Hearts and Minds At Work

Hearts and Minds At Work




the peaceful uprising

hearts and minds
doing the real work
the bone-deep work
of freedom

no guns
no bombs
clear voices
one mind

syria
cannot
stay
here

hearts and minds
have decided
upon their
own direction

AP/CNN photos

Notes:

- Today, President Bush demanded an end to Syria's "occupation" of Lebanon

- Syrian withdrawal is already a part of Syrian policy.

- Syrian political activists, on Sunday, supported calls for their country to withdraw the troops but expressed concern at the level of anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon.

- More than 40 of Lebanon's 128 MPs have called on the international community to back their peaceful "uprising for independence" and accused the government and its political masters in Damascus of having a hand in Rafiq Hariri's assassination.

- President of France, Jacques Chirac is adamant about having the process of the Syrian withdrawal and Hizbullah's disarmament be monitored by the U.N. France and the United States sponsored U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, which essentially calls on Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and to stop interfering in Lebanese politics. Chirac has recently said that Lebanese parliamentary spring elections "will only be credible" if the resolution is applied. He said France wanted to see a "fully sovereign and democratic Lebanon."


- Lebanon's Defence Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad said his government was poised to boycott a UN probe into the death of former Premier Rafiq Hariri, a move likely to put Lebanon on a collision course with both the former mandatory power and the United States. Some news reports are saying the Lebanese government will cooperate.

_ Some American conservatives are concerned about the Hariri assassination and the blame that is being thrown at Syria's Bashar, who, if he did have anything to do with it, would have to be "the dumbest *#$!* man on the planet."

"This atrocity has the look of a false-flag operation to goad a volatile president into an attack on Syria. And, indeed, the cries are coming from the predictable quarters for Bush to let the missiles fly."

- Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has defended his nation's role in Lebanon by arguing that if Syria pulled out, the Lebanese would slip back toward civil war. Bashar has implied that forcing a Syrian withdrawal could reignite Lebanon.

To the U.S. Congress:

After Iraq, we citizens have good reason to be concerned. We have good reasons not to trust the Bush administration. Public opinion polls have borne out the truth about our deep-rooted suspicion. These sound like unnecessary war drums coming from the Bush administration. Please, do your sworn duty to the people of America this time. Let's not allow President Bush to lead us to unnecessary war with Syria.

"Buckle up and watch your backs"

"Buckle up and watch your backs"


Hunter S. Thompson 1937 - 2005

Winston Churchill said "The first casualty of War is always Truth." Churchill also said "In wartime, the Truth is so precious that it should always be surrounded by a bodyguard of Lies."

That wisdom will not be much comfort to babies born last week. The first news they get in this world will be News subjected to Military Censorship. That is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately-planted "Dis-information." That is routine behavior in Wartime -- for all countries and all combatants -- and it makes life difficult for people who value real news. Count on it. That is what Churchill meant when he talked about Truth being the first casualty of War.

From: When War Drums roll

See Rox Populi for a collection of Hunter S. Thompson links

Blogs and Mainstream - A new balance of power

Blogs and Mainstream - A new balance of power

"There is something in the virtual air and the winds of change seem to be blowing harder".

At Blogcritics.org, Margaret Romao Tolgo provides an analysis of how blogs are making their way into the mainstream and are directly affecting the news.

I couldn't agree more with this comment by Ms. Tolgo:

The blogger coverage of Gannongate appears to have fallen victim to partisan spin that spun out of control. In their zeal to discredit Mr. Guckert/Gannon, the bloggers covering him got caught up in a salacious sidestory and lost sight of the most important issue which was suspicion that the White House might be engaging in the manipulation of the press -- a most grave breech of our founding principles, if it is true -- not that Mr. Guckert/Gannon used a pseudonym..or registered domains for gay pornography sites after having written anti-gay articles.

In the story of J.D. Guckert, it isn't too late for the bloggers to steer and steady their course toward the "most important point". I have been stressing this point since the blog-story broke. While the tawdry gay-escort portion of the tale is relevant to the story, the bigger issues must remain the focus. As evidenced in yesterday's Washington Post Ombudsman's editorial, the bloggers have done their job in bringing Guckert's situation to the forefront. The mainstream, if you believe Michael Getler, will now seize this story as "their own".


