Clippings for 31 December 2009

Community Bridge wishes our listeners a 2010 filled with good health, happiness,  self-fulfillment, and an end to war.

2009 - The Year in Review
John Reimann writes for The Daily Censored: "In the early morning hours of Jan. 1, 2009, a white transit cop in Oakland, California, shot and killed Oscar Grant, a young black man. Grant was lying face down on a train platform with his hands handcuffed behind his back at the time of the shooting. The cop claimed he thought Grant was going for a gun. Thus was the New Year ushered in."

Six Things to Do in 2010
Jim Hightower writes for Creators.com: "In my travels, I've heard many cries of despair from you good folks about the timorous Obama presidency. On issue after issue, it's been go-slow and don't-rock-the-corporate boat. 'Where's the "audacity of hope?"' people are asking. 'Where's the "change you can believe in?"' The answer is that in our country's democracy, audacity and change are where they've always resided: out there with you and me, at the grassroots level. For some reason, the guy who was elected by running from the outside is now trying to govern from the inside — which is where change is taken to die."

Andrew O'Hehir on the Best Movies of the Decade
Andrew O'Hehir writes for Salon.com:"A year of living one's life and watching movies can be considered in the abstract, as if it were an interesting phenomenon that happened to someone else. A year doesn't seem to matter that much. Sure, we're all that little bit older than we were last year. We've survived the tomato blight and the release of "Hotel for Dogs" and grown accustomed to the once-implausible phrase "President Obama." But it was just a year. We've lived through a bunch of them already, and most of us are hoping for a decent number still to come."

Anthony Lane to Zadie Smith: My 26 top cultural moments of the 2000s in alphabetical order.
Troy Patterson writes for Slate.com: "Anthony Lane on Her Majesty in "Battle Royal," a review of The Queen in The New Yorker, Oct. 9, 2006. Hot Brit-on-Brit action. Probably the greatest critic-on-movie match-up of all time. (It surpasses James Agee's review of The Lost Weekend, an appropriately evasive lush-on-lush spectacle.) Themes include the aristocracy of taste and the English way of death, the facade of Tony Blair, and the carriage of Helen Mirren. Divine, right?"

Recommended Audio Visual: The Best Galleries of 2009 - from Magnum Photos.

Autumn of the Republic?
Kirk Nielsen reviews some recent books on the U.S. for Miller-McCune: "Did America slip into a semiliterate, polarized, pre-fascist state over the past decade or so, allowing greedy oligarchs and corporate elites to run the government? Two books I recently read offer reasonably persuasive evidence and arguments that the country did, and a third suggests that dictatorial mindsets could besiege Americans, with an assist from the Internet, if they don't come to their more deliberative senses."

The Global War on Stealth Underware
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig.com: "There is no “war” against terrorism. What George W. Bush launched and Barack Obama insists on perpetuating does not qualify. Not if by war one means doing the obvious and checking a highly suspicious air traveler’s underwear to see if explosives have been sewn in. If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had put the stuff in his shoes we would have had him because that was tried before, but our government was too preoccupied with fighting unnecessary conventional wars and developing anti-missile defense systems to anticipate such a primitive delivery system."

Who's Running the TSA? No One, Thanks to Sen. Jim DeMint
Margaret Talev reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration - if there were one. The post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) has held up President Barack Obama's nominee in opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union." 

Craving Terrorist Melodramma
Glenn Greenwald writes for Salon.com: "As dumb as our political discourse typically is, it gets dumber by many magnitudes whenever there's a terrorism-related scare (of the Islamic variety).  From The Washington Post's editorial writer Jo-Ann Armao:

Why is Obama still in Hawaii?
President Obama wants us all to know he’s taking seriously the attempted terrorist attack of Christmas Day and that his administration is doing all it can to ensure our safety.  But his words would be a lot more convincing if not delivered during time snatched between rounds of golf, swimming and sunbathing. . . ."

On Day We Will All Be Terrorists
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak."

Eight GOP Senators Opposed Bill that Funded Airport Screening and Explosive Detection
Sam Stein reports for the Huffington Post: "Some of the same Republican lawmakers currently criticizing the President for softness on terrorism voted back in July 2007 against legislation that, among other reforms, provided $250 million for airport screening and explosive detection equipment.  The Improving America's Security Act of 2007 was a relatively non-controversial measure that effectively implemented several un-acted-upon recommendations from the 9/11 Commission. Eighty-five Senators voted in favor of the bill's passage. Seven missed the vote (several of whom were on the campaign trail, including Barack Obama, John McCain and Chris Dodd)."

The New Call for Full Body Scanners
Irene North writes for The Daily Censored: "No one really wanted full body scanners. There were numerous talks of invasions of privacy and viable cases of abuse of that privacy. Today, however, the pantsbomber has made that discussion return to the forefront, with many people readily giving up their privacy because they now feel that the government knows what they’re doing. For the skeptic in me, it all seems rather convenient."

Terrorism Still Less Deadly in US Than Lack of Health Insurance, Salmonella
Blue Texan writes for the Firedodlake blog: "Since we still seem to be having a national freakout over some loser who got on a plane with a bomb in his underwear, which was apparently worthy of a presidential address, it might be a good idea to put the actual danger posed by terrorist attacks in some numerical perspective."



The Cowboys of Kabul
Daniel Schulman reports for Mother Jomes: "It was March 2002, and Del and Barbara Spier were flat broke. The Texas couple, grandparents of five and owners of a small, Houston-based private investigations firm, were more than $260,000 in debt. They carried balances as high as $18,600 on more than a dozen credit cards and were saddled with $80,000 in outstanding bank loans and a $95,000 mortgage. In their bankruptcy filing, the Spiers' company, which they founded in 1987 and named the Agency for Investigation and Protective Services, was deemed of 'no marketable value.'"

Inside the Military-Industrial-Media Complex: Impacts on Movement for Social Justice
Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff comment for Truthout: "Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States' military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths."

US Military Is Meeting Recruitment Goals With Video Games - but at What Cost?
Jamie Holmes comments for The Christian Science Monitor: "For the first time since the establishment of all-volunteer forces in 1973, the US military has met all of its recruiting goals. This success can be attributed in part to the new video games and graphic novels aimed at America's youth. It may sound like the US military has solved a major recruitment problem, but there may be a high cost." 

Uncle Sam's Signature
Bruno Odet in an editorial and Cathy Ceibe in an interview with scholar Julio Navarro, both for L'Humanite, decry the continuing usurpation of power in Honduras: "The death squads are circulating once more. A week does not go by without atrociously mutilated corpses of militants from the various democratic organizations gathered together in the Resistance Front against the Coup d'Etat (FRCG) being found. The mutilations prove that they were tortured before being killed." -- English translation by Truthout.

Recommended Audio: Democracy Now - Anti-Mining Activists Killed in El Salvador
For the second time in a week, a prominent anti-mining activist has been assassinated in El Salvador. On Saturday, thirty-two-year-old Dora “Alicia” Recinos Sorto was shot dead near her home. One of her children was also injured in the shooting. Sorto was an active member of the Cabañas Environment Committee, which has campaigned against the reopening of a gold mine owned by the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Company.

