U.S. Citizens Arrested in #Bahrain during Peaceful Protest @huwaidaarraf & @radhikasainath in Gov Custody @WitnessBahrain

American Citizens Arrested in Bahrain during Peaceful Protest Huwaida Arraf & Radhika Sainath in Police Custody
 
For immediate release
 
Febraury 11, 2011
 
(Manama) – US Citizens Huwaida Arraf and Radhika Sainath were arrested by Bahraini security forces in Manama on Saturday during a peaceful protest in near the Standard Chartered Bank downtown.  Protesters had marched into the city center to reestablish a presence of nonviolent, peaceful protest leading up to the 1-year anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising in Bahrain.
 
Huwaida and Radhika were in Bahrain as part of an international solidarity effort aimed at providing an international civilian presence to report and monitor the situation on the ground.  Leading up to February 14, Bahraini authorities had prevented journalists, human rights observers and other internationals from entering the country, leading many to fear a brutal crackdown.  The two women are part of the Witness Bahrain initiative ( http://www.witnessbahrain.org ), which arrived in Bahrain in response to a call by Bahraini democracy activists for international observers.
 
Just yesterday, top US human rights envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, called on the Bahraini authorities to respect the rights of Bahrainis to peaceful protest and to refrain from using excessive force.  Huwaida was dragged away by numerous security forces after sitting on the ground, and it is widely reported that detainees have suffered physical abuse while on the way to and at police stations.
 
Both women were part of a peaceful protest marching near the Pearl Roundabout – site of last year’s peaceful round-the-clock protest in Bahrain, modeled after Egypt’s Tahrir Square – when they were attacked.  Both are human rights lawyers, and both have experience as human rights activists in Palestine.  Additionally, both were part of the National Lawyer’s Guild delegation to Gaza following Operation Cast Lead to investigate possible war crimes and illegal use of American weaponry on a civilian population.
 
For more information:
 
adamsop at gmail.com 
http://www.witnessbahrain.org

This Birth Control Funding Debate Would be Irrelevant with Single Payer

From today's Democracy Now -- it took them a while, but a central point was finally made, one that should help contribute to exposing the political and media system for what it is: 
AMY GOODMAN: Isn’t the issue ... who pays? Who can afford to pay for it, and who can’t afford? So, women who are better off can afford to get it outside, even if their health insurance doesn’t pay, but poorer women will just not have access to birth control.

MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY: Right. But we have this already in our employer system with other parts of healthcare. Many employers don’t even offer dental coverage or eye coverage, and yet we’re not dragging them, you know, before the trial of the American public and saying that they are committing a war on people with bad vision. I mean, this is such hyperbole. And most of the people who want to enforce this rule would prefer a single-payer system of healthcare anyway, where you’re not actually forcing employers to violate their conscience in buying this.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’re saying a single-payer system would solve the problem.

MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY: Well, I’m saying it would solve this particular problem of conscience, as it has in Europe. The bishops don’t—they do not like that the government subsidizes abortion or contraception, but they are not in full mode of fury, because they are not being asked to formally cooperate with things they view as sinful. And the Church will not cooperate with this and will resort to civil disobedience to avoid it. [emphasis added]

AMY GOODMAN: Loretta Ross, final comment on the issue of why birth control over dental care, eye care? Those stuff is optional.

LORETTA ROSS: Well, first of all, I do agree with Michael that we should have had a single-payer system. ...

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, and I thank you all for being with us, Michael Dougherty of Business Insider and American Conservative, Jon O’Brien with Catholics for Choice, and Loretta Ross with SisterSong Reproductive Justice Collective in Atlanta, Georgia. 

This seems to in effect be a special case of the problem of having a mandate to buy health insurance. 

Also, single payer offers a similar solution on other issues, for example, whether same-gender couples should have heath insurance coverage under each other's plans. 

But the partisan hacks would rather focus on this "issue" -- that affects a tiny number of people -- rather than actually fixing actual problems.

As such, they defame religious freedom in a real way: By obscuring the meaning of what Jesus Christ was saying. See my: "Religion and Politics: The Media's One-Dimensional View." 

Rockpile "No One Knows" vs Leonard Cohen "Everybody Knows" #GreatSongDebates

In light of current events, the words could better be changed to:

In the tall building
sit the head of all nations
Worthy men from Spain and Siam
All day discussions with the Russians
But they still went ahead
and vetoed the plan
Now up jumped the U.S. representative
She's the one with the steeled eyes
F-15 put her in that condition
Flyin' back from a war keepin' mission

And so it goes and so it goes
And so it goes and so it goes
But where it’s going, no one knows.

Meanwhile Leonard Cohen argues, that, actually "Everybody Knows."

Syria and Libya and..... so very much noise and not a peep about the Military Staff Committee, the possible solution

... because none of the "powers" want solutions -- and I'm not sure how much of civil society does either, to be honest....

'The Military Staff Committee (MSC) is the only subsidiary body specifically named in the UN Charter. Eric Grove has called it "a sterile monument to the faded hopes of the founders of the UN", because it is a body that meets every 14 days, mandated to achieve nothing. Giving it a mandate threatens to erupt Cold War indigestion, eliminating it would require Charter reform, so the bi-weekly ritual continues for the sake of form, facilitated by one staff based on the upper floors of the UN building in New York.'