I was quoted in Ms. Tolgo's article:

Jude Nagurney Camwell of The American Street offered this assesment (sic), "The ‘Right-wing mouth machine’ would like us all to think that Eason Jordan was 'bad' and 'unAmerican' for saying what he said. CNN has been complicit by their reticence to talk about tough issues. They wound up to be the biggest loser. They lost Eason Jordan. Eason was guilty before being proven innocent by no other process except one: the blog-trial."

I stress my point once more:

Eason Jordan lost his position with CNN due to a blog trial. There was never a mainstream media discussion. The Star Tribune has a piece (ex post facto) about the Eason Jordan case, pointing out the fact that Jordan was out of a job before some major media outlets even reported there was a controversy.

Right wing blogs seized the moment in the case of Jordan.

CNN allowed themselves to be abused by the court of the right-wing in the rolling vigilante thunder of the new storm called the blog-mob.


In the Star Tribune article, there are statements from Bill Roggio, a New Jersey computer technician who helped put together the Easongate.com Web site

"I think that we're definitely being accused of going on a witchhunt and I think that was unfortunate."

From a rational standpoint, this looked as if it was, indeed, a concerted political effort to promote an activism which has become all too familiar to call it anything less than a witchhunt.

Easongate: J'accuse.

"The reason a story like this broke is because the media ignored it and the bloggers pursued it."

The "reason" the story broke, I would respectfully contend, is due to the inescapable fact that people with a political agenda (which they cannot deny or rationalize away) wanted to make Jordan's statement a focal point in the headlines.

Roggio says he believes 'Jordan's resignation was justified'. I could not disagree with him more. There was no fireable offense committed by Eason Jordan. There was no public debate, other than the trial-by-blog by a non-balanced right-wing kangaroo court which seems to wield an unreasonably weighted influence upon the mainstream media today.

Roggio dons a mask of hypocrisy when asked for a statement about the J.D. Guckert story that is just now heating up in the mainstream and coming up for public debate in the mainstream arena. Bloggers uncovered evidence linking Guckert to online sites suggestive of gay pornography. Roggio says:

"That's ugly. It's an embarrassment to me as a blogger."

I wonder if Mr. Roggio might think that a person posing as a trusted and seasoned journalist, getting [far] too-easily credentialed for the White House Press corps, is a situation in which he should have any concern, especially when we've learned that the news organization Guckert represented did not even become a "news organization" until after he'd somehow squeezed his way into the White House press room?

Why wouldn't Bill Roggio care about this story unless he was politically motivated to want to sweep it under a rug?

More importantly, why would he see the citizen-journalists' act of uncovering the story as "ugly" in any way, shape or form?

No one has made up stories about J.D. Guckert. If the truth surrounding J.D. Guckert is ugly, we can only blame the light of day.

Who can be embarrassed by the light of day?

Putting Guckert's unusual activities in the White House Press corps into clear focus will work to expose the same right-wing misinformation-carousel that has caused Eason Jordan to lose his position by no more than an unjust blog-mob tarnishing.

It's no shame for the Bush administration to shape their agenda.
It is against every common American value we share for the administration to use the media to twist reality and truth to fit its agenda.

Any possibility whatsoever that Guckert was allowed to be in that room to assist that perversion of reality on behalf of the Executive is worthy of a high level of investigation.

It's time for reasonable and caring citizens to put a stop to this political manipulation of American journalism.

That concern isn't ugly.
It's based upon shared American values.

Gannon May Sue Bloggers

Run, Guckert, run
from thyself, ye shall run
and by the truth say we
'tis none but the fault o'the light o' day

Gannon May Sue Bloggers
Get this:

Jeff Gannon is considering suing liberal interest groups, bloggers and others for a "political assassination" that drove him from his job as a reporter for a conservative news outfit called Talon News, he told NEWSWEEK.

If he's going to take such little responsibility for his own actions, perhaps he'd better sue the Bush administration, too, for allowing him to become a story. Karl Rove mistakenly thought the news was something he could manipulate, package and sell to all of us. He expected we'd never question it at all. Or that we'd be intimidated from free speech - from asking and pointing to truths uncovered by investigation - under the scary threat of pending lawsuits.

Yes. Guckert had best add the Bush administration to his list of all the defendants who caused him to run away - from himself.

Lotsa luck, "Guck".




Photo credit: fusionanomaly.net

Mme Ebadi Calls For Judicial Reforms in Iran

"We want justice, not political turmoil."

