Horror

I don't think I'm over my shock at today's news of the tsunami that hit South Asia. The damage and loss is unfathomable, but even more difficult is understanding what it means for 14,000 people to be erased so quickly. As usual, it will be the poor who suffer most; I wonder what organization I could raise funds for in the next few days.

One suggestion.

We were right

Great briefing on C-SPAN, with David Lytel of Redefeat Bush reminding the press of the many occassions on which the lunacy of the opposition left has turned out to be the truth (no WMDs, no Saddam-al Q connection, higher than advertised costs of war, Mission NOT Accomplished, etc.).

"Corporate news media" is a brilliant phrase, by the way. Hopefully "Corporate" will scare them as much as "Liberal" does.

"People of conscience" don't use the media (Shahid Buttar). Nice.

A reason for protest 1/20? "Five words: Bush is illegitimate and corrupt" (Buttar).

"There is no legitimate reason that that man should be any part of our federal government" (Buttar, on Rumsfeld).

Lytel is saying that the media is too focused on finding one message, and that activists don't live in that world.

Freepers were on next. Thousand dollar suits, all of them. Just complaining about ANSWER's having submitted permit requests first. Ha.

I'll link to it all if I ever find it.

Wag the Dog

Atrios has a good model for the propagation of crazywing talking points into the mainstream. While that may answer the first question posed by Kevin Drum over at Washington Monthly, it hardly answers the second - how do we do the same for our issues? How do we take more control over media perceptions of what Americans care about?

I was just watching CNN, and the topic was Christmas. But the show was not the sort of feel-good holiday piece one expects this time of year, but instead a heated debate about whether the holiday is in danger due to political correctness. It's a wonderful construction, this danger in which Christmas supposedly finds itself. One former mayor of Boston and ambassador to the Vatican spent the time decrying the crazed seculars represented by his counterpart, who merely suggested that there are a growing number of non-christians in America who, just maybe, might feel off-put by christmas in public schools, it being a Christian holiday. The host just asked why Christmas, in the spirit of Christ, can't just be shared by everyone. The ex-ambassador reacted with disbelief at the idea that anyone could be intimidated by millions upon millions of Christians. The poll question was, "Is it time to take back Chrismas?" (I wonder from whom CNN feels it must be taken back, and whether they actually believe anyone so concerned about Christmas' perilous position is watching their network.) Where does such craziness come from? A Bill O'Reilly tirade.

The real issue here may not be how we do this ourselves, but if we can keep this from happening so regularly. It's the same thing that happened with the swift boat adds. There's something broken here, where the ostensibly balanced professional journalists take up the batshit-crazy rants of the right. Roger Ailes is on C-SPAN talking about how CNN and the other news channels are all copying Fox News because it's so popular. I think he's right (whoa, did I just type that?) but I think the solution sought by CNN is pretty dumb, and is the same wrong direction taken by centrist and left politicians in that arena. I don't watch as much CNN anymore because it's gone just as nuts as Fox, but it doesn't even know it's become such a tool. What is conscious on Fox's part is weakness on CNN's, and willful ignorance of its complicity in what's wrong with America is worse than the other's intentional propagandizing. So you've lost me. To boot, right-wingers won't ever switch, because they know Fox to be the legitimate winger network. You can't copy Fox, and you can't copy the GOP; there is no beating the brand.

Finally

Some good news - the BBC is reporting that the Sudan has suspended military operations in Darfur. No thanks to the American media establishment, for whom the genocide didn't seem to rank highly in newsworthiness among such stories as the Scott Peterson trial.

Seriously, something is wrong with whatever determines what gets on the news when the death of one pregnant white woman gets one hundred times more coverage than the rape, murder, and brutal terrorization of thousands.

India

Some friends and I got together a little demonstration outside the Indian Embassy last tuesday.

We were there to ask the staff to forward our letter to their PM, which requests an assurance that he and his government will support generic drug manufacturing.

India is in the middle of trade talks with the US which jeopardize access to AIDS treatment for thousands of the infected poor. India, the leading generic manufacturer, is being asked by the US to enact stringent intellectual property laws that would end the production and sale of these lifesaving drugs at affordable rates. We're talking about drugs that can be produced and sold for 20 cents a day jumping back up to thousands of dollars per year, well outside the ability of most people in the world to pay - over 1 billion people now live on less than 1 dollar per day. The rise in cost is not due to cheap indian labor alone, but more significantly because of large premiums charged by western pharmaceutical companies to support their massive advertising budgets. From Public Citizen:

The drug industry’s top priority increasingly is advertising and marketing, more than R&D. Increases in drug industry advertising budgets have averaged almost 40 percent a year since the government relaxed rules on direct-to-consumer advertising in 1997. Moreover, the Fortune 500 drug companies dedicated 30 percent of their revenues to marketing and administration in the year 2000, and just 12 percent to R&D (emphasis mine).