Take Your Money Out of the Hands of the Banking Oligarchs
Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson write for Move your Money, via AlterNet: "Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money."

 

AIG Executives Failed to Repay Majority of Bonuses
Jason Leopold reports for Truthout: "Despite previous promises, beleaguered insurance giant American International Group (AIG) has failed to return tens of millions of dollars in bonus payments the firm doled out to executives following the company's spectacular unraveling and subsequent multibillion government bailout, according to a recent report by the special inspector general for the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)."

The Lingering Bush Legacy: What to do About Those Tax Cuts
Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers: "In the back of every Washington politician's mind is this sobering fact: Unless Congress acts, the temporary tax cuts it passed when George W. Bush was president will expire at the end of next year. If the Democrats who control Congress do nothing and let the tax rates on the highest income brackets return to their pre-2001 levels, their Republican rivals and many Americans will slam them as tax hikers."

Report Says ACORN Didn't Commit Voter Fraud or Misuse Federal Funding
Mary Susan Littlepage reports for Truthout: "The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) did not commit voter fraud, and it didn't misuse federal funding in the last five years, according to a recently released report prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan investigational arm of Congress."

The Racial Diversity of Hunger
David Bacon writes for the East Bay Express: "Everyone knows that Oakland is diverse. Probably more people from more races and nationalities live in the city than anywhere west of New York or north of Los Angeles. But before we celebrate diversity, think of its most diverse places. Some of them are surely the lines of hungry people lining up for food."

Burt's Bees, Tom's of Maine, Naked Juice: Your Favorite Brands? Take Another Look -- They May Not Be What They Seem
Andrea Whitfill writes for AlterNet: "My first introduction to natural, organic and eco-friendly products stems back to the early '90s, when I stumbled upon Burt’s Bees lip balm at an independently owned health food store in the heart of Westport, Kansas City, Mo. Before the eyesore invasion of ’98, when Starbucks frothed its way into the neighborhood, leading to its ultimate demise, Westport was the kind of  'hood I still yearn for. It was saturated with historically preserved, hip and funky, mom-and-pop-type establishments, delivering their goods people to people." This article was AlterNet's 6th most popular article in 2009.

Democracy's Baseline Need for Transparency
David Sirota comments in the Seattle Times: "This month, a British government report admitted that one of the major rationales for invading Iraq — the claim that Saddam could deploy WMDs in 45 minutes — probably came from a cabdriver. Had the public originally been told about this sketchy sourcing, there may have been a more, ahem, forceful mass opposition to pre-emptive war in the Middle East."

My Simple Fix for the Messed Up Sunday Shows
Jay Rosen writes on his blog: "Look, the Sunday morning talk shows are broken. As works of journalism they don't work. And I don't know why this is so hard for the producers to figure out. The people who host and supervise these shows, the journalists who appear on them, as well as the politicians who are interviewed each week, are all quite aware that extreme polarization and hyper-partisan conflict have come to characterize official Washington, an observation repeated hundreds of times a month by elders in the Church of the Savvy.  Ron Brownstein wrote a whole book on it: The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America."

Clippings for 26 December 2009

The Christmas Truce of 1914
Paul J. Magnarella writes for Truthout: "Although World War I ranks as one of the most horrific in history, causing about 40 million casualties and up to 20 million military and civilian deaths, it also included a famous and spontaneous peaceful interlude inscribed in chronicles as the unofficial Christmas truce of 1914."

In Romania, Ceausescu's Death Haunts Christmas
Sinziana Demian reports for GlobalPost: "Twenty years ago, as Romanians were celebrating their first free holiday in decades, they rejoiced at the news that dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena had been shot dead on Christmas day. It was the ultimate proof that the communist regime had crumbled irrevocably and that the late-December revolution had indeed succeeded."

A Holiday Season of War
Tom Engelhardt writes for TomDispatch.com: "Excuse the gloom in the holiday season, but I feel like we're all locked inside a malign version of the movie Groundhog Day. You remember, the one in which the characters are forced to relive the same 24 hours endlessly. Put more personally, TomDispatch started in November 2001 as an email to friends in response to the first moments of our latest Afghan War. More than eight years later ... well, you know the story."

Stunning Statistics about the War Every American Should Know
Jeremy Scahill writes for Rebel Reports: "A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, 'the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.' That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety. In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, 'From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan.  During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.'"

Foreign Interpreters Hurt in Battle Find US Insurance Benefits Wanting
T. Christian Miller reports for ProPublica and The Los Angeles Times: "After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. military discovered that rebuilding the country and confronting an insurgency required a weapon not in its arsenal: Thousands of translators.  To fill the gap, the Pentagon turned to Titan Corp., a San Diego defense contractor, which eventually hired more than 8,000 interpreters, most of them Iraqis. For $12,000 a year, these civilians served as the voice of America’s military, braving sniper fire and roadside bombs. Insurgents branded them collaborators and targeted them for torture and assassination. Many received military honors for their heroism."

Recommended Audio: Bill Moyers Journal December 18 - Washington For Sale

Amidst fading hopes for real reform on issues ranging from high finance to health care, economist Robert Kuttner and journalist Matt Taibbi join Bill Moyers to discuss Wall Street's power over the federal government.

Top 10 Ethical Scandals for 2009
Evan Jones reprots for Mother Jones: "Christmas came early today when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington revealed their "Top Ten Ethics Scandals" of 2009. It’s their third annual list, and is jam-packed with titillating/depressing breaches of ethics in both the legislative and executive branches. A must-read for all observers of crooked ambition and unchecked hubris in the political sphere."

To download the complete report (PDF file), click here. 

Reclaiming Public Values in the Age of Casino Capitalism
Henry A. Giroux writes for Truthout: "This is a difficult time in American history. The American people have every right to demand to live in peace, enjoy the comforts of economic security, have access to decent health care, be able to send their children to quality schools and live with a measure of security. And yet, at a time when public values are subordinated to the rationality of profits, exchange values and unbridled self interest, politics and the institutions and culture that support it become corrupt, devoid of agents and reduced to empty rituals largely orchestrated by those who control the wealth, income, media and commanding institutions of American society."

Wall Street's Fingerprints Evident on Financial Reform Bill
Gail Russell Chaddock reports for The Christian Science Monitor: "Since the near meltdown of Wall Street in late 2008, Congress has pledged to tighten regulations on the finance industry. That exercise is now half over, with the House approving a reform package Dec. 11."

10 Greedest People of 2009
Sam Pizzigati author of Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality writes for AlterNet: "Has picking a year’s greediest "top ten" ever been easier? We don't think so. We could, this year, fill an entire top ten just with bankers from Goldman Sachs -- or JPMorgan Chase or any of a number of other Wall Street giants. All sport executive suites packed with power suits who fanned the flames that melted down the global economy, then helped themselves, after gobbling down billions in bailouts, to paydays worth mega millions -- at a time when, in over half our states, over a quarter of America’s kids are living off food stamps. Now that’s greed. But that’s also not the whole picture. The Great Recession’s greedy don’t just sit on Wall Street. They occupy perches of power throughout the reeling U.S. economy. So we’ve tried, in this our latest annual ranking of avarice, to survey that bigger picture."