- Mme Shirin Ebadi

Mme Ebadi Calls For Judicial Reforms in Iran

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi is calling for judiciary reforms in Iran, claiming that many political prisoners in the country are not granted access to a lawyer.She said that just because people like her are struggling for human rights and justice does not make them political opponents.

Ebadi, the 2003 Peace Prize winner, was speaking at a human rights meeting in Tehran.

She said any accused person has the right to have a lawyer. Ebadi said even the judiciary chief himself has stressed this irrefutable right, but she said that many, mainly political, prisoners cannot avail themselves of it.

She said that she was jailed for representing students involved in protest demonstrations and her colleague, Nasser Zarafshan, is still in jail for having taken on the 1999 controversial case of slain Iranian dissidents.

WP:Why Gannon is "A Story"

Washington Post:
Why Gannon is "A Story"

I offer an important mainstream media opinion to those of my readers who have chastised me (on and off this blog) about what they see as partisan "screeching" about Jeff Gannon.
The Washington Post concurs with my view.
This is a non-partisan and relevant issue.
WP Ombudsman Michael Getler explains why.

The events, questions and controversies surrounding Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent war in Iraq, are like bones in the throat for millions of people. For many, they are also seen as a partisan issue. But for others, they are not partisan. It is a matter of wanting to know everything we can about what was known, said and done. That's the journalist's role. Every piece of the puzzle deserves to be looked at and reported on by journalists who have followed these events closely. These two documents added to the historical record and merited more attention.

Many more readers were exercised last week about the bizarre case of James Dale Guckert, aka "Jeff Gannon," the conservative "reporter" who worked for such organizations as Talon News and GOPUSA, and who managed to get himself regularly cleared into White House news briefings, and who asked a question at a presidential news conference about Democrats who he said "seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

Here's how one reader put it: "I don't understand why The Post has turned the 'Jeff Gannon' story into yet another piece about bloggers. The story happened to be broken by bloggers, to their credit. But the story has two serious elements that The Post should report out on its own: 1) How is it that in an era when we have to take our shoes off to get on an airplane, a guy gains access to the White House with an alias on his ID badge? I don't believe that has yet been answered; 2) To what extent was granting 'Gannon' access another form of buying or manipulating the news? These are important questions." I agree."

We Must Not Act Out of Fear

We Must Not Act Out of Fear

My adopted son was born in West Africa. When he was 10 there was a civil war. He was left alone without care, food, school or safety. At 11, he was forced to become a soldier. He was told he could avenge the death of his parents.I met him when he was 15. He had escaped the army and found his sanity again. He said, "I realize now that revenge only produces revenge. There is no end to revenge.We must simply stop."

During the war in Sierra Leone I spoke to my son every Friday morning. While waiting for permission for him to come to this country, I could not immediately change his life in Africa or slip him through the phone wire as I liked to imagine. But I could offer some relief from excruciating bouts of fear and hopelessness, and the hurtling energy of frustration that re-instigated his earlier trauma.I suggested he try to distinguish between when he was caught up in stories about frustration, panic and fear, and when he felt alert, regardless of feeling or circumstance.

By sitting down at the moment the fear began, and becoming familiar with the details of where he was at the moment, he was able to place his attention on his feet and hands, back and belly.

Just like the shopkeeper as he sits with his tea, my son discovered that what he was feeling could be experienced and tolerated. He was able to calm himself and be of help to others.

There are so many ways in our everyday lives in which we can be drawn out of a sense of wakeful balance and become victims of our impulses. In that moment we have no power. We become like the two friends who propose to battle over the length of a moustache. The awareness that lets us rest our minds before acting out of fear is the same awareness that produces the joy of creative problem-solving and generosity that brings peace in adverse circumstances.

- Laura Simms, one of the nation's leading storytellers helping to bridge differences between students divided by racial and cultural strife.

There Is Only One of Us Here

There Is Only One of Us Here

Through the curtain the daylight crept
I looked at my lover as she slept
And as I watched her face I wept
It was a wonderful disguise.

Mike Scott (of Waterboys fame) recites the strangers he encounters throughout the day: a driver turning to look at him in traffic; a blind man addressing him outside a museum; a fat woman in a queue; a drunk on the stairs as he returns home; and the president “on the news at 10, looking like he could use a friend.” All of them, he decides, wearing a wonderful disguise.

Stood in front of the mirror all alone
Examined my features, skin and bone
Looked at the face I’ve always known
It was a wonderful disguise.

