Friday, April 08, 2005

Tough Way to Make Sophomore!

Well isn't this a fine dust-up! Frosh Congressman Mel Martinez of FL, with a well-established rep by now for scapegoating obviously carefully hand-picked staff to keep his hems clean, has fessed up to the "play Schiavo for political gain" memo that Fox and similar non-media swine wanted to pin on Democrats. Or perhaps he's an easy stand-in given his well-established routine and reputation.

It might have been a great move actually for the Dems, were they cast from same mold as the sleazeballs who appear to nest so happily in the mainstream of the Republican party these days. Who knows - it might have been worth a gamble given that the neutered MSM that seems to be the only channel to many folks finds issues like the Jackson trial and the Pope's death all the "news" they can deal with.

We must not forget that Dan Rather went down over some carelessly checked memos despite the fact that the contents of the memos, pointing to criminal AWOL behavior by George Bush are, from the evidence, probably correct. Bush broke his contract for military service and broke the law. Memos most probably faked in that case by Republican partisans were apparently used to discredit reporters and were - amazingly - enough to distract the mainstream media and their sheep from recalling that their beloved ubermensch is actually a repeat-offending criminal. Paying attention and questioning authority are obviously endangered skills in our country these days.

The excellent site Media Matters seems to have a down-to-earth perspective on the apparently quite earth-bound Martinez:

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Already the focus of intense media scrutiny, the Senate memo promoting the potential political benefits to Republicans of the Terri Schiavo case garnered further news coverage late in the day on April 6, when freshman Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) acknowledged publicly that one of his aides had produced the document. In covering this scandal, however, the media has largely ignored Martinez's history of blaming staffers for other controversies during his Senate campaign.

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Josh at Talking Points Memo is also on to Martinez and appropriately pungent:

(April 08, 2005 -- 10:29 AM EDT)
From the Miami Herald ...

The campaign ads were bitterly divisive, even by the standards of a bare-knuckle primary, accusing the opponent of then Republican senatorial hopeful Mel Martinez of playing to the "radical homosexual lobby.''

Martinez blamed the ads on "young Turks" in his campaign and apologized to his GOP rival. Weeks later Martinez found himself again blaming a staff member after a press release from his campaign likened U.S. immigration agents to "armed thugs" for seizing Elián González from his Miami home in 2000.

Now, for the third time, Martinez finds himself under fire -- and blaming an aide for the conflagration.

Good help is so hard to find.


In a separate post, Media Matters reminds us of what should be obvious - resignation of one staff member as a sort of purgative doesn't cut it. There are a multitude of questions yet to be answered given what we have learned in the last couple years about the formerly somewhat independent media being so deftly played by highly skilled propagandists:

Following the April 6 revelation that that a senior aide to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) authored a memo that described the Terri Schiavo case as "a great political issue" that would excite "the pro-life base" and be a "tough issue for Democrats," Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, told CNN congressional correspondent Joe Johns on the April 7 edition of CNN's Inside Politics: "Now that we know where the memo came from, and the staff member has resigned, that's pretty much the end of it."

But the Martinez revelation is not, as Lott claimed, "the end of it." In a follow-up article on April 8, Washington Post staff writer Mike Allen wrote that Martinez's staff is looking into whether other staffers in the office had seen the memo and whether Brian Darling, the Martinez staffer who resigned after reportedly admitting authoring the memo, had distributed it to other Senate offices. But there are other questions, and perhaps the media will look past Martinez's
account of what happened, especially given his history of disavowing politically damaging conduct by staffers, and look past the results of Martinez's staff's investigation, to
try to resolve these questions . . .

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Those of concerned about our non-sheep credentials and with even a modicum of concern about authority these days certainly hope so!

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Rick Steves Does Latino Politics

It wasn't love at first sight between me and Rick Steves. Come to think of it, I can only speak to one side of this! For all I know he's been politely fending off questions about my peccadillos for years. But by the time I became aware of him he was well into the "fad" category, always for me a major put-off. I loathe crowds but perhaps more to the point resent being late to the show. And of course Rick's well-earned success means he is a Superstar - albeit a very unusual one. And, yeah, he might be even geekier than me.

