Magazine throws bash

NYC, New York (AP) -- Revelers celebrated Saturday to honor the 500th issue of MAD Magazine. The comic magazine began offering it's parodies and satirical look at the world in 1952 as a bi-monthly magazine before quickly become a monthly.



Spokesperson Alfred E. Newman led an afternoon conference entitled "What me worry?" -- the trademarked phrase Newman debuted in 1955.



"Inspirational, simply inspirational," declared Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation magazine. "This has been a glorious day for free speech and vodka."



vanden Heuvel had obviously enjoyed copious amounts of the latter as evidenced by her inability to operate an elevator. When asked how she decided which costume to wear to the celebration, vanden Heuvel responded, "What costume?"



More confusion ensued in the main ball room when Newman and US House Rep Dennis Kucinich entered from opposite points of the room. "They really are two different people!" gasped Will Durst.



At the podium, bad writer and den mother to the push-up bra set of 'feminists,' Katha Pollitt was explaining the effect MAD Magazine had on her life, "I was a homely teenager. I know some of you may find that hard to believe. Don't all gasp at the same time. Anyway, I was homely and I'd read MAD and they made all the powerful women look ugly. And that's how I decided I could be powerful. MAD helped me visualize the dream. If you can dream it, you can own it. If you can see it, you can be it. If . . ."



Following Pollitt's speech, revelers took a 30 minute cat nap -- well, during Pollitt's speech.



Outside the auditorium, in the parking lot, Matthew Rothschild, editor and chair of the board of The Progressive, was taking part in what he dubbed "a mass political action" but which several passersby dubbed a "lonely pity party."



Rothschild decried what he termed the "softening" of the magazine and, "most of all, it's high circulation."



Wearing a Barry O! So Stylish! t-shirt, an Obama button and, he told the press, Barack BVDs, Rothschild insisted that MAD no longer did hard hitting satire.



When shown a section of "The Bailout Hymn of the Republic" produced by Frank Jacobs and James Warhola, Rothschild wrinkled his nose and insisted, "They're making fun of Barack! That's racism! It is wrong to make fun of Barack! He is our God, Lord, Master and Turkey Baster!"

Spittle dripping from his chin, Rothschild was led away by the police as he dove both hands down the front of his pants and began rubbing furiously. Said MAD magazine editor John Ficarra, "The FBI once asked MAD to stop calling its director, J. Edgar Hoover, 'J. Edgar Electrolux'."

The Progressive Celebrates 100 Years of Racism

To travel through The Progressive's April 2009 issue is to stare in disbelief at just how racist the people involved are. The White periodical, started by White people, serving White people celebrates its 100th anniversary by reducing race to Black and White.

Even more appalling than the silence is the promotion of racism. An unnamed Vietnamese man (presumably Colonel Nguyen Van Ve) appears on page 81 in a comic by Pat Oliphant. Whomever the Vietnamese male is supposed to be, he's drawn as if he were a guerrilla. If it is Ve, it needs to be noted that the prison he ran was run on methods he was taught not only by Americans but by the British, in fact, Ve traveled to England in 1965, five years before the cartoon, to attend a training at the Prison Service Staff College at Wakefield. We're failing to see any cartoons where British males are drawn as apes. We live in the Bay Area which isn't the Whiter Shade of Pale that Madison, Wisconsin is. There is huge shock and outrage in the Asian American community over this comic. And there should be.



As already noted, the cartoon is by Pat Oliphant who has a long history of doing cartoons known for their racially offensive nature. In 2001, Marsha Ginsburg (San Francisco Chronicle) reported on only one instance of Oliphant trafficking in racial stereotypes to demean Asian Americans:



Outspoken Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Pat Oliphant, who once said political correctness "drives me crazy," enraged Asian Americans with a cartoon that appeared this week in many Bay Area newspapers.
The cartoon, which The Chronicle declined to run, portrays a buck-toothed Chinese waiter delivering cat gizzard noodles to a customer who concedes he had been "slowly getting used to doing business with China."
The waiter trips, dumping noodles on the head of the customer, who says the waiter must have been waiting for an apology. The waiter jumps up and down while saying, "Apologize Lotten Amellican!" The customer, who gets up in a huff and leaves, is Uncle Sam.
The 1,700 member Asian American Journalists Association said Oliphant's work "crossed the line from acerbic depiction to racial caricature" and yesterday demanded that he stop using racial stereotypes in his work.