He explained the inspiration by email. “I was living in the Findhorn community in the mid 1990s and started to see divinity in peoples’ faces, in their eyes. I told a more experienced community friend and she said ‘you are seeing God in all his wonderful disguises’. I knew in my heart then she was right – and now I know it in my whole being.”
“Findhorn changed the way I look at life and other people forever,” he noted on the Waterboys’ official website. “I realized everyone really is the same deep underneath, with the same longing to love and be loved.

Behind all our appearances, as one writer says,
‘There is only one of us here.’”


*A tip of the hat to Jerry Katz

Jonathan Schell on Iraq's Unpredictable Politics

Jonathan Schell on Iraq's Unpredictable Politics

Last year I commented that the U.S. assault on Fallujah would probably work against the intended goal of a healthy liberal democracy in Iraq.

Judging from what we know, so far, about the results of January's election in Iraq, I think my prediction bore much truth.

There were many happy purple fingered people in Iraq. The fingers belonged to the Shiite and Kurd population, for the better part. It would be dishonest for me to say that I am not happy that the voters in Iraq literally risked their lives for the hope of something better. Hope does not translate to reality, as we well know from our own nation's past two presidential elections. In the case of Iraq, when the hoped-for "better" falls out, I think what we will really see is a push for a separation of the varied tribes of the land rather than the growth of united and proud nationalism.

Jonathan Schell says it very well. (subscription required for link) His recent Nation article explains the "falling out" and the realistic truth that surrounds the results of January's election. Schell says:

"What the election was not was a decision by "the Iraqi people." It's not even clear that at this moment there is such a thing as the Iraqi people. Opinion among scholars and others is divided on the point. Iraq is a nation without a constitution (it is governed by a Transitional Administrative Law) and without a state. If some observers are correct, it is also a nation without a nation."

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was offering the elections as a means of ending the occupation while he was, at the same time, relying upon the U.S. occupation to make the elections happen. Terror attacks occurred, largely by Sunni insurgents upon Shiites. Because of Sistani's leadership and insistence upon the January election date, Shiites did not retaliate. The Sunnis knew they could still boycott the voting, and, in Schell's words, "the great majority of them reportedly did, but they failed to stop it entirely."

As a result, al-Sistani may have been able to win power, but he may still be unable to found a just new order in Iraq. In Schell's words:

All the parties express a desire to avoid civil war, but there is a distinct possibility that what the vote strengthened was not "the Iraqi people" but each of the subgroups. The high vote of the Shiites and the low vote of the Sunnis may have carried the same message: When all is said and done, we are more faithful to the interest of our own group than to a unified Iraq. The very steps Sistani took to achieve the Shiite electoral triumph may turn out to have fatally undermined any future government. When he acquiesced in the smashing of Falluja, he passed up an opportunity for national solidarity that may not come soon again. The danger for the Shiite leadership is that by associating themselves with an occupying power, they will--even among many Shiites--throw away the legitimacy that the election has just given them. Then all hopes, including those so movingly expressed on January 30, will have been betrayed.

Schell ponders the wisdom of an extended U.S. presence in Iraq, saying that "the danger for the United States in staying is that it will wind up on one side of a civil war that its presence will continually exacerbate but be unable to quell."

Gannon Headlines

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Gannon and WHIG: The Noose Gets Tighter

"Systematic coordination began in August, when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad.

In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.

A "strategic communications" task force under the WHIG began to plan speeches and white papers. There were many themes in the coming weeks, but Iraq's nuclear menace was among the most prominent."

Gannon and WHIG: The Noose Gets Tighter

I believed Joseph Wilson All Along

I'm glad I did. As I look back, I see that Jeff Gannon played a central role in the right wing's vigilante activism to destroy Wilson's credibility.

IDDYBUD: July 12, 2004

IDDYBUD: Sunday, July 11, 2004:

The new Senate intelligence committee report has served to undermine Joseph C. Wilson IV's prior assertions that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence to build their case for war....

...As far as common sense is concerned, this report does not prove or disprove Joseph Wilson's criticism of the Bush administration's abuse of bad intelligence.

Just as I believed there was no imminent threat to America all along based on the information I'd personally collected before the Iraq war, I continue to believe Joseph C. Wilson IV. He has my benefit of doubt.. and I hope he'll have yours, dear readers.

Consider the liars and the powers he's up against.