But Steves gets high marks from travelers and enthusiasts for transnational bonding whose judgment I trust. And I can attest after my first timid trip outside my own neighborhood that his world-wisdom is worth attending to. That's especially true if you have an interest in connecting with people from different backgrounds and even possibly getting some insight (gasp!) on other cultures (my first furtive foray didn't go that far). Ideologically-driven neos inclined to pander to the anti-spiritual so-called religious fundamentalist right beware! Beyond here be dragons. Like Real Life.

Confession: I have not plumbed the depths of the Steves article I am quoting and linking to. My limited reading suggests that especially because of franker, more outspoken voice than is common in Steves' commercial tour-guides, this should be of great interest to literate creatures with feelings for others, i.e., those capable of empathizing with the less fortunate in classic terms than we are. I'd argue, at risk of invoking Hemingway, that the circumstances and struggles of the Latin Americans Rick encounters may well have potential to be a more enlightening and enspiriting life than that of the typical norteamericano. Just so long as you don't mind short life spans and routine infant death, right?

Without further ado, the admirable Mr. Steves:


The following is a report written after a six day “educational seminar” in El Salvador. The trip was built around the events memorializing the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Romero in San Salvador. For me personally, it was an effort to better understand the effects of globalization (from the point of view of a poor nation) and follow up on the rich travel experiences and education I had with the same educational tour company in 1989 and 1991. While there’s nothing like actually being there, it’s my hope that this report can be the next best thing for whoever’s interested. Thanks for traveling with me through this journal.

As we prepare to leave Miami, the flight attendant liked my travel show and bumped me from coach to first class. Alone in leather seats with my drink in a real glass, I look out the window and wonder “why did God put me here?” A chain of lights leads to Key West. Then deep in the blackness glitters the forbidden city of Havana. The pilot’s door is fortified as we fly to El Salvador.

Landing in San Salvador, I’m met by Cesar who whisks me away in his car. In the coin dish I see shiny Lincolns and Washingtons. It’s been 13 years since I was here last. My coins have become the local coins, and I’m in for big changes.

To many, this is boom time. Chains are thriving — Pizza Hut, Texaco, Subway. The Marlborough Man looks good on his horse. The Civil War is long over and, driving through town, it seems the US victory has been a huge success.

The minimum wage is about $1 an hour ($144 a month). It costs $3.50 to go to a movie. Cesar explains that, in El Salvador, a worker is happy to be employed. While in the USA minimum wage is at rock bottom level, most Salvadorans aspire only to minimum wage and that’s all they get.

After one day, I’m settling in quite well. I’m speckled with bug bites, used to my frail cold shower, noisy fan, and saggy bed. I know that paper clogs the toilet and it’s best to brush my teeth with bottled water. El Salvador provides this Norte Americano with a warm — and muggy — welcome.

Why visit El Salvador?

My friend gives me a print-out of the US State Department’s warning against travel in El Salvador. The dangers it describes unnerves me. “Wouldn’t some beach time in Mazatlan make a little more sense for a vacation?” he wonders. Why would anyone go to El Salvador?
In spite of my privileged position, I have an appetite to know the truth. For many Americans, privilege brings with it the luxury of obliviousness. We don’t need to know what the forces of globalization are doing because they don’t effect us. We don’t need to know the impact of a new International Money Fund (IMF) regulation on a person who sews clothing in Honduras or plants beans in Panama. Paul Wolfowitz may well be running the World Bank. Who cares?
The victims of structural poverty care. Free trade, neo-liberalism, and globalization are all concrete and real issues to the half of humanity trying to live on $2 a day. When it comes to these issues, you’d be impressed by their savvy.