PhaRMA, the lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, have long been advocating the use of US trade policy to protect their clients' intellectual property over the human rights of poor people to receive treatment for AIDS and other diseases. Their successes have been startling, but not complete - after they enticed the Clinton Administration to sue South Africa to stop its use of generics, AIDS activists protesting at Al Gore events shamed the administration so thoroughly that the policy was reversed.

The embassy staff were easily the most polite of any target of a demonstration I've attended, and the most generous with their time. The representative who took our letter had even worked on treatment access issues before. This seems like a government genuinely concerned with the rights and welfare of its people; I wish we could say that of ours.

Ohio

Spotted an interesting piece over at Common Dreams. I'm not following the Ohio recount as much as I perhaps should be, given my interest in the matter, but its generally too depressing to think much about. Perhaps we'll learn something, but I doubt it; election fraud is something that is here to stay.

Tough Questions

I've enjoyed immensely the squirming of Rumsfeld now filling the airwaves; here's the NYT's original story. I don't think we should be at all worried that an imbedded reporter helped create the most reported question. While the vehicle armor query has been treated with much sensation, other soldiers asked things too, like why the Pentagon is relying on stop-loss so heavily, and why guard units seem to have less priority in receiving suitable equipment. Anyway, the soldier in question wouldn't have asked if he hadn't wanted to, and the cheers of other soldiers in response says something too.

At CNN, they're saying that the editor in charge has apologized for not telling readers about the planted question. Good for him, but I don't see it as a major infraction, and it's best that the question was asked no matter how it had to be done. The press has a responsibility to get the information and hold those in power accountable to the outcomes of their actions and decisions.

And I've got one thing to say to Don: support our troops.

The Crusade against Blogistan

CBS has one of their snarky attacks on all that is good in the world on their website, as mentioned by Eschaton's Atrios. Dr. Black points out the hideous, libelous falsehoods promoted in the story, which have since been changed. Oh, and again.

Anyway, to boil it down for the non-atriots, this guy Duncan Black, an economist, decides in 2002 to start a blog, Eschaton, which through a thorough whomping of Trent Lott and other stories gains quite a bit of net cred and a following of thousands. Gallons of thousands. He keeps his alter ego a closely guarded secret for employment reasons, writing under the pseudonym Atrios. In 2004, he's asked to join a bran' spankin' new organization, Media Matters, which happens to do the same kind of media watchdogging he does so well on his blog. Shortly after returning from vacation, Dr. Black attends the DNC in Beantown, where he divulges his secret identity to all interested. There's even a picture. Anyway, CBS lacks the wit to figure out this time difference, and allows a claim that Atrios was working for Media Matters "all along." I wish I had the time machine they suppose Dr. Black to have had.

Chairman Dean

I have a poster on my wall, two feet above my head right now. It's a "John Kerry, President" poster, back when he was the only John on the ticket, and on it is signed the name of Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. All I can see in it now is his handiwork, his failed bid to put Kerry in office.

Yesterday, Howard Dean paid another visit to campus, the second time he's been to GW that I can recall. I caught his endorsement of Kerry on Kogan Plaza, but I missed yesterday. Thank god, then, for C-SPAN. A transcript is available here.

If you watch it or read it, either one really, you'll see why I've been supporting Dean's ascendence to DNC chairman since I heard his name mentioned as a candidate. For those of you who've spoken with me on the subject of the Democratic Party's future after Nov. 2, you should notice a great deal of similarity in what he says to my own positions. It's rather striking, actually; I'd expected to support Dean for DNC because he was the right man to turn the party around during the presidential election. Now I find he's got the right plan for the whole party, too.

The thing is, all of what he says is just common sense, no more. But that's always been what Dean's been about. The sad thing is that in comparison to the current ingrown party leadership, he shines like a visionary that he's not. That's why we need Dean so badly - not so he can be some genius nemesis of Karl Rove, but to show us what we all can be.

Our values, our core beliefs aren't mutable. I wish it didn't take Howard to tell us that.