On the Anniversary of Mohamed Bouaziz's Sacrifice #sidibouzid

Harry Belafonte said back in 2004 on Democracy Now: "Somebody, in trying to get a better price for good, is going to have to say that we just can’t keep running after the fast food market. Somebody is going to have to make a sacrifice. Somebody is going to have to put their body in front of the machine. Somebody is going to have to die. It’s the way things are. It’s the way things have been."

Those words stuck with me. 

There's an irony. People die everyday, sometimes out of self-sacrifice. But we don't know about it. 

When Mohamed Bouaziz incinerated himself a year ago today, he set off a flame felt far and wide. 

But often, people self-sacrifice and no one seems to notice. Like in November 2006 Malachi Ritscher immolated himself in Chicago against the Iraq war. And virtually no one seemed to notice. 

Perhaps people are getting killed all the time and we just need to see it. 

A Plastic Christmas Tree at Freedom Plaza: The point of the entire oil and plastics industries of the last century...

Ariel Zevon building great tree. Photo by Bill Moyer. Rumor is it blew away as beautiful things sometimes do. 

‎"Plastic tress" used to be awful, now they're beautiful. I especially liked how the plastic bags were stranded together like a woman's hair -- and the little things put into the plastic bottles. Before it arose, with the strands on the ground, it rather looked like a compass rose. Perhaps this tree was the ultimate point of the oil and plastics industries of the last 100 years, so that artists could do something poets thought only God could. 

Muse "Resistance" vs South Park "La Resistance" #GreatSongDebates

A silly yet meaningful post for a coughy morning... It's of course comical, but South Park seems gutsier than Muse....
Muse's Defensive "Resistance"
(often prefixed with an ad):

...Love is our resistance / They'll keep us apart and they won't to stop breaking us down
Hold me / Our lips must always be sealed

The night has reached its end / We can't pretend
We must run / We must run / It's time to run
Take us away from here / Protect us from further harm

South Park's Offensive "La Resistance"

...They may cut your dick in half / And serve it to a pig 
And though it hurts, you'll laugh / And dance a dickless jig 
But that's the way it goes / In war you're shat upon 
Though we die ... La Resistance lives on!

similarly...
The Mole's Reprise

...Now the lights, she fade / And darkness settles in
But I will find strength... I will find pride within... Because although I die...
Our freedom will be won... Though I die, La Resistance lives on

PS: I remain convinced that audio of Muse's "Uprising" with visuals of the Egyptian uprising(s) would still be worth some enterprising talented person's time, pulling together as a great vid. 

Asking Tom Ridge About the MEK Gets an Angry Response

Today I went to a news conference on the MEK (which the State Dept. lists as a terrorist group) put on by the Institute for Democratic Strategies (which doesn't seem to have a webpage) at the National Press Club.

Among the speakers:

Ed Rendell, Former Governor of Pennsylvania
Tom Ridge, Former Governor of Pennsylvania
Col. Wes Martin (Ret.), Former Commander of Camp Ashraf
Michael Mukasey, Former Attorney General
Ramesh Sepehrrad

They have been criticized for their support of the MEK by Glenn Greenwald and others, see: "Leading Conservatives Openly Support a Terrorist Group."

See also: "Words of Praise for an Iranian Exile Group Described as a Cult by Its Critics" and "Mujahideen-e Khalq: Former U.S. Officials Make Millions Advocating for Terrorist Organization."

I asked Ridge about any financial arrangement between him or the other speakers and the MEK. He reacted with anger, questioning my motives and my affiliations. Rendell said in much calmer tone that no one was getting paid for today's event but that people there had been paid for other speeches at other events. One of the speakers indicated that Ridge had personally paid for today's event. Ridge in his remarks derided the notion that money would ever influence men of the stature of those speaking at the event. I asked if he was arguing that there was no problem of money influencing politics. Rendell cut that off. I asked if there were any other relevant financial ties besides speaking fees. Mukasey said "hell no."

I'd really wanted to ask another question about potential hypocrisy, given that Americans have been prosecuted under the law for supporting humanitarian organizations which the government claimed were linked to terrorists, which I think is a much more interesting issue, but they would not come back to me. See David Cole in the New York Times: 

I believe Mr. Mukasey and his compatriots had every right to say what they did. Indeed, I argued just that in the Supreme Court, on behalf of the Los Angeles-based Humanitarian Law Project, which fought for more than a decade in American courts for its right to teach the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey how to bring human rights claims before the United Nations, and to assist them in peace overtures to the Turkish government.

But in June, the Supreme Court ruled against us, stating that all such speech could be prohibited, because it might indirectly support the group’s terrorist activity. Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that a terrorist group might use human rights advocacy training to file harassing claims, that it might use peacemaking assistance as a cover while re-arming itself, and that such speech could contribute to the group’s “legitimacy,” and thus increase its ability to obtain support elsewhere that could be turned to terrorist ends. Under the court’s decision, former President Jimmy Carter’s election monitoring team could be prosecuted for meeting with and advising Hezbollah during the 2009 Lebanese elections.

At least two people in the audience were called upon for "questions" after me who were somehow affiliated with the event and who gave statements responding to or somehow deriding my question about funding.