When we learn that people in the poor countries know so much about us and our policies, I’m inclined to figure it’s merely out of admiration of our way of life. When we are ignorant about others and their struggles we are also ignorant about ourselves and our impact on others.
This blissful ignorance seems innocent and innocuous. But, combined with power, it can bring smug self-delusion, belief in our own superiority and a presumed right to dictate morality to others. This is the evil cocktail that causes good Americans to celebrate American Imperialism.


This privilege-rooted ignorance makes Americans easy to mislead into war. “Fighting for freedom,” we willingly send thousands of our children to die and almost eagerly divert billions of much needed dollars from domestic spending to “defense.” To populations on the receiving end of the American crusade, the “freedom and liberty” our president touts is freedom for corporations to exploit natural resources and liberty to take advantage of the labor of weaker countries.

Globalization is a big train, and it’s moving out

People in the Third World are told “Globalization is a big train and it’s moving out. Get on or get run over.” Even proponents don’t claim anything compassionate about this power. It’s presented simply as an unstoppable force.

America is pushing globalization with the zeal of an evangelist. Our ideological export after the defeat of communism is free trade. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO) are its crusaders. Market fundamentalism is the creed of the new muscular “church of laissez-faire.” The new virtues are deregulation, privatization, openness to trade, unrestricted movement of capital, and lower taxes. Attacking the theory is attacking America.

America’s passion for freedom is more accurately a passion for free trade. It’s driven not by altruism, but by a desire to open new markets to US firms and products. If you have resources, laborers, or potential customers, you must play.

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Sunday, April 03, 2005

Et Tu, Jeeves?

Scott Ritter just won't leave "awful enough" alone. Lest we subjects of the New Amerikan Dynasty forget, we were not wholly alone in promulgating an unprovoked war because we felt impelled to rid the world of yet another lousy unscrupulous human-rights-abusing dictator. (Wait a minute - that sounds like home - and some might ask why we chose this particular despot versus the others we have continued to subsidize and shore up.) But we had the Tony Team backing us from the get-go, helping out no doubt with forgeries and otherwise quacked-up "intelligence," in this context a one-word non-sequitur. Ritter ponders today in the Independent whether the upcoming British election might reveal some actual morals-based voting in contrast to the ideology and self-delusion that left our AWOL war criminal still happily ensconced in the former house of white.

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell has secured his place in history, not as a great American military leader, national security advisor, or diplomatic representative of his country, but rather the dupe who peddled false intelligence data to the Security Council of the United Nations on that fateful day on 5 February 2003, sealing the US case for war with Iraq. Powell, once revered as an American hero, will be remembered as Bush's shill for a sham case for war, waxing eloquently: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" for ever fixed in the minds of the more than 150 million people who watched him that day.

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In the end, it is the policymakers - British and American alike - who must shoulder the responsibility for the Iraqi WMD fiasco. This was very much an elective war, not a conflict of necessity. In their headlong rush to get rid of Saddam Hussein, George Bush and Tony Blair violated not only international law and the moral character of their own respective democratic constituencies, but also the intellectual integrity of the very intelligence services the citizens they are responsible for depend on to help guide them through a dangerous world.

The Presidential Commission says that the CIA was "dead wrong" when it came to assessing Iraqi WMD capabilities, but the fact of the matter is that it is George Bush and Tony Blair who were dead wrong, to the tune of over 1,500 American, nearly 90 British, and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives lost, in pursuing a war on such blatantly false premises.

The American people have already shown themselves to be culpable in legitimizing this tragedy by re-electing George Bush, the chief architect of this disaster, as president of the United States. In the weeks to come, the citizens of Great Britain will have a chance to carve their names in the annals of history, either slavishly repeating the same mistake of their American cousins by re-electing a man who is responsible for a massive violation of international law, or establishing the viability of British democracy as a lasting bastion of the rule of law by voting out Tony Blair. This will send a clear and lasting signal to those on the Presidential Commission and the Butler Commission that illegal wars of aggression are the responsibility of the politicians who order them, not the intelligence officials who justify them.