Clippings for 3 October 2008

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Hate Speech Rises in the Media
John Torres writes for StopBigMedia.com that for many people of color, fighting against our nation's media system is a matter of life and death. Too often, the media have contributed to the racial divisions that still exist in this country by marginalizing people of color in its coverage.

Project Censored: Top 10 Stories the US Media Missed in the Past Year
Amanda Witherell writes for the San Francisco Bay Guardian that the daily dispatches and nightly newscasts of the mainstream media regularly cover terrorism, but rarely discuss how the fear of attacks is used to manipulate the public and set policy. That's the common thread of many unreported stories last year, according to an analysis by Project Censored.

FCC Commissioner to Public in Atlanta: Shut Up And Watch TV
Bruce Dixon writes for Black Agenda Report: "In Atlanta, the FCC's sham “Digital TV Consumer Education” town hall meeting was a near-secret affair, held in a conference room in rather than the advertised auditorium. FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate refused to answer questions about how the FCC gave broadcasters 5100 additional digital TV stations without the public bother or notice of issuing a single license. 'Shut up, get yourself a converter box, and watch TV' was the FCC's message, and let us and the broadcasters worry about who gets the frequencies and why."

Saying "No Deal" to this New Deal
David Sirota writes for Truthdig.com: "The marriage of American capitalism and democracy has always been a Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee affair—stormy and erratic since its hasty wedding. But during the debate over a Wall Street bailout this week, we watched that matrimonial knot unwind into a tangled tale of terror."

Let the Rich Bail Them Out
Bernie Sanders is his Senate floor speech says: "This country faces many serious problems in the financial market, in the stock market, in our economy. We must act, but we must act in a way that improves the situation. We can do better than the legislation now before Congress."

From Empire to Democracy
Historian Howard Zinn writes for The Guardian UK: "This current financial crisis is a major way-station on the way to the collapse of the American empire. The first important sign was 9/11, with the most heavily armed nation in the world shown to be vulnerable to a handful of hijackers."

Red Flag on Purging Voter Rolls
Pia Malbran reports for CBS News: "With Election Day rapidly approaching, a new report, obtained exclusively by CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian, raises serious questions and exposes flaws in the way states maintain their voter registration rolls."

Firing Back on the CRA Libel
Sara Robinson writes for the Campaign for America's Future: "Conservative pundits and politicians have piled onto the excuse like shipwreck victims clinging to a passing log: The real blame for the current economic crisis lies not with anything they did, but rather with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act-a successful Carter-era program designed to get banks to stop covert discrimination, and encourage them to invest their money in low-income neighborhoods. It's always easy to tell when the cons are completely lost at sea. The lies get more absurdly preposterous-and also more transparently self-serving. But when they go so far as to openly and unapologetically latch onto race and class as an excuse for their woes (which this is, at its heart), you know they're taking on water fast-and scared of going under entirely."

Kansas Governor Says Obama Better for Women Than McCain
Steven K. Paulson reports for The Associated Press: "Sebelius, a Democrat, campaigned for presidential candidate Barack Obama in Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Denver on Tuesday. She said women are more likely than men to earn the minimum wage and go without health insurance and pension benefits. 'Women are at the forefront of the economic crisis,' she said during a panel discussion in Denver. Sebelius said she is promoting policies that Obama says will provide economic relief to small business owners, including many women."

International Women's Health? Who's President Makes the Difference
Craig Lasher writes for RH Reality Check: "Under the Constitution and our system of government as it has evolved over the more than 200 years of the country's history, the president has been vested with a number of powers and authorities by which he can imprint his stamp on the interactions of the United States with the rest of the world, including through development and humanitarian assistance. As a result, who occupies the White House can greatly affect what policies govern international family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) programs and how much money is spent on these critical health activities. The president matters."

Leaked Memo Questions War Strategy in Afghanistan
Charles Bremner and Richard Beeston write for The Times UK: "The official version of the US-led campaign in Afghanistan received a blow today with a leaked report that the British Ambassador in Kabul believes that US strategy is wrong and the war is as good as lost. The potentially explosive views were published by Le Canard Enchaîné, a respected French weekly, which said that they were direct quotations from a diplomatic cable written by François Fitou, the French Deputy Ambassador in Kabul."

The Cost of Boots on the Ground in Iraq
John Basil Utley writes for Foreign Policy in Focus: "It takes half a million dollars per year to maintain each sergeant in combat in Iraq. Thanks to a Senate committee inquiry, an authoritative government study finally details the costs of keeping boots on the ground. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in its report Contractors' Support of US Operations in Iraq, compared the costs of maintaining a Blackwater professional armed guard versus the US military providing such services itself. Both came in at about $500,000 per person per year. News reports of the study have largely focused on the total cost of US contractors. The 190,000 contractors in Iraq and neighboring countries, from cooks to truck drivers, have cost US taxpayers $100 billion from the start of the war through the end of 2008."

Fueling the Fires of Real Change
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com on the Catholic Worker Movement that the coals of radical social change smolder among the poor, the homeless and the destitute. As the numbers of disenfranchised dramatically increase, our hope, our only hope, is to connect intimately with the daily injustices visited upon them. Out of this contact we can resurrect, from the ground up, a social ethic, a new movement.

Banking Collapse Lands on American Schools
Bill Boyarsky writes for Truthdig.com that one of the worst casualties of the Iraq war and the Wall Street failures is the U.S. public school system, which is central to the nation’s economic, intellectual and social health. With financial resources being consumed, education cuts are on the way. Thank you, John McCain and President George W. Bush.