In-Office and Online Internships Available at the Institute for Public Accuracy

Noam Chomsky: "IPA has been regularly providing the media with informed and expert commentary on the crucial events of the day, compensating for the inevitable distortion and significant omissions that trace to reliance on official sources and on a narrow spectrum of opinion, among other factors. Apart from its constructive contributions to media comprehensiveness and accuracy, for individuals who are seeking a better understanding of evolving world events IPA has been an incomparable source of critically important news that had escaped notice or received inadequate or misleading coverage, as well as acute analysis that is hard to find or completely missing in the mainstream. Speaking personally, I have found it invaluable as a source of insight and information, and for leads to pursue that I would otherwise have missed."

The Institute for Public Accuracy -- http://accuracy.org -- is a non-profit organization that increases the reach and capacity of progressive and grassroots organizations (at no cost to them) to address public policy by getting them and their ideas into the mainstream media. IPA gains media access for those whose voices are commonly excluded or drowned out by government or corporate-backed institutions. As a national consortium of independent public-policy researchers, analysts and activists, we widen media exposure for progressive perspectives on many issues including the environment, human rights, foreign policy, and economic justice. 

The typical internship itself involves real hands on-work. Interns work directly with our staff and the experts whom we publicize. Through that interaction they gain valuable insight into how to work with the media and think more critically about the mainstream press. Interns are responsible for researching and compiling our news releases, fielding inquiries from working journalists, publishing our news releases, posting blogs and interviews from our "experts," managing our webpage and building our social media presence.

Our office is located in the National Press Building in the heart of downtown D.C., right next to Metro Center, but coming in might not always be required; we welcome applications from outside the D.C. area. 

We're looking for an intern to be available as soon as possible. Our schedule is flexible, and we can accommodate both full and part-time interns. We're looking for students with an interest in politics who are capable of thinking critically about the media and who can work well under deadlines. 

Responsibilities include:

* Following news to help put out editorial material
* Tracking down experts for news releases and helping put releases together
* Updating IPA's web page
* Building up IPA's online presence including twitter, facebook and a new IPA blog
* Structural improvements to IPA's web presence, such as building an online Daybook
* Using databases to add journalists contacts to IPA's email lists
* Attending and covering events at the National Press Club
* Regularly done for college credit; a modest stipend may be available. 
Contact: Communications Director Sam Husseini at samhusseini at gmail.com, or call him at 202-347-0020.

Etta James "At Last" vs Peggy Lee "Is That All There Is?" #GreatSongDebate

Many have rightly given tribute to Etta James upon her death. I'd much rather associate "At Last" with her directly or with a wonderful scene on Boston Legal when, as I recall, Alan Shore and Tara Wilson finally shack up in a motel with the neon lights strunning into their room than the inauguration abomination. 

Just recently my dear friend Emily introduced me to more of the work of Peggy Lee, and especially "Is That All There Is?" -- which offers an appropriate rebuttal to Etta Lee's classic. Peggy Lee herself died exactly ten years ago yesterday.   

Note: I'd wrongly called Etta James Etta Lee initially, appologies; thanks Steve.

Ron Paul References the Golden Rule and Martin Luther King. We Must Stop This Madman and Deride His Followers

From last night's Republican debate. Transcript and video.

RON PAUL: My — my — my point is, if another country does to us what we do others, we’re not going to like it very much. So I would say that maybe we ought to consider a golden rule in — in foreign policy. Don’t do to other nations…
(BOOING)
… what we don’t want to have them do to us. So we — we endlessly bomb — we endlessly these countries and then we wonder — wonder why they get upset with us? And — and yet it — it continues on and on. I mean, this — this idea…
BAIER: That’s time.
PAUL: This idea that we can’t debate foreign policy, then all we have to do is start another war? I mean, it’s — it’s warmongering. They’re building up for another war against Iran, and people can’t wait to get in another war. This country doesn’t need another war. We need to quit the ones we’re in. We need to save the money and bring our troops home.

...

 

PAUL: Yes. Definitely. There is a disparity. It’s not that it is my opinion, it is very clear. Blacks and minorities who are involved with drugs, are arrested disproportionately. They are tried and imprisoned disproportionately. They suffer the consequence of the death penalty disproportionately. Rich white people don’t get the death penalty very often.
And most of these are victimless crimes. Sometimes people can use drugs and arrested three times and never committed a violent act and they can go to prison for life. And yet we see times just recently we heard where actually murders get out of prison in shorter periods of time. So I think it’s way — way disproportionate.
I don’t think we can do a whole lot about it. I think there’s discrimination in the system, but you have to address the drug war. You know, the drug war is — is very violent on our borders. We have the immigration problem, and I’m all for having, you know, tight immigration policies, but we can’t ignore the border without looking at the drug war.
In the last five years, 47,500 people died in the drug war down there. This is a major thing going on. And it unfairly hits the minorities. This is one thing I am quite sure that Martin Luther King would be in agreement with me on this. As a matter of fact, Martin Luther King he would be in agreement with me on the wars, as well, because he was a strong opponent to the Vietnam War.
So I — I — I would say, yes, the judicial system is probably one of the worst places where — where prejudice and — and discrimination still exists in this country.