From Smirking Chimp March 2004:

"The political hit squad assigned to go after Wilson – meeting, perhaps, in the Situation Room – decided to hit back at him through his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA undercover agent working on nuclear nonproliferation issues. They told Novak, and apparently a good number of other journalists, that he wasn't really qualified, Wilson's wife had gotten him the (non-paying) job to go to Niger through her CIA connections, a bit of information dropped casually amid familiar complaints of partisan bias and ulterior motives. Plame's career in the CIA was effectively ended."

I want to know who, if anyone, Jeff Gannon was in cahoots with, and if his involvement was direct, conspiratorial, and intentional.
It's all too strange. You look back to summer, 2004. You see a high-powered White House cabal in the information-war business, and nearly every article that is first to deliver a message attacking Joe Wilsons credibility, as we look back on that period, has Gannon's name at the top of it. (Some of the articles are listed below).
Gannon, apparently, was the only one who's been identified by the Washington Post as having knowledge of a leaked internal memo's existence. The document, written by a State Department official who worked for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), described an alleged meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed. The memo was alleged to have contained information which suggested that Joseph Wilson claimed his wife was instrumental in his selection for the fact-finding trip to Africa. CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, a White House official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended the meeting.
Why Gannon?
Why Talon News?
Did the Senate Intelligence Committee, knowingly or unknowingly, contribute to the media propaganda?

I would hate to even suspect that any of the fine Senators on the Intelligence Committee (listed at bottom) would have cooperated in any activity, intentional or unintentional, which involved slipping internal information to Jeff Gannon/JD Guckert for the purpose of partisan gain.
How did Gannon get this information from the INR report?
Why did no other reporter have access to it?

A multi-leveled propaganda operation

IDDYBUD: July 9, 2004: Who was the "White House Iraq Group (WHIG)" - and did they use Jeff Gannon for their PR?

Waas writes that some of Libby's notes describe efforts to discredit Wilson by the mysterious cabal known as the White House Iraq Group. Little is known about that group beyond what Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus wrote in The Washington Post last August. But it included Rove, Libby, adviser Karen Hughes and other top White House players."

--Dan Froomkin/Washington Post

Justin Raimondo deserves much credit for his early investigation and questions about Gannon's role:

"My regular readers might recall a column I wrote on Plame-gate a couple of months ago, wherein I mentioned that the Talon News Agency, an arm of something called "GOP U.S.A," did an interview with Ambassador Wilson, during which the interviewer challenged Wilson with an internal U.S. government document purporting to be the minutes of a meeting at which Plame played a key role in getting her husband the Niger assignment. There was just one problem with these documents: as in the Niger uranium forgeries, which listed ministers who hadn't served in years and got key facts wrong, these minutes of a purported meeting of CIA agents placed personnel in locations they couldn't possibly have been. Another forgery! Counterfeiting official documents is also a crime, particularly when it is done with the cooperation or complicity of government officials involved in a conspiracy.

I advise Mr. Gannon to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, if he knows what's good for him.

This case is about much more than the outing of a CIA agent: It's about a cabal of ruthless liars who stopped at nothing – not even treason – to achieve their goals, and kept lying (and committing forgery) even after they were caught. It's about a bogus war fought on account of faked "evidence." It's about the hijacking of American foreign policy on behalf of interests that are neither American nor morally defensible."

Republicans On Intelligence Committee


Pat Roberts, (KS)
Orrin Hatch (UT)
Mike Dewine (OH)
Chris Bond (MO)
Trent Lott (MS)
Olympia Snowe (ME)
Chuck Hagel (NE)
Saxby Chambliss (GA)
John Warner (VA)


____________________________

"In uncovering the culprits, this investigation is bound to unearth the network of Washington warmongers who retaliated with such swift treachery when Joe Wilson hit them, unexpectedly, in a weak spot." - Justin Raimondo

Gannon-Related articles

Talon article July 27, 2004

Talon article July 13, 2004
Excerpt from Gannon's own article:

"..the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered a memo from Plame dated February 12, 2002 to the Deputy Chief of the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) that "offered up his name." It was also revealed that Wilson traveled to Niger for the CIA in 1999 on a mission whose details are redacted from the report.

