNyQGF0dC5uZXQmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&100&&&http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/big-news-student-loans?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email224-text1&utm_campaign=studentloans>*
Check out this graphic about student loan rates.
<http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwNzIzLjIxNDAyNjkxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDcyMy4yMTQwMjY5MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODgxMDYwJmVtYWlsaWQ9bGxvY3NpcmRzckBhdHQubmV0JnVzZXJpZD1sbG9jc2lyZHNyQGF0dC5uZXQmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&101&&&http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/big-news-student-loans?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email224-photo&utm_campaign=studentloans>
*http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/big-news-student-loans
<http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwNzIzLjIxNDAyNjkxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDcyMy4yMTQwMjY5MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODgxMDYwJmVtYWlsaWQ9bGxvY3NpcmRzckBhdHQubmV0JnVzZXJpZD1sbG9jc2lyZHNyQGF0dC5uZXQmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&102&&&http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/big-news-student-loans?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email224-text2&utm_campaign=studentloans>*
Thanks!
Cecilia
Cecilia Muñoz
Director, Domestic Policy Council
The White House
*@Cecilia44
<http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwNzIzLjIxNDAyNjkxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDcyMy4yMTQwMjY5MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODgxMDYwJmVtYWlsaWQ9bGxvY3NpcmRzckBhdHQubmV0JnVzZXJpZD1sbG9jc2lyZHNyQGF0dC5uZXQmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&103&&&https://twitter.com/cecilia44>*
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Good news? We call holding the line on student loan interest as good news?
We treat our children like we treat Third World Nations, forcing them deep
into debt in order to receive what they need to barely survive.
Shame on us!
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "R. E. Driscoll Sr" <llocsirdsr@att.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 7:36 PM
Subject: Fwd: Big news on student loans
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Big news on student loans
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:01:39 -0500
From: Cecilia Muñoz, The White House <info@messages.whitehouse.gov>
Reply-To: info@messages.whitehouse.gov
To: llocsirdsr@att.net
Big news on student loans
The White House, Washington
Hi, everyone --
We've got some good news to share! Senators from both parties have come
up with a plan to reduce the interest rates on student loans. Once it
becomes law, rates on every single new college loan will come down
before the start of the school year.
Because of this agreement, 11 million borrowers will save money, and we
need help to make sure that everyone gets the details. The graphic below
breaks down all the facts, and gives parents, undergrads, and grad
students the information they need to know what they can expect in the
years ahead.
*Check it out, then share it to help spread the message.
<http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwNzIzLjIxNDAyNjkxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDcyMy4yMTQwMjY5MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODgxMDYwJmVtYWlsaWQ9bGxvY3NpcmRzckBhdHQubmV0JnVzZXJpZD1sbG9jc2lyZHNyQGF0dC5uZXQmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&100&&&http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/big-news-student-loans?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email224-text1&utm_campaign=studentloans>*
Check out this graphic about student loan rates.
<http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwNzIzLjIxNDAyNjkxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDcyMy4yMTQwMjY5MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODgxMDYwJmVtYWlsaWQ9bGxvY3NpcmRzckBhdHQubmV0JnVzZXJpZD1sbG9jc2lyZHNyQGF0dC5uZXQmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&101&&&http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/big-news-student-loans?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email224-photo&utm_campaign=studentloans>
*http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/big-news-student-loans
<http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwNzIzLjIxNDAyNjkxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDcyMy4yMTQwMjY5MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODgxMDYwJmVtYWlsaWQ9bGxvY3NpcmRzckBhdHQubmV0JnVzZXJpZD1sbG9jc2lyZHNyQGF0dC5uZXQmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&102&&&http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/big-news-student-loans?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email224-text2&utm_campaign=studentloans>*
Thanks!
Cecilia
Cecilia Muñoz
Director, Domestic Policy Council
The White House
*@Cecilia44
<http://links.whitehouse.gov/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTMwNzIzLjIxNDAyNjkxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEzMDcyMy4yMTQwMjY5MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODgxMDYwJmVtYWlsaWQ9bGxvY3NpcmRzckBhdHQubmV0JnVzZXJpZD1sbG9jc2lyZHNyQGF0dC5uZXQmZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&103&&&https://twitter.com/cecilia44>*
Visit WhiteHouse.gov
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