CNN and NBC were there, but said they could not share video with me. The organizers of the event said they would share a transcript and video with me. I will post if/when they do or if I find another way to get that. Note to self: Get handy audio and video equipment.

Special thanks to Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy.

Round up of coverage of suspension

Three pieces today on the lifting of the suspension:

Betsy Rothstein in Media Bistro "He’s BAAACK! NPC Ethics Committee Clears Suspended Member After Last Week’s Drama"

Ben Smith in Politico "National Press Club withdraws suspension"

Erik Wemple in the Washington Post "National Press Club ‘lifts’ suspension on ‘boisterous’ member"

And this from Peter Hart at FAIR: "Sam Husseini, David Ignatius: Who's the 'Real' Journalist?"

Some early pieces I haven't noted early on were critical in getting the story out: Democracy Now headline "National Press Club Suspends Journalist After Questioning of Saudi Prince" and Zaid Jilani from Thinkprogress.org "National Press Club Reverses Suspension Of Journalist Who Aggressively Questioned Saudi Royal"

Should also make particular note of these piece from libertarian quarters:
Brian Doherty in Reason.com "Don't Let's Discuss the Legitimacy of the Saudi Government, MMkay?"

John Glaser on Antiwar.com "Memo: Proper Journalists Ought to be Subservient to Power"

Thanks to Commondreams, Truthout, The Real News and others for posting my initial article.

Ethics Committee Rescinds National Press Club Suspension

I've been informed by the chair of the Ethics Committee that my suspension at the National Press Club has been lifted. I welcome this decision and aim to ask ever tougher and sharper questions. I hope others will as well. I had asked the Saudi ambassador about the legitimacy of his regime, but if tough questions are not welcome at the Press Club, or at other media institutions, then their legitimacy is also undermined. I particularly welcome this decision as it allows me to attend the debate for the Press Club presidency this evening. It's a rare contested election -- with the Let's Press Ahead slate having issued a strong statement on my behalf. I hope it will mark a meaningful step forward.

See:
"An Open Letter to the Ethics Committee of the National Press Club"

"Journalist Questions Legitimacy of Saudi Regime, Is Suspended from National Press Club"

Some notable writings on my suspension from the Press Club

In addition to the pieces I've already cited, there are several I should note:

Pepe Escobar writes in The Asia Times: "Were this to happen in the Middle East, Husseini would have been duly kidnapped by Saudi intel, tortured and snuffed out. ... Was this a one-off? Obviously not. Flashback to January 2009, at the same National Press Club, during a news conference by then-Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. When Livni was asked a tough question - once again by Husseini - the mike was cut..."

Press Club member Wayne Madsen writes: "the U.S. defense and intelligence contractor, Harris Corporation, has provided, gratis, goods and services to the National Press Club. Harris has contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information to provide television studios throughout the strict-censorship nation. More alarming is the fact that Harris has provided services to Saudi intelligence, once headed by Turki." Madsen has been dismissed by some as a conspiracy theorist. I have not examined his writing well enough to form an opinion, but I think he's probably more credible than most of the media that insisted Iraq had WMDs. He's also one of the nicest people around the Press Club. In this case, just doing some elementary searching, he seems to be on to something: "National Press Club Recognizes Harris Corporation with Major Award" and "Harris Corporation Continues to Win Saudi Television Contracts for its Integrated High-Definition Broadcast Technology."

My old friend Greg Tucker-Kellogg, now a professor of biochemistry in Singapore, writes: "Sam Husseini and I went to college together back in the 1980s. I tried to teach him to play guitar, he tried to get me to read Chomsky. Sam grew up in New York. When Sam and his father became naturalized US citizens during Sam’s junior year, Osama Farid Husseini briefly became Samuel Frank Hennessy; we bought him a bottle of liquor and a book of Irish pub jokes so he could learn the heritage of his temporarily adopted surname. After graduation, Sam, who majored in Applied Mathematics (Computer Science) worked at Moody’s, which he disliked, but rather than taking a job offer with JP Morgan gave up his corporate career for independent journalism. ..."

The rabidly pro-Israeli group CAMERA was the only one from those quarters that made note of the affair to my knowledge. "Reporter Asks a Good Question, Gets Suspended from National Press Club." It is remarkable that all the pro-war noise makers who have spent much of the last ten years proclaiming their commitment to democracy in the Mideast have now vanished. This case is but a small illustration of it.

"Richard Grossman 1943-2011" -- "Execute the Corporations" #ows

I feel sick about this. Had been wanting to have Richard on a news release since the beginning of the occupy movement, but "something keeps coming up". He was a visionary who never lost his edge, he was critical of the establishment as well as of reformers he saw as offering band-aid solutions. Must read from Russell Mokhiber -- "Richard Grossman 1943-2011":

Last month, Richard Grossman sent me an e-mail.

He wanted to let me know of legislation he helped draft that would criminalize the corporate form.

It was classic Richard Grossman.

“If people want to go into business, fine,” Grossman said. “But this law would strip away 500 years of constitutional protections and privileges. No more limited liability for shareholders. No more perpetual life. No more constitutional protections. ... When others inspired by him had launched campaigns to ban corporate personhood, he moved on.