In October 2003, Talon News reported on an internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel that detailed a meeting where Plame suggested Wilson be sent to Niger. Wilson claimed to have never been in a meeting with his wife, but a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst's notes indicated that a meeting was "apparently convened" by Plame who had proposed her husband go on the mission. Plame told the committee that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

A CIA source told the Washington Post in December 2003 that the INR memo was still classified and disputed its contents. As a result of asking Wilson about the memo during an October 2003 interview, FBI agents questioned Talon News under the guise of the leak probe to discover the source of the memo that refuted the assertions of the agency and Wilson about the circumstances by which he was chosen for the trip.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report may have a significant impact on the leak probe. Loss of confidence in the agency and its attempts to discredit evidence that suggests alternate motivations by sub-groups within it may serve to undermine the case. The INR memorandum may have revealed Plame's identity prior to Novak's column and therefore any statements by the administration might only qualify as simple gossip.

Even if that is not the case, the federal statute requires that the exposure of Plame would have had to be deliberate and malicious, a threshold that may not be reached by the investigation, particularly in light of new information revealed by the Committee report."

Talon article, October 29, 2003

Talon article, July 22, 2004 (Gannon on Sandy Berger)

"Instead of reviewing documents for the 9/11 Commission investigation, Republicans suggested that Berger used the information from the National Archives to help the Kerry campaign.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said, "Reportedly these documents related to homeland security and then suddenly we see that the Kerry campaign came
forward with what may have been illegal documents. This is sensitive
stuff and was a significant breach of security."

Articles Where Gannon is quoted or mentioned:

Washington Post article December 26, 2003

Excerpt:

"Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.

CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended the meeting.

"It has been circulated around," one official said. CIA and State Department officials have refused to discuss the document.

On Oct. 28, Talon News, a news company tied to a group called GOP USA, posted on the Internet an interview with Wilson in which the Talon News questioner [Gannon] asks: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"

Other past Gannon-related media Comments and Referrals:

From a live Q and A chat-session with Washington Post's Mike Allen, May 13, 2004:

Washington, D.C.: There's some new guy asking questions at the daily briefings who sounds like a plant from the Bush administration. I think his name is Jeff. Any idea who he is and how he gets in to the briefings? This guy makes Fox News actually seem fair and balanced.

Mike Allen: I believe you're referring to Jeff Gannon of Talon News, whose dispatches are available at GOPUSA.com

Additional Note:

The Democrats have been trying to get the public to understand the severity of this problem all along. It was not a partisan act on their part.

Bloggers need to speak out now.

A high level of investigation is needed.

It may need to be initiated by Republicans.

We are watching. We are waiting. The whole world is watching.

You can run, but you just can't hide these days.

This was part of a memo from a Democrat on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which was stolen ascertained by Republicans:

"...even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter foot-dragging on the part of the majority...the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman (Jay Rockefeller); we have independently submitted written questions to DoD; and we are preparing further independent requests for information".

Advice for Well-Known Freepers: Go Underground

Advice for Well-Known Freepers: Go Underground

The Freepers are warning their "prominent" participants to "go underground".
They've posted a new set of suggested guidelines.
They need to get sneakier and more intelligently devious.
They know others are watching what they've been getting away with in the "light of day" for far, far too long.

Need A New Career?

Need A New Career?

Go HERE. Ol' J.D. will set you up.

New Info On How Gannon Got Credentialed

"It was a bad enough that somebody let in a guy with no media experience, an alias, and a background as an on-line escort -- but why did they let him in if he wasn't even pretending to represent a news organization of any kind?"

-- Keith Olbermann, MSNBC


New Info On How Gannon Got Credentialed

Former Talon News reporter James Guckert obtained his first White House press credentials as a representative of the pro-Republican Web site, GOPUSA, not as a Talon News reporter, as previously believed, Press Secretary Scott McClellan told E&P today.

McClellan said White House Press Office staffers considered the openly partisan site to be a legitimate news organization when they gave Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, the first of numerous day passes in February 2003.

LINK

__________

Editor and Publisher: Radio Producer Could Always Count on 'Gannon' for Tips

________________

RAW STORY: Gannon’s own statements suggest he fed exclusive stories damaging Bush opponents to networks; Bragged of feeding Rather story

_________________

Guckert will give interview to CNN: "My side of the story has been poorly reported," said Guckert.

* (Jude says: In other words, Jeff is saying Crap! They know too much about me now! I want to go on CNN and give my slanted, Karl-Rove-ass-saving side. It will sound just like my shady reporting).

AMERICAblog: Anderson Cooper is my God

_______________

CBS: Gannon connected to Karl Rove?