So how the hell did his racist comic make it into The Progressive? We're not talking about back in 1970. We're talking about in the April 2009 issue.



The magazine reproduces the cartoon on page 81 which is devoted to 1970. With twelve issues making up 1970 and multiple illustrations to select from each issue, a decision was made to go with this cartoon over others. A decision was made to run this racist cartoon which suggests that Vietnamese (or all Asians?) are apes.



We're not even sure the cartoon ran in the magazine originally. If it did, it wasn't created for the magazine. They could have chosen any illustration. They went with that racist one. By a cartoonist who's long been called out for drawing racial stereotypes and who has a very hostile relationship with the Asian American community.



"But we're happy with the final result," gloats Matthew Rothschild on page 66 as he begs for more money. Apparently, with enough of your hard earned dollars, Rothschild would be able to run even more racist cartoons.



As you leaf through the bad issue, you search in vain for many topics. The internment of Japanese Americans? Not there. Native Americans? In 100 years of publishing, you might think the magazine had a lot to say about the topic but apparently not. One article . . . on the schools attended.



Latinos? In May 2006, the largest rallies and marches took place and they were advocating on behalf of immigrant rights. They offer one lousy paragraph (page 123) that doesn't even make it clear that this was about immigrants, that this was a Latino led movement and a student led movement.



As I marched on May 1, I began to grasp the heart of this movement: the economic rights of any and all people, regardless of papers, to decent pay and dignified work, housing, education, health care, an equitable distribution of wealth and income. Borders are now irrelevant. Corporations have long acted as if this were the case. Why shouldn't we?



That could be about immigrant rights . . . It could be someone elaborating on Judystock, a gathering of Judy Garland buffs discussing the meanings of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow."


In the excerpt, the word "immigrant" is never used (the headline to that paragraph is "A Single Movement"), nor the word Latino, Hispanic, etc. Another curious absence is the term "Holocaust."


Despite having WWII stories abounding throughout pages 46 through 51 (and after), the Holocaust is never noted. Norman Thomas (heavily featured throughout the magazine) has a 1948 piece on Palestine which mentions "Jews and Arabs." That's apparently the first mention of "Jew" in the retrospective.



It's hard to believe that a magazine wants to look back on the last 100 years and refuses to note the Holocaust, especially a magazine that features Ruth Conniff who is so damn eager to portray others as Holocaust deniers. (Such as when she falsely accused Norman Finkelstein of being one.)



The refusal to note the Holocaust is all the more appalling when you grasp that they included Milton Mayer's "Let Me In on the Kill" where Mayer's ridiculing those who would hang the Nazi leaders, "Let me drink the blood of the Beast, and I shall be new and pure" (originally ran October 14, 1946). This has to be a first: A look back at WWII that omits the Holocaust but does include sympathy for the Nazi leadership. In one form or another, Mayer spent the 40s and 50s begging for sympathy for Germany. Prior to WWII, Mayer, a non-practicing Jew, was most famous for penning "The Case Against The Jew."



What you quickly find as you flip through the issue is a narrative where race in the US is Black and White and that no issue could ever matter as much as what 'wonderful things' Whites have done for Blacks. Careful readers will quickly catch on that it's what 'wonderful things' White males have done for Black male. It's not only condescending it's sexist and, in their 100th year celebration, they make a strong case for why their bad magazine needs to go out of business. Pronto.

Passing a historical problem off as something 'new'

As Ruth noted Thursday, Danny Schechter and his ghost writer won an award for best blog, a James Aronson Award. And as Ruth explains, C.I.'s jaw dropped wide.



Why is that?



Because Danny Schechter is among the ones portraying the problems with the media as something new, something recent.



Get a grip, flibbertigibbet.



Good strong stuff dealing in round abuse and blackguard names, pulling off the roofs of private houses, pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw; setting on, with yell and whistle, and clapping of foul hands, the vilest vermin and the worst birds of prey.



What is that? It's a media critique. It's actually a blistering media critique of the US press. Who authored it? Charles Dickens. In the 19th century. Not the 20th.



There will most likely be no media reform in this country, no real reform. And the failure will have a lot to do do with the desire of the left to turn a historical problem into a 'new' and 'emerging' one.