Modern-Day Slavery in Mexico and the United States
Megan McAdams reports for Council on Hemispheric Affairs: "On December 3, Mexico City police freed 107 human trafficking victims who were forced to manufacture shopping bags and clothespins under 'slave-like' circumstances. Officials reported that the victims exhibited signs of physical and sexual abuse, and were also malnourished, as they had been given only chicken feet and rotten vegetables. Twenty-three individuals were arrested and charged with human trafficking after one of the workers escaped and informed the authorities about the dire situation."

America's Secret ICE Castles
Jacqueline Stevens reports for The Nation: "'If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear.' Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report Jailed Without Justice (PDF download) and said in an interview, 'It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong.'"

Climate Discord: From Hopenhagen to Nopenhagen
Amy Goodman writes for Truthdig.com: "Barack Obama said, minutes before racing out of the U.N. climate summit, 'We will not be legally bound by anything that took place here today.' These were among his remarks made to his own small White House press corps, excluding the 3,500 credentialed journalists covering the talks. It was late on Dec. 18, the last day of the summit, and reports were that the negotiations had failed. Copenhagen, which had been co-branded for the talks on billboards with Coke and Siemens as 'Hopenhagen,' was looking more like 'Nopenhagen.'”\

For Obama, No Opportunity Too Big to Blow
Naomi Klein writes for The Nation: "Contrary to countless reports, the debacle in Copenhagen was not everyone's fault. It did not happen because human beings are incapable of agreeing, or are inherently self-destructive. Nor was it all was China's fault, or the fault of the hapless UN.  There's plenty of blame to go around, but there was one country that possessed unique power to change the game. It didn't use it. If Barack Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative and inspiring commitment to getting the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, all the other major emitters would have stepped up. The EU, Japan, China and India had all indicated that they were willing to increase their levels of commitment, but only if the U.S. took the lead. Instead of leading, Obama arrived with embarrassingly low targets and the heavy emitters of the world took their cue from him."

Copenhagen Decoded
Kate Sheppard writes for Mother Jones: "Late on Friday at the climate summit in Denmark, President Barack Obama announced the Copenhagen Accord, an eleventh-hour deal with the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa that broke a seemingly intractable impasse in the negotiations. But after the president boarded Air Force One—hoping to reach Washington before an approaching snowstorm—negotiators for 193 countries fought bitterly about the agreement through the night. In the small hours, a handful of nations—including Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan, and Nicaragua—refused to sign the pact. Exhausted negotiators, some looking ready to keel over at any minute, railed and pleaded to no avail; a Venezuelan delegate even cut her hand to emphasize her opposition to the deal. In the end, the holdouts could not be won over, and so the summit’s final statement does not adopt the Copenhagen Accord, but merely "takes note" of it. What does this nebulous pact actually mean—and what happens next?"

End to the Abstinence-Only Fantasy
The New York Times editoralizes: "The omnibus government spending bill signed into law last week contains an important victory for public health. Gone is all spending for highly restrictive abstinence-only sex education programs that deny young people accurate information about contraceptives, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. The measure redirects sex-education resources to medically sound programs aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy."

Judge Denies Request for 'Necessity Defense' in Trial of Accused Tiller Shooter
The National Partnership for Women and Families reports: "Sedgwick County, Kan., District Judge Warren Wilbert ruled Tuesday that Scott Roeder, the man accused of fatally shooting Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, cannot use a "necessity defense" to argue that he believed the murder was justified to save the lives of fetuses, McClatchy /Los Angeles Times reports. Wilbert did say, however, that he would "leave the door open" for Roeder to present other evidence and arguments that he killed Tiller because he believed he was saving fetuses. According to McClatchy/Times, that might make it possible for Roeder's attorneys to argue that he committed the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter, which is defined under Kansas law as an 'unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force.' Roeder is charged with first-degree murder (McClatchy /Los Angeles Times, 12/23)."

Women
Ellen Goodman writes for Truthdig: "It is one of those moments when I feel like a time-traveler. I look out the airplane window and watch a young woman on the tarmac directing our jet to its gate. As she waves the signals, I fall into a silent, familiar reverie: “I remember when.” What I remember, of course, is a time when no woman would have been hired for this “man’s job.” What I remember is when my generation opened the door for hers. If I talked to her about the old days, I wonder, would she listen as politely as if I were talking about walking four miles in the snow to school?

Moyers, Moore and Maddow are the Most Influential Progressives
Don Hazen writes for AlterNet: "The three M's -- Bill Moyers, Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow -- scored highest in a recent AlterNet survey* asking more than 5,000 readers to rate the most influential progressive media figures. Moyers, who scored 67.5, and Moore, with a 66.2 score, were very close. Maddow was a tad behind at 63.5. It's no surprise that Moyers, the moral sage, and Moore, the rabble-rouser, are ranked at the top. They have been popular with AlterNet readers for years. Moyers' current show, "Bill Moyers' Journal," gets at the heart of our many social ills with long-form exploration and probing interviews. Recently, Moyers spent an episode on the Lyndon Johnson Vietnam tapes, drawing a connection to Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan. The show was a television masterpiece."

Top 10 Internet Moments of 2009
Tim Karr reprots for the Huffington Post: "More than a decade ago, President Clinton pledged that every person in America would soon be able to go online 'to order up every movie ever produced or every symphony ever created in a minute's time.'  Well, we're already well into the next millennium and less than one out of every 10 Americans has a connection capable of those speeds. And it's not just the speed of our connection that's fallen behind. When we can get online in the United States, a free and open Internet is no longer guaranteed."

Google Post Manifesto on Open Internet
Cecilia Kang reports for the Wahington Post: "Google has come to symbolize a crusade by some in the high-tech sector for open Internet policies. But even within the Silicon Valley search giant, the concept of open Internet practices isn’t always clear.  Yesterday, Google’s senior vice president for product management, Jonathan Rosenberg, cleared the air. In a letter to employees posted on the company’s official blog, Rosenberg wrote what read like a manifesto of the company’s philosophy on what open Internet means to Google."

Comcast Settle Case Action Suit on Traffic Blocking
Michelle Meyers reports for CNET News: "As we close the book on 2009 and ready for 2010, a legal settlement takes us back to 2007 and 2008, when Comcast got into trouble with customers and the feds for throttling peer-to-peer traffic on its network.  Comcast has agreed to pay $16 million to end to a class action lawsuit alleging the broadband provider promised and advertised certain download and upload speeds, but blocked peer-to-peer traffic on its high-speed Internet network. 'Comcast denies these claims, but has revised its management of P2P and is settling to avoid the burden and cost of further litigation,' according to the proposed settlement, pointed out to us by Ars Technica."