"Rove's dominance of White House and Republican politics, Gannon's aggressively partisan work and the ease with which he got day passes for the White House press room the past two years make it hard to believe that he wasn't at least implicitly sanctioned by the "boy genius." Rove, who rarely gave on-the-record interviews to the MSM (mainstream media), had time to talk to GOPUSA, which owns Talon....

...what Gannon was up to was not just writing opinion columns or using a different technique to get information. He was a player in Republican campaigns and his work in the South Dakota Senate race illustrates the role he played. It is also a classic example of how political operatives are using the brave new world of the Internet and the blogosphere. Gannon and Talon News appear to be mini-Drudge reports; a "news" source which partisans use to put out negative information, get the attention of the bloggers, talk radio and then the MSM in a way that mere press releases are unable to achieve...

...Planting or even just sanctioning a political operative in the WH press room is a dangerous precedent and Karl Rove's hope to become a respected policymaker will be hampered if the dirty tricks from his political past are more apparent than his desire to spread liberty around the globe."

Destroying Daschle: Gannon tagged as political operative

"Nobody in South Dakota could know, until now, the true identity and purpose of "Jeff Gannon" and his employers at Talon News.."

Destroying Daschle: Gannon tagged as political operative

Before he was buttering up Bush at White House press conferences, Jeff Gannon, the Great Gay White House Press Corps Escort of the Internet was doing the GOP's dirty work by attacking Tom Daschle.

Joe Conason reports:

"Gannon took up the Republicans' dirty work with great gusto, beginning more than a year before the election, in the summer of 2003. Working with two local South Dakota bloggers, both of whom later turned out to be secretly paid operatives of the Thune campaign, he targeted Daschle and discredited mainstream journalists..[..]..

...why he obtained such special treatment from Karl Rove's White House communications operation -- one useful exercise may be what intelligence analysts call "walking back the cat." In essence, this means running the movie in reverse slow-motion to see where the suspect came from and what he did along the way.

Looking back at the special role played by Talon and Gannon in the South Dakota Senate campaign may provide clues in the mystery of the male-escort-cum-journalist's extraordinary access to the Bush White House."

Conason's article exposes a site called "DaschleVThune," a Web blog operated by history professor and Republican activist Jon Lauck, and South Dakota Politics.com, run by a lawyer named Jason Van Beek, who gave flight to Gannon's covert and operative style of "journalism".

CBS News reported in December, 2004:

"The two leading South Dakota blogs – websites full of informal analysis, opinions and links – were authored by paid advisers to Thune’s campaign.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the National Journal first cited Federal Election Commission documents showing that Jon Lauck, of Daschle v Thune, and Jason Van Beek, of South Dakota Politics, were advisers to the Thune campaign.

The documents, also obtained by CBS News, show that in June and October the Thune campaign paid Lauck $27,000 and Van Beek $8,000. Lauck had also worked on Thune’s 2002 congressional race.

Both blogs favored Thune, but neither gave any disclaimer during the election that the authors were on the payroll of the Republican candidate."

To the bloggers at LGF

To the bloggers at LGF

My fine fellow Americans at Little Green Footballs, you think I'm calling the kettle black by insinuating that you participated, in concert with other right-wing blogs, in a well-orchestrated activity which resulted in grave harm to the career and reputation of a 23-year veteran of CNN news, a brilliant, decent, and hard-working man with years of on-the-job experience.

Was this a case where Jordan actually said something inflammatory? Of course. It cannot be denied.

Do I think he should have resigned? No. I don't.

He says he wanted to save CNN from controversy. If any of you say you think you know any other reason why he left so quickly, I will remind each of you that you could not know. Conjecture just won't do.

My observations on the gang-mentality that led him to resign are just what they are. I saw it unfolding before my eyes and I blogged about it. I realize that you did not appreciate my observations about what was occurring. I won't rehash it again. It's over.

I make no apology. I'm a blogger, just like you.

Little Green Footballs people, you categorize my follow-ups on the ongoing Jeff Gannon story as "screeching". It seems that you cannot imagine how I could possibly reconcile the hypocrisy that you see in me.

Jay Rosen recently said that "the solution to miscommunication has to be more communication." I agree. CNN failed Eason Jordan in their failure to defend him with open discussion and a demand for the tape's release. They could have foiled what I saw to be the Right's distinct intent to damage the "old media".