Danny Schechter is receiving a James Aronson Award.



That is laughable. All the pleas you will hear at MediaChannel were done by Aronson and company at The National Guardian, a weekly national paper that was published in NYC from 1948 through 1992. The radical paper was started by James Aronson, Cedric Belfarge and John T. McManus. The paper was created in time to promote (and endorse) Henry Wallace for president. FDR's former vice president was running against Democratic Party nominee Harry S. Truman and Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey. Norman Thomas was the Socialist Party's candidate, Claude A. Watson was the Prohibition Party candidate, Strom Thurmond was the Dixiecrat's candidate, Wallace was running on the Progressive Party ticket which was a blend of Socialists, Communists and disaffected Democrats who did not see Truman as a continuation of FDR's policies.



The National Guardian, publicly, was not a Communist Party publication. It liked to point out that it did not just offer praise to the Communist Party and just echo the Party line. The Nation does the same with the Democratic Party today and, yes, to many both would qualify as party organs. While claiming not to want to be a party organ of any party, the reality was they hoped to get the Progressive Party to fund their newspaper; however, the party's leadership was opposed. (As James Aronson noted in Something To Guard, co-written with Cedric Belfarge, the Communist Party was the leadership and they had no interest in sharing the resources: "The framers of this 'go look for funds elsewhere or drop dead' policy were, we knew, in or close to the CP.").


They published their first issue October 18, 1948. February 7, 1949 (not even four months later), the front page carried a plea for money ("A CALL TO ACTION NOW! THE PROGRESSIVE PRESS IS IN PERIL"). Readers responded. And one reader, Anita Blaine, even donated (a gift, not a loan) $78,000 that month. But instead of using that money to cover expenses or investing it or just saving it, they decided to act like $78,000 would come in every year and lower the subscription rate when the subscription rate had already failed to cover the basic expenses, hence the plea for money February 7th. By June of 1949, they were hitting up Anita Blaine for an additional $150,000. $228,000 in 1949. A huge amount. Enough that should have guaranteed solvency. But the beggar media never knows how to stay afloat or to budget. It's probably why Blaine made her gifts gifts and not loans. She always knew they'd never repay the loan.



For a little over 40 years, the newspaper managed to stay afloat through constant fundraising. It died two years after its last living founder (Cedric Belfarge) had passed away. But James Aronson and Cedric Belfarge left the paper in the spring of 1967. (It was a bitter departure, Aronon wrote of it in "Editing on the Left: Memories and Convictions," The Nation, February 5, 1968.)



Unlike most in Panhandle Media, the staff of the Guardian could actually work in the real press. They hailed from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time, The New York Post, etc. Why would they want to start their own press?

For the same reason that people do today: The stories that matter were not getting out. Too much was being ignored and hidden.



They also saw their goal as informing and educating. They did not (unlike today's Beggar Media) see their role as promoting either of the two dominant political parties (the same ones then as now). They never endorsed a Democratic Party presidential nominee. They, in fact, saw one of their long range goals as creating a new political party (originally as keeping the Progressive Party alive but that was impossible -- in 1948, you already had people running from it due to the Communist presence). If you were fortunate enough to know Aronson (Elaine and C.I. were), he could tell you all about the fakes in the Communist Party who latched onto the Democratic Party with the hopes of changing it from within. They would infiltrate it, they would take it over! That was their plan. As noted in other articles here, that is also what fueled the hardening against Communists among centrist and liberal Democrats and allowed them to take part in the witch hunts, or watch without objection as they went on.



It's why non-Democratic Party members like Laura Flanders, Grace Lee Boggs and others attempting to influence a Democratic Party matter (the selection of the presidential nominee) actually set the stage for the backlash that is mounting. Equally true is that a number of people who don't grasp what happened run from the party they don't understand. They're not coming back just like an earlier group switched parties and never came back. To them, the Democratic Party is officially crazy. They don't grasp that events were influenced by outsiders who had no business in the Democratic Party process because they are not Democrats. It is, to finish out this line of thought, why for all the talk of the GOP's funeral, the most dangerous development for Democrats and the thing that will lead to a steady bleed over the next years. Since FDR, no Democrat other than Bill Clinton has ever been elected to two terms as president. (Death allowed Truman and LBJ to finish their predecessors terms after which they were each elected to only one term. Jimmy Carter was elected to only one term. Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan were elected to two terms. Bully Boy Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court to one and elected to another.)