So Many Bogus Stories, so Little Time
Joan Walsh comments for Salon.com: "There was plenty of news in 2009: economic near-collapse. An eight-month debate over how to remake the country's flawed healthcare system. Big elections in Iran and Afghanistan.  Yet the media spent a lot of time chasing non-stories, from Balloon Boy to Sarah Palin's death panels -- so much so that Salon felt compelled to call out the top Bogus Stories of 2009. You can find them here."

Think-Tanks and the Reporters who Heart Them
Nathan Hodge writes for Wired magazine: "The relationship between reporters and think tanks used to be, well, pretty simple. You called up defense expert X for a quote on, say, cost overruns on a stealth fighter jet, and if you were lucky, you’d get something lively. (Free tip to aspiring defense wonks: Try more pop-culture references.) You could attend one of their conferences, listen to one of their panels and perhaps pick up half a sandwich."

The 2010 Kansas Legislative Session

Rep. Sydney Carlin and Sen. Rodger Reitz discuss the up-coming legislative session; the Kansas budget crisis; funding public education and more.

MP3 File

Clippings for 10 December 2009 - Human Rights Day

Our clippings service will be taking a couple of weeks off as Christopher Renner takes a much need vacation.  We will return after the week of December 28th.

Human Rights Day Part 1: Why We Need A Human Rights Movement
Christopher Renner writes for the Kansas Free Press: "On December 10 the world marks the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is commonly referred to as Human Rights Day and this year's theme is: Embrace Diversity: End Discrimination. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillary said:

"Discrimination lies at the root of many of the world's most pressing human rights problems. No country is immune from this scourge. Eliminating discrimination is a duty of the highest order."

Download and read An End to Discrimination, the official publication for the 2009 Human Rights Day."

Human Rights Day Part 2: Moving Beyond 'Civil Rights'
Christopher Renner writes for the Kansas Free Press: "As a nation we have been slow to evolve in our understanding of human rights. When asked, most of us think that civil rights are human rights. They are, but they are only the beginning. Civil rights are basically your right to be created equal to everyone else. Civil rights are incomplete if they are not accompanied by economic, social, political, and cultural rights. Unfortunately early on in the civil rights struggle, here was a big battle in the NAACP over human vs. civil rights. At the heart of this battle were two men: Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP and a lawyer who could pass as white, and W. E. B. DuBois one of the founders of the NAACP. DeBois asked: "Why should we ask for only one of the five rights categories?" Eventually, White won, and force out an ever more radical DeBois from the NAACP which set human rights back 50 years. Equality is precious but is incomplete."

2009: A Year in Human Rights
Andrew Wander writes for Al Jazeera English: "With a new US president, international crises from Gaza to Sri Lanka, and continued political impediments to international justice, 2009 has been a busy year for those working in the field of human rights. On Human Rights Day (December 10), Carroll Bogart, the associate director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), shares her views on some of the key moments of the past year and looks ahead to what 2010 might hold."

Rick Warren Should Denounce Uganda's Anti-Gay Legislation
Kapya Kaoma comments for Global Post: "As the world celebrates Human Rights Day Thursday, Pastor Rick Warren should make his own contribution to human rights by denouncing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009.  Although homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, the proposed law calls for the death penalty for people convicted of something called 'aggravated homosexuality,' as well as life imprisonment sentences for being gay. If family, friends, teachers or counselors fail to report gay individuals, they too can be imprisoned."

Execissive Secrecy Undermining Obama's Human Rights Achievements
Ken Gude writes for the Center for American Progress: "Today is World Human Rights Day, the annual celebration of the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The visionary leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt was the driving force behind the Declaration and the United States had consistently pressed for the spread of human rights around the world for decades. America’s longstanding authority as a global leader in human rights was one of our greatest national security assets. But the credibility of America’s commitment to human rights has been severely damaged in the wake of the Bush administration’s official policy of torture and abuse of detainees captured in the fight against Al Qaeda."

Worst Companies for Union Organizing Highlighted for International Human Rights Day
International Labour Forum comments: "December 10 - As human rights advocates around the world celebrate International Human Rights Day, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) has released "Working for Scrooge: Worst Companies of 2009 for the Right to Associate" - a list of the four worst multinational corporations for union organizing. Among other rights related to workers, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that "everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests" (Article 23, Section 4). The US-based companies on ILRF's list use intimidation and even violence to violate workers' internationally recognized right to organize."

Af-Pak War Racket: The Obama Illusion Comes Crashing Down
David DeGraw writes for Amped Status: "As Obama announced plans for escalating the war effort, it has become clear that the Obama Illusion has taken yet another horrifying turn. Before explaining how the Af-Pak surge is a direct attack on the US public, let’s peer through the illusion and look at the reality of the situation. Now that the much despised George W. Bush is out of the way and a more popular figurehead is doing PR for Dick Cheney’s right-hand military leader Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is leading his second AF-Pak surge now, and with long time Bush family confidant Robert Gates still running the Defense Department, the masters of war have never had it so good."

War and Poverty in Afghanistan
Katrina Vander Heuvel comments for The Nation: "President Obama has made the wrong decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan--at a cost of $1 million per soldier, or $30 billion a year. What we need is not more war but attention to problems like poverty which so often play a role in breeding insecurity and terrorism. In Afghanistan, as we dispatch these first soldiers, it's important that we pay attention to the dire problem of extreme poverty in that tormented country."

'There hasn't been two seconds of intelligent discussion about living standards in Afghanistan'
John Hanrahan writes for Nieman Watch: "The poverty in Afghanistan is almost beyond imagining. Thirty Afghans die from TB every day; life expectancy is 43 years; per capita income is $426; only 13% have access to sanitary drinking water; fewer than one in four are literate; access to electricity is among the lowest in the world. Conditions for women are brutal. If Obama plans to address these issues, he's pretty much keeping it secret, points out world poverty expert Jeffrey Sachs. But without addressing them, can stepped-up American military involvement succeed? Or is it bound to fail?"

Is US Prepared to Care for More Casualties From Troop Buildup?
David Goldstein reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "As the Obama administration ramps up the war in Afghanistan, veterans advocates say the government must develop a better plan to handle the wounded when they come home. Eight years of war have overtaxed the health care systems that treat service members and veterans, several said, and President Barack Obama's decision to deploy 30,000 to 35,000 more troops in Afghanistan will compound the stress."

Dear Barak, Spare Me Your E-mails
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig.com: "Barack Obama's faux populism is beginning to grate, and when yet another one of those “we the people” e-mails from the president landed on my screen as I was fishing around for a column subject, I came unglued. It is one thing to rob us blind by rewarding the power elite that created our problems but quite another to sugarcoat it in the rhetoric of a David taking on those Goliaths. " 

Texas Populist Jim Hightower Makes Progressive 'Hall of Fame,' as Nation Magazine Gathering Grapples with Conflicted Feelings about President Obama
Don Hazen writes for AlterNet: "The annual Nation Institute dinner in New York City on Monday, where the $100,000 Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship was awarded, turned into a revealing Rorschach test of how progressives feel about President Obama nearly a year after the inauguration that made many of them downright giddy. Needless to say, the giddiness has dissipated. Obama's escalation of the war effort in Afghanistan was a prime preoccupation of many of the attendees; a mix of leaders, advocates and wealthy donors who support the great investigative work of the Nation Institute and many other progressive causes."