The fact that CNN refused to even talk about it leads me to believe that they thought they couldn't fight the Right's influence. That, to me, is very telling.

I see Jeff Gannon as a wicked symptom of the very same gang mentality that helped to easily destroy Eason Jordan's CNN position.

Gannon was not Eason Jordan. They are two different people and these are two different stories. Each story needs to be based upon its own merits. It's easy to spin them together, but they are not the same story.

Gannon was a professional imposter (not to mention a man-ho) and perhaps he was a known shill for the White House. We still don't know. All signs are pointing to the suspicion that he was a political operative.

None of us know the full scope of the story to date. There are stones still unturned.

Unturned stones is precisely what an investigation is all about, Little Green Footballs people.

I see a disturbing trend, in the case of Jeff Gannon. As Frank Rich wrote in a recent column:
By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news.

A real investigation isn't "He said this (or that)! Let's complain to his employer! Let's petition! Let's act en masse to put the pressure on his employer to fire him!"

You may call that a really good investigation.
I call it an extremely effective dogpile.

In the case of Jordan, the Davos tape you so badly wanted means almost nothing now, and I am proud to say that I never once advocated its stifling.

You can dogpile on me all you'd like, LGF folks, but in the end, I am one person who gets paid a big fat ZERO and am under the influence of no one and nothing except for my own conscience.

I stand alone, I have one opinion, I abhor cultural propaganda and shoddy journalism, and consider myself to be no hypocrite.

I wish each one of you peace and hope you will never fail to closely examine your own individual conscience in all endeavors.

I also hope Eason Jordan finds a wonderful new job and that Jeff Gannon never again attempts to pass himself off as anything more than a willing participant in the propagandizing of the media.

-- Jude

Gotcha, Ted Hitler!

Gotcha, Ted Hitler!

I mean, like...being a fake newsman wasn't enough, already? And now we bloggers uncover the grisly reality--
you're a fake fake newsman!

See the Daily Show last night? ;)
VIDEO here.

*Thanks, in large part to people like John Stewart making this a featured focus, this Jeff Gannon story moved over to the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight. Finally, someone in the mainstream has taken it seriously.

Glocal Journalism at Glocal Man

Glocal Journalism at Glocal Man

Doug McGill, the former New York Times reporter, has created a blog which he hopes will illuminate the links between local and global life.

I discovered his new blog while visiting Press Think today.

I like the idea. I plan to visit often.

Tom Ridge:Regardless of Party Affiliation?

Tom Ridge: "Regardless of Party Affiliation"

It should be no great surprise that Frank Luntz prepped Tom Ridge during Bush's re-election campaign.

I'm not surprised.

Why did Tom Ridge feel that he had to insist Homeland Security was not about politics, though?

That's my question.

In effect, he lied for political gain.

He lied.

During the campaign, he bragged to crowds:

"We don't do politics in Department of Homeland Security."

Like hell, you didn't, Mr. Ridge.

When Ridge was running the department of Homeland Security, he said the war on terrorism is "about as apolitical or bipartisan as you can get. There's no Republican or Democratic way to do it. We just have to do it right, regardless of our party affiliation."

Now, more than ever, I firmly believe Ridge was lying about that, as well.
Once again, the people's trust is breached by the discovery of bold lies.

I think back to past terrorist-alerts issued by Ridge at incredibly opportune political moments. I wonder how much of it was complete and utter deflective politics?

Regardless of party affiliation, my Homeland posterior.

I can't imagine anything LESS characteristically or traditionally "American" as painting members of your loyal opposition with the same brush as terrorists, but it's been done far too many times now for me to put an ounce of trust in the purposefully divisive Bush administration.

It all makes this spoof seem eerily close to reality.

Rumsfeld Defensive on Missile Defense

Rumsfeld Defensive on Missile Defense

Former US weapons inspector Scott Ritter is in the news again. He is saying that the new Russian Topol missile makes U.S. defenses obsolete. Russia has tested the ballistic missile and it's a weapon that would render the United States Star Wars scheme useless.

This comes on a day when Donald Rumsfeld's hawking of the Missile Defense program appears in the press. When Senator Hillary Clinton expressed her concerns about the oddity that we would deploy a system that hasn't succeeded and expect that to serve a deterrent value, Rumsfeld said this:

"If you didn't do anything until you could do everything, you probably wouldn't do anything."

Whew.
I hope you can figure that one out.