The National Guardian didn't succeed in establishing another political party. Aronson's opinion was that it split (further) into factions after he and Belfarge left in 1967 and its best times were behind it with the exception of continuing to run reports by contributors who had been with the paper for many years (such as Anna Louise Strong and Wilfred Burchett). Most readers would trace the end to the US pullout from Vietnam and careful readers would certainly notice that the coverage of Watergate was rather staid for the paper that, December 19, 1963, ran Mark Lane's "A Brief for Lee Harvey Oswald."



Lane's article had been turned down by every US outlet and, when it ran, was ignored with a tiny group choosing not to ignore it but to ridicule it. While ignored by US outlets, the international press was all over it. And that's a good place to go out because it underscores how nothing has really changed. Whether it's the Downing Street Memos or any other story, it's easier to find it covered outside the US than within -- especially true the more it has to do with events in the US.

The woman who should sit on the Court

Having lived through last summer's vote on FISA, Barack's broken promise on public financing and so much more, we don't trust him and we're certainly not going to devote our time to lobbying for a Surpeme Court nominee when we know Barack Obama's never kept his word and won't start now.

But we do want to note one thing as a list of women, possible nominees to replace Justice David Souter, flies back and forth. We want to note how appalled we are by what passes for 'leadership' on the left because there's one name which has never made the lists and should be at the top of it.

We're not going to lobby to put her on the Supreme Court (for reasons already stated) but we'll note she's earned her place on that and any other list: Anna Diggs Taylor.





Jimmy Carter appointed Judge Diggs Taylor to the federal bench (US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan). The Barnard College and Yale Law School graduate had worked for the Dept of Labor, had been a Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor, an Assistant US Attorney, a legislative assistant to US House Rep Charles C. Diggs, Jr. (her husband from 1960 through 1970, she was a legislative assistant from 1967 through 1970), a labor and a law professor and an attorney in private practice prior to sitting on the bench.

The list of organizations she's a member of include:

Michigan Association of Black Judges
Women Judges Association
Federal Judges Association
State Bar of Michigan
Federal Bar Association
Wolverine Bar Association
National Lawyer's Guild
Women Lawyers Association of Michigan
Civic & Other Activities
Trustee, Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan
Trustee, Metropolitan Detroit Health Council
Trustee, Founders Society of Detroit Institute of Arts
Trustee, Arts Poetica Chamber Orchestra
Trustee, Henry Ford Health System Eastern Region
Vice President, Yale Law Alumni Association
Co-chair, Volunteer Leadership Coalition
Co-chair, United Way Community Services
Trustee, Herlong Episcopal Cathedral School


She's clearly qualified and she clearly would bring a professional and personal background of needed diversity to the court.

But, most important, she earned her spot on the Supreme Court.

If the name hasn't registered yet, let's drop back to Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Bully Mama Babies Bully Boy" (August 20, 2006).







Yeah. The decision in ACLU v. NSA, the one where Judge Diggs Taylor found, "There are no hereditary kings in American and no powers not created by the Constitution." In 2006, the judge stood up when every other member of our three branch federal government trembled. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor stood up.

She sided with the Constitution. She gave a ruling that she knew the administration in power would be hostile. What she did took courage and guts. It showed real independence and real respect for the law.

It is amazing that a list of potential Supreme Court nominees is repeatedly circulated and her name isn't even on the list.

-----
Along with Isaiah's illustration, we're also using a photograph of Robert Maniscalo's portrait of Judge Diggs Taylor which hangs in the Theodore Levin US Courthouse, Detroit, Michigan.

Diane Rehm censors Abeer

As reported in Friday's "Iraq snapshot," the Thursday conviction of Steven D. Green in a US federal court on all counts for his War Crimes involving the gang-rape and murder of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her five-year-old sister and her parents was banned as an agenda topic on The Diane Rehm Show. Rehm didn't want to address the international incident even though Friday, as usual, found her gas bagging for an hour about 'international affairs' such as . . . well, swine flu.


E-mails came in suggesting the topic before the show began airing. E-mails came in during the broadcast. Rehm made a point to ignore all e-mails and, so worried was she that the topic might be brought up, she banned female callers to the second hour of her show. That was not only stupid, it only further exposed how few females she books. (The second hour's panel was made up of three journalists: all male. The first hour had two males and one female.)