Liberals Are Usless
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision."

Yes, Virginia, It's Bernanke's Fault
Dean Baker writes for the Huffington Post: "As the Senate debates Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's reappointment, it is striking how the media views blaming Bernanke for the Great Recession as being out of bounds. Of course Bernanke bears much of the blame for America's economic collapse.  He was either in, or next to, the driver's seat for the last seven years. Bernanke was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board since the summer of 2002. He served a six-month stint as head of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors beginning in the summer of 2005 and then went back to chair the Fed in January of 2006." 

Wall Street Snaps Its Fingers
Alexander Cockburn writes for CounterPunch: "For months now, Congress has been stumbling through an exercise billed as “financial regulatory reform,” purportedly dedicated to bringing law enforcement to the Wall Street Casino. One activity notably popular among the gamesters has been the “dark markets” in the $600 trillion derivatives trading markets, not least because trades are executed on a bilateral basis between dealer and customer, with no public price disclosure, at least not until well after the fact. An analogous situation would be for someone buying stock in, for example, the Apple Corporation, to take the price offered by a broker with no opportunity to see what everyone else is paying that day, or that minute.

Thousands of Stimulus Reports Missing, Resulting in Potential Undercount of Jobs Created
Michael Garbel reports for ProPublica: "Eagle Peak Rock and Paving created and saved 32 jobs thanks to an $8 million federal stimulus contract to repair Glacier Point Road in Yosemite National Park. But you won’t find that on Recovery.gov, the government’s Web site for tracking stimulus money. You also won’t find the eight employees hired by Owensboro-Daviess County Regional Airport in Kentucky, or the 46 jobs claimed for some $65 million in grants awarded to the Louisiana Department of Social Services."

The Real Chicago Way: A privatization scheme that's a loser for taxpayers
Thomas Franks writes for the Wall Street Journal: "When the entertainers of the right aren't declaring their disgust with President Obama for groveling before foreign potentates, they're pretending to fear him as a left-wing thug, an exemplar of what they call "the Chicago way." As imagined by the right, the men in the West Wing are like a demonic cross between the antiwar demonstrators who gathered in Grant Park in 1968 and the Chicago cops who cracked their hippie skulls. Tremble, men of commerce, before this infernal combination. Myths like this are fun to invent. The problem, as ever, is reality."

Gun Activits Take Aim at Obamacare
James Ridgeway reports for Mother Jones: "Right-wingers have long viewed health care reform as a cover for various dastardly liberal plots—from killing off grannies and unborn babies to ushering in a socialist state. Now, pro-gun activists see yet another hidden agenda: Health care legislation, they say, threatens their right to bear arms. The accusation comes from Gun Owners of America, a 300,000 member group that proudly advertises itself with a quotation from Ron Paul: "The only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington." The GOA sits well to the right of the National Rifle Association, which it tends to dismiss as a pack of sell-outs. Yet, like the Tea Partiers who draw Republican congressional leaders to their racially tinged protests against "National Socialist Health Care," the GOA could influence the reform debate. GOA has thrown itself wholeheartedly into the battle for the soul of the GOP, pledging to help oust "RINOs" and other insufficiently trigger-happy Republicans in the 2010 primaries—and to go after conservative Democrats, too."

Billionaires Behind the Hate
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Lee Fang, and Alex Seitz-Wald write the Progress Report for Think Progress: "Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are the wealthiest, and perhaps most effective, opponents of President Obama's progressive agenda. They have been looming in the background of every major domestic policy dispute this year. Ranked as the 9th richest men in America, the Koch brothers sit at the helm of Koch Industries, a massive privately owned conglomerate of manufacturing, oil, gas, and timber interests. They are best known for their wealth, as well as for their generous contributions to the arts, cancer research, and the Smithsonian Institute. But David and Charles are also responsible for a vicious attack campaign aimed directly at obstructing and killing progressive reform. Over the years, millions of dollars in Koch money has flowed to various right-wing think tanks, front groups, and publications. At the dawn of the Obama presidency, Koch groups quickly maneuvered to try to stop his first piece of signature legislation: the stimulus. The Koch-funded group "No Stimulus" launched television and radio ads deriding the recovery package as simply "pork" spending. The Cato Institute -- founded by Charles -- as well as other Koch-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, produced a blizzard of reports distorting the stimulus and calling for a return to Bush-style tax cuts to combat the recession. As their fronts were battling the stimulus, David's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) spent the opening months of the Obama presidency placing calls and helping to organize the very first "tea party" protests. AFP, founded in 1984 by David and managed day to day by the astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips, has spent much of the year mobilizing "tea party" opposition to health reform, clean energy legislation, and financial regulations."

ACORN Not Guilty
Peter Dreier writes for Talking Points Memo: "ACORN is getting a bum rap -- in the news media, among politicians, and even by some foundations. That's the conclusion of an independent report released Monday, which acknowledged that ACORN needs to improve its management structure, but that it did not engage in illegal activities when two videographers, one posing as a prostitute, showed up at 10 ACORN offices, tried to entrap low-level staff mem¬bers into providing tax and housing advice for their illegal prostitution ring, and secretly videotaped the encounters."

The Manufactured Doubt Industry and the Hacked Email Controversy
Jeff Masters writes for Weather Underground: "In 1954, the tobacco industry realized it had a serious problem. Thirteen scientific studies had been published over the preceding five years linking smoking to lung cancer. With the public growing increasingly alarmed about the health effects of smoking, the tobacco industry had to move quickly to protect profits and stem the tide of increasingly worrisome scientific news. Big Tobacco turned to one the world's five largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton, to help out. Hill and Knowlton designed a brilliant Public Relations (PR) campaign to convince the public that smoking is not dangerous. They encouraged the tobacco industry to set up their own research organization, the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), which would produce science favorable to the industry, emphasize doubt in all the science linking smoking to lung cancer, and question all independent research unfavorable to the tobacco industry. The CTR did a masterful job at this for decades, significantly delaying and reducing regulation of tobacco products. George Washington University epidemiologist David Michaels, who is President Obama's nominee to head the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), wrote a meticulously researched 2008 book called, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. In the book, he wrote: 'the industry understood that the public is in no position to distinguish good science from bad. Create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. Throw mud at the anti-smoking research under the assumption that some of it is bound to stick. And buy time, lots of it, in the bargain.' The title of Michaels' book comes from a 1969 memo from a tobacco company executive: 'Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.' Hill and Knowlton, on behalf of the tobacco industry, had founded the 'Manufactured Doubt' industry."

The Physics of Copenhagen: Why Politics-As-Usual May Mean the End of Civilization
Bill McKibben writes for TomDispatch: "Let me be blunt about what amazes me when it comes to global warming.  In the U.S., it’s largely an issue for Democrats, “progressives,” liberals, the left, and I simply don’t get that.  Never have.  If the word “conservative” means anything, the key to it must be that word at its heart, 'conserve'; that is, the keeping or not squandering of what already is, especially what’s most valuable. And for us humans, what’s better than our planet?  It’s the only home we’ve got and -- though I was one of those 1950s boys who read H.G. Wells and Isaac Asimov, as well as plenty of pulp sci-fi, and spent too much time dreaming about other planets and the stars -- probably the only one we’ll ever have.  For us, there is nowhere else.  Wreck it and you wreck us."


EPA Finds Greenhouse Gases Pose Dangers, Plans Regulation
Renee Schoof reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that global warming pollution endangered the health and welfare of Americans and must be reduced, a move that seemed timed to signal that the US is serious about joining an international bid to reduce the risks of damaging climate change."

The True Story About "Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming"
Rinaldo Brutoco and Madeleine Austin comment for Truthout: "Why have hopes faded for a binding agreement at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen that began this week? Why aren't the people of the world demanding that their national leaders act to avert the greatest environmental crisis the world has ever known?"

Climate Change on the Move: Climate Migration Will Affect the World's Security
Michael Werz and Kari Manlove write for The Center for American Progress: "African immigrants are given drinks inside a hospital tent in Los Cristianos on the Canary island of Tenerife, Spain. The Spanish government set up operations in African countries to discourage migration to Spain, which could intensify with climate change's effects." 

The Struggle for Public Education
Sanny Weil writes for The Daily Censored: "Recently, Scott Lay, President and Chief Executive Officer Orange Coast College ‘94, a community college in California, spoke with the Academic Senate President Jane Patton about governance in these difficult times to trustees, administrators, faculty, staff and students at Delta College in Stockton. Like many community colleges bereft of monies, they have struggled to slash millions from the budget and align their limited funds to best serve their community. They are one of the hardest hit in the entire country by the financial and real estate crises that has made devastation for the profits of a few while disembowling public education. The entrusted and not to be trusted “legislature” of California have come up with a resolution contained in their Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education that recognizes that the 'recent economic downturn has taken a toll on the state’s fiscal support for public higher education; however, the economy will revive, according to the resolution, and this Master Plan review can set a framework for funding priorities when funds become available to restore and increase the state’s support for its colleges and universities and invest in preparing its future workforce.'"

The Selling of "Precious:" Hollywood's Enduring Myth of the Black Male Sexual Predator
Ishmael Reed writes for CounterPunch: "One can view Sarah Siegel on YouTube discussing her approach to marketing. During her dispassionate recital she says that she sees a 'niche dilemma,' and finds a way to solve that dilemma. Seeing that no one had supplied women with panties that were meant to be visible while wearing low cut jeans, she captured the niche and made a fortune. With five million dollars, she invested in the film Precious, which was adapted from the book Push, written by Ramona Lofton, who goes by the pen name of Sapphire, after the emasculating shrew in “Amos and Andy,” a show created by white vaudevillians Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll."

Recommended Audio: Rachel Maddow Demolishes Therapist Who Claims He Can Make Her Straight

Richard Cohen claims his therapy can turn gay people straight -- an absurd theory debunked by all national psychological associations.
Transcript available from AlterNet.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Comcast-NBC Deal Finds Donors Converging with Obama's Principles
Kim Hart writes for The Hill: "The proposed merger of Comcast and NBC Universal will be the first big test of the Obama administration’s stance on the hot-button issue of media consolidation. It could also put the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress at odds with a few of their largest supporters."

Comcast-NBC U Merger Could Hurt Consumers
Josh Silver and Tim Winter comment for the Philadelphia Inquirer: "After months of speculation and rumor, Comcast and NBC Universal have formally announced that they are getting hitched in one of the biggest media mergers in our nation's history. The country's largest cable company and residential broadband provider is poised to take a controlling stake in NBC's broadcast network, dozens of cable channels, 27 local television stations, a movie studio, and a long list of other holdings. If this deal goes through as proposed, Comcast would control huge swaths of the cable, Internet, and content industries. It would be the first of a new generation of media behemoths, with more sure to follow."

Why the Comcast-NBCU Acquisition is Possible: A Glance at Recent History
Kamilla Kovacs reports for Media Access Project: "Many analysts have identified the proposed acquisition between Comcast and NBC Universal (NBCU) as the first example of vertical integration in the communications marketplace of the Digital Age. Few have pointed out, however, that the regulatory framework that allows for such an unprecedented combination of assets is also a 21st century phenomenon. Less than a decade ago, this combination would have been against Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations – indeed, it would have been merely a business executive’s dream. What makes this acquisition attempt possible today is the drastic, systematic deregulation in media policy that has taken place over the last 20 years."

Google, Washington Post and N.Y. Times Create News Tool
Howard Kurtz writes for the Washington Post: "Take the engineering mystique of Google, add the prestige of The Washington Post and New York Times, throw in the spice of secret meetings, and what have you got? A new online tool that, well, isn't exactly going to revolutionize journalism. But those involved in the partnership between the California software giant and two of the nation's top newspapers see it as a first step toward changing the way news is consumed online."

A Municipal Wi-Fi Model that Actually Works
Lynnette Luna reports for Urgent Communications: "While New York City's mobile broadband network garners much attention concerning its ability to serve both public safety and multiple government agencies, Oklahoma City's Wi-Fi mesh network recently passed its third anniversary and is now the world's largest mesh network, handling more than 4 terabytes of data traffic a month and serving up more than 200 applications concurrently for multiple government agencies. Launched in 2006 using Tropos equipment, Oklahoma City's mesh network—which operates in the unlicensed band — now covers 95% of the city's 620 square miles. The vision was to supply public safety with high-speed broadband service but now city departments including transit, public works and IT access the network using a slew of devices ranging from handheld devices, laptops, traffic controllers and video cameras."

Washington to Verizon Wireless: Can You Hear Us Now?
Cecilia Kang reports for the Washington Post: "The Federal Communications Commission sent a letter to Verizon Wireless Friday morning asking the company to explain why it has more than doubled its penalties for customers switching carriers. The inquiry follows pressure by lawmakers, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) who introduced a bill Thursday to curb the penalties known as early termination fees (ETFs). Last month, Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest cellphone service provider, increased its ETFs for smart phone customers to $350 from $150. The company said smart phones had become more expensive to subsidize, making it more costly when customers with discounted phones left long-term contracts early. No other wireless companies have introduced higher ETFs."

2008 Show Archive

Here's the best of our 2008 shows...


18 December 2008 - Sustainability Conference - What's next for NBAF?
On this week's show, we open with Ben Champion and Barbara Anderson who discuss the up-coming "Leading Kansas in Sustainability Conference" which will take place at K-State on January 23rd. For more information about the conference visit: http://sustainability.k-state.edu/conferences/leadingkansas/ During the second half, Dale Askey of No NBAF Kansas joins us to discuss what options exist now that it has been announced that the new lab will be coming to Kansas.

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11 December 2008 - Shepherd's Crossing
During the first half of this week's show we welcome Jan Connizzo, Executive Director of Shepherd's Crossing, to discuss the services offered and how listener's can support their mission to fight poverty in Manhattan. During the second half, we hear two recent clips from CounterSpin. In the first clip we hear an analysis of why the media supports Obama's cabinet appointments. In the second we learn some important information about the Fairness Doctrine.

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4 December 2008 - Manhattan Boys and Girls Club; UDHR at 60 and the work of Amnesty International
During the first half of this week's the show, Community Bridge welcomes Joyce Glasscock, Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Club of Manhattan to talk about their new building and programs. In the second half we discuss the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the work of Amnesty International with Frank St. George and Rob Dunn from the K-State Chapter.

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20 November 2008 - Economic Bailout and World AIDS Day
Community Bridge opens the show featuring Amy Goodman interviewing Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine. Klein discusses the economic crisis and efforts by the administration and congress to give enormous sums of money to people Klein refers to as "bailout profiteers" and the multi-trillion dollar crime scene that is unfolding in the last days of the Bush administration as they once again raid the US Treasury to give money to their rich friends. During the second half of the show we welcome Dusty Garner from the Regional AIDS Project to talk about the activities what will be happening around World AIDS Day on December 1.

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13 November 2008 - Fair Trade Marketplace and International Education Week
During the first half of this week's Community Bridge, we welcome Prof. Torry Dickinson and Linda Teener, Executive Director of UFM Community Learning Center to talk about fair trade and the up-coming Fair Trade Marketplace to be held next week, Nov. 18 and 19 from 10 am to 6 pm at the K-State Student Union. In the second half we explore International Education week with Prof. Barry Mitchie.

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6 November 2008 - Election Wrap-up
As a result of the election, the political landscape has changed in the US, or has it? This week Community Bridge will take an objective look at this week's election results and discusses what the future may bring. Join our guests, Prof. Joseph Aistrup from K- State's Political Science Department, who will give an analysis for both national and state results, along with community activist Jan Garton and K-State Young Democrat Bryan Cox for a discussion of what it all means.

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23 October 2008 - An Interview with Ray McGovern

This week Community Bridge welcomes Ray McGovern as our guest. McGovern served as a CIA officer for 27 years under seven presidents and nine CIA directors. For the past seven years McGovern has been a prominent and outspoken commentator on intelligence-related issues, and a very vocal critic of President George W. Bush's use of government intelligence to justify the Iraq War.

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CCHW 2008 - Muslims in the Media

The A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications' Media Professional Day was held as part of the 2008 CCHW and featured Mahnaz Shabbir presenting "Muslims in the Media," - an analysis of of the stereotypes used by mainstream media to depict Muslims and the Islamic faith. This lecture provides basic information on Islam; challenges the stereotypes the media uses; and, challenges the listener use critical thinking when decoding the messages the media transmits.
Mahnaz Shabbir is president of Shabbir Advisors. Ms. Mahnaz was awarded the Kansas City Press Club Journalist of the Year for 2003 and received another Journalism award in 2005. In March 2004, she received the YWCA award for the Gold Honoree in the category of Racial Justice at their annual luncheon banquet. In November 2005, Shabbir received a special recognition award from the Crescent Peace Society for her contributions in community service. On September 11, 2006, Shabbir received the Human Rights award from Church Women United.

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2 October 2008 - Domestic Violence Awareness Month
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Community Bridge opens its October line-up with Tychelle Jones from the Domestic Violence Task Force to discuss and educate on this issue during the first half of the show. In the second half we welcome Representative Sydney Carlin, who will discuss why she is running for office, her accomplishments during her past six years of service, and what are some of the issues facing the Kansas Legislature this session.

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18 September 2008 - Community Cultural Harmony Week
Community Cultural Harmony celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Doug Benson, Candi Hironaka, and founder, Barbara Baker, discuss its impact on the K-State and Manhattan communities as they review this year's calendar of events.

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11 September 2008 - A discussion with Stan Cox about the effects of 9-11

On the seventh anniversary of the events of 9-11 Community Bridge welcomes back to the show Stan Cox for a discussion of how this event has affected civil liberties and the rule of law in the post-9-11 era. We have posted several articles on our blog that related to the topics Cox discusses. We recommend these articles to our listeners as background to the topic of this show. During the second half of the show, we tune into CounterSpin for the September 8th show and a discussion of the police-state like actions taken against the press and protesters at the Republican National Convention.


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4 September 2008 - An Interview with Charles McVey
Community Bridge welcomes Kansas singer/songwriter Charles McVey for a discussion of his music. McVey's music reflects a heavy '80s new wave influence, mixed with subtleties of the piano and soothing harmonies. McVey has added himself to the growing ranks of "out" musicians and makes no apologies for who he is. His approach is non-confrontational and open which allows his music to transcend gender and sexual identity.


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21 August 2008 - Water Policy for Kansas
Community Bridge welcomes representatives from the Manhattan/Riley County League of Women Voters who discuss the recent study on water policy for Kansas conducted by the state organization. In an age of changing climate and more demand for water from agri-business and ethanol production, will Kansas have water to drink in the future? Karen Mayse and Hilary Esry discuss what the League has discovered and what they are proposing as state water policy for the future.
Please see the links to water, water policy and its history in Kansas in the postings under "Commentaries, Articles, Resources."

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14 August 2008 - Opposition to NBAF
Since our 17 July show about the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), opposition about locating the facility in Manhattan has increased as more area citizens have become informed about the pathogens which will be studied at the location. Community Bridge welcomes Stephen Anderson, Debbie Nuss and Paul Irvine to discuss the opposition's take on the issue of locating the NBAF in Kansas. For more information, visit their blog at: http://nonbaf.wordpress.com In the final 15 minutes of the show we connect with Carol Barta, chair of the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice who briefly discusses the panel on energy which will take place Monday at 7:00 pm at the Public Library Auditorium.

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7 August 2008 - Poverty in the Little Apple
This week Community Bridge welcomes Mandy Chapman Semple, Executive Director of the Manhattan Emergency Shelter as we take a look at reality of poverty in Manhattan. The 2000 census placed 24% of Manhattanites living in poverty. Most dismiss this figure as "caused by the student population," but as Mandy will discuss, poverty in Manhattan is very real and not limited to "a bunch of college kids throwing off the statistics."

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31 July 2008 - The Child Care Crisis
This week, Community Bridge looks at the growing child care crisis in Manhattan and the surrounding community. Affordable, quality child care is becoming harder and harder to find, with many programs having waiting list of hundreds of children. Join City Commissioner Bruce Snead, Susie Kufahl, assistant administrator of the Riley County Health Department, and Jayme Morris-Hardeman, Executive Director of Sunflower CASA, in a discussion of the topic, the work the area Child Care Task Force has conducted and what the future holds for child care.

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17 July 2008 - NBAF in Manhattan

The proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), which K-State and Manhattan are under among the final five possible locations under consideration for this new facility, is the topic of this edition of Community Bridge. Opening the show is Ron Trewyn, Vice President for Research and Jerry Jaax, Associate Vice President for Research Compliance at K-State. They give an overview of the facility and respond to questions concerning safety issues at the facility. Responding to their presentation will be Sylvia Beeman.
The proposed facility will occupy 48 acres. The estimated construction cost is $563 million with an annual payroll of $27 million. Additional infrastructure requirements include new power lines and a sewage treatment plant.
To read an op-ed by Paul Irvine, a contributing writer to the Manhattan Mercury, opposing the placement of the NBAF in Manhattan, click here.

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10 July 2008 - A conversation with Kevin Willmott
This week Community Bridge engages Kevin Willmott, assistant professor in the Film Studies Department of Kansas University about his recently released film, Bunker Hill, in a discussion of what democracy means in the post 9-11 United States.
Willmott's Bunker Hill looks into the American psyche in the post 9-11 era. A former Wall Street executive comes to Bunker Hill, KS, to reconnect with his ex-wife and daughters. Soon after he arrives, all power is lost as well as communication with the outside world. At a lost to explain what happen, militant forces coalesce to protect the citizens from an unseen enemy. As unfounded fears run wild, torture, illegal searches and murder becomes become part of the new reality. Visit the film's website at: http://www.bunkerhillthemovie.com/

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26 June 2008 - Flint Hills Pride/MSCDR Petition Ordinances

During the first half of the show members of Manhattan's LGBT community talk about the Pride events scheduled for the weekend. During the second half, Debbie Nuss and Kathy Dzewaltowski from Manhattan Citizens for Sustainable Downtown Redevelopment discuss the organization, discoveries made during their recent law suit against the city and their efforts at petition ordinances designed to bring citizen control back to the redevelopment project.

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19 June 2008 - Voter ID Laws

This week Community Bridge takes up the topic of the Republican-led efforts to pass laws that require proof of identity in order to vote. Republicans leaders claim that the laws are needed because voter fraud is a reality. Numerous studies by Secretaries of State and independent researchers show that voter fraud is a myth. Recently the US Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law, which lead to 12 Roman Catholic nuns, all of whom were registered voters, being barred from voting in the Indiana presidential primary. If voter fraud is a myth, why are the Republicans pushing for this legislation and why should you be concerned about it? Tune in to find out. Guests included Diane Kuhn, President of the Kansas League of Women Voters, and Debbie Nuss, local community activist and League member. Together they will discuss what happens when voter ID laws are passed.

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5 June 2008 - Community WiFi
Community wireless networks are being built using WiFi, or "Wireless Fidelity", a standard technology that provides wireless Internet connection using unlicensed spectrum. These networks are being built by a variety of organizations including volunteer cooperatives, non-profit organizations, local governments, business development associations and educational institutions — many in partnership with each other. The networks are helping to deliver Internet access to residential neighborhoods, downtown business districts, low income and transitional housing projects, city parks and Native American Tribal reservations. Our guests, Joshua Montgonery, founding member for the Lawrence Freenet Project, and Prof. David MacFarland, recently retired professor of journalism and mass communications here at K-State, discuss community WiFi.

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29 May 2008 - Energy Policy
Community Bridge welcomes back Chris Cardinal of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy for this week's show. We will discuss GPACE's take on the 2008 legislative session, what the future holds for clean energy, a comprehensive energy plan for the state, net metering, and more.
Due to a technical problem we join this show already in progress.
As a special feature, this summer we will take a tour of syndicated progressive talk shows which are available on the Internet. This week we will listen to a segment from New Internationalist Radio's "Pathways to Peace," featuring Kathy Black - a convener of the US Labor Against the War, who explains how military intelligence, fundamentalist religion, education, and the American psyche have helped build and maintain US war-mongering.

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15 May 2008 - The ACLU

On this week's Community Bridge we welcome Dan Winter, Executive Director, The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri.
In an age where fear has dominated national and international politics, the ACLU has stood against the Bush administration's efforts to curtail the rights and freedoms granted by the US Constitution to each person based on their humanity, fought efforts to allow domestic spying on US citizens and challenged the immorality of torture, secret tribunals, and extraditions. As such, they have been vilified by the Radical Right as unpatriotic, when in fact they are fighting to defend the very principles on which our nation was founded.
Mr Winter discusses the ACLU, its goals and projects. Topics include the Patriot Act, LGBT rights, reproductive rights and sex education, as well as other topics.


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1 May 2008 - The Rising Cost of Food

This week we take a local look at the rising cost of food. We begin with a short piece from New Internationalist Radio featuring Rachel Smolker from the Global Justice Ecology Project and author of a report called The Real Cost of Agrofuels: Food, Forest and the Climate. She gives a global assessment of the impact of pouring the world’s grain supplies into our cars’ gas tanks. Then we will tune in locally with Prof. Rhonda Jhanke, sustainable agriculture expert at K-State and author of a new book: Farming in the Dark: A Discussion about the Future of Sustainable Agriculture. Dr. Jhanke discusses the impact of agrofuels on Kansas farmland and the role subsidies play in support corporate agriculture.

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17 April 2008 - The work of the Wheels of Justice Campaign

During the first half of the show Mariya Vaughan and Shireen Roshanravan from K-State's Ordinary Women discuss the organization and the annual "Take Back the Night" march and rally. The second half features a recorded interview with Kathy Kelley and Nora Barrows-Friedman from the Wheels of Justice campaign discussing the war in Iraq and the situation in the Palestine-Israel conflict.

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27 March 2008 - The War in Iraq at Year Five

This week's show opens with Chad Fitzloff from the K-State French Club discussing the up-coming French Film Festival. Then Prof. John Exdell (philosophy) and Prof. Robert Schaeffer (sociology) will explore the impact five years of War in Iraq, has had on our nation and what the price tag - $522 billion with another $70 billion allocated for 2008 on the war has meant to our economy. Every $1 billion spent by the government on education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than when that same amount is sent to Iraq. Is George Bush bankrupting our nation?

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13 March 2008 - Audubon of Kansas

David Westfall of K-State ONE opens the show with a discussion about their rally on March 25th. Then, Ron Klataske, Executive Director of Audubon of Kansas joins host Christopher Renner to discuss Audubon's activities and work for the environment. Topics include the reintroduction program of black-footed ferrets; bird populations and birding; impact of ethanol on the prairies and habitat; and, Audubon's efforts at establishing biding and nature trails in Kansas.

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28 February 2008 - Manhattan's Jewish Community

We open the show with a brief interview with Elise Young, Bread for the World’s Mid-Atlantic and Central campus organizer. Then we will learn about the history and activities of the Manhattan Jewish Congregation with guests Janis Clare Galitzer and Charlotte Edelman.

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21 February 2008 - The Kansas Health Policy Authority

Community Bridge looks at the Kansas Health Policy Authority with Barbara Langner, KHPA Director of Policy, along with Jeff Levine, who serves on KHPA's Purchaser Advisory Council, and other members of the KHPA structure, who will discuss the new agency and its role in providing health care to all Kansans.

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31 January 2008 - An discussion with Chris Hedges

Chris Hedge’s will discuss his 2007 book: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, published by Free Press.
Hedges is a Nation Institute Senior Fellow and has spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was part of The New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism and received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. His next book, Collateral Damage, co-authored with Laila Al-Arian and published by Nation Books, came out in June 2008.


MP3 File