Since Diane Rehm wouldn't read the e-mails on the air, we figured we'd note some of them here. (Thanks to ____ for passing them on to C.I.) We are withholding names from the e-mails. If you recognize an e-mail as your own and would like to be noted as the writer, e-mail us at thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com giving your permission for us to make your name public. And e-mail from the same account you e-mailed the show because that's how we'll know it was you.

We'll also note that after C.I. said, "This is going in the snapshot," The Diane Rehm Show went into overtime actually responding to some of the e-mails (____ told us that and noted that the auto reply is all anyone e-mailing the show ever gets "until you wrote that"). In the reply (which went out over five hours after the show aired, we are told, it was stressed that they really, really tried to get to the topic, really. Bull f**king s**t. What they really, really tried was to damage control.



As I listen to all the babble on this second hour and notice that NO female guest is on the panel, I have to wonder if that's why we're hearing nothing about Abeer Qassim Hamza.
Steven Dale Green was convicted yesterday afternoon.
Why aren't you talking about that?
And why doesn't Diane book female guests?
This is embarrassing, in 2009, that Diane's got 3 guests and everyone's a man.
A 14 y.o. girl was gang-raped and murdered. In Iraq. US soldiers. It's an international incident. And we can't hear it and I've got to hear three men drone on about the most dull topics in the world.
[name withheld]
Manchester, New Hampshire


As a Iraqi American whose family came here twenty years ago I am very concerend about the story of Abeer Qassim al Janabi who was only 14 when she was killed in her home along with other members of her family and she was killed after she had been raped. I have been most displeased to see no attention given to this especially since the man who is said to be the leader was convicted yesterday in court. I would hope you would find time for this topic.
Thank you,
[name withheld]


Dear Diane Rehm,
Looking forward to today's second hour because I always enjoy the lively international discussion.
Hope you will be addressing the conviction of Steven D. Green yesterday in the Kentucky federal court for his crimes in Iraq.
Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was a 14 year old girl and he was stationed in her Iraq neighborhood at a checkpoint. He was supposed to protect the neighborhood. Instead, he plotted with other US soldiers on how to rape her. He (and other soldiers already convicted) raped her. He killed her parents, he killed her sister and he killed her.
Hope this will be addressed.
Thank you,
[name withheld]
[Note that the e-mailer attaches this CNN article on the verdict after his name.]



Good morning Miss Rehm,

Can you and your guests cover the trial of the US soldier who was convicted of raping and murdering an Iraqi girl yesterday? I have not heard this covered on any show and it's the topic I really count on you for deep explorations of.

Sincerely,

[name withheld]

Ann Arbor, MI




Yesterday in Kentucky, a federal court convicted Steven Green on 16 counts over the March 12, 2006 crimes in Iraq that he and other U.S. soldiers took part in.
Green specifically took part in the gang-rape of a 14 y.o. girl, he murdered her, he murdered her parents, he murdered her sister, and he was the ringleader.
This was an international incident.
This topic belongs on today's show and I'm very distressed that I'm having to write in to say, "Girlfriend, cover it!!!!!"
[name withheld]




This story [link to Democracy Now! headlines for Friday] about the soldier being convicted for raping the 14 year old girl is really tragic and I hope you and your guests plan to discuss it.

Also when do you plan to have Jerry Seib back on the show?

Yours truly,

[name withheld]

Boston





Why is today's show ignoring the verdict in United States versus Steven D. Green?
That is the big international story and there's been no mention of it. War crimes took place in Iraq. A verdict came down yesterday.
It needs to be addressed.
[name withheld]

listening on KERA in Dallas



Dear Ms. Diane Rehm,

As a survivor of rape, I know the horror involved and I know that we rarely get media attention on sexual assault cases. That is why National Public Radio is so important. It can cover these topics and do so without interrupting to broadcast commercials. Yesterday Stephen Green, a US Army man, was convicted in court of raping and murdering a 14 year-old girl while he was serving in Iraq. This is a very important story that I believe many of your listeners would be interested in hearing about. I know I would be. Please consider addressing it.

[name withheld]

New Haven, Conn.


We could go on and on. That's only a sampling. All but two of the above are from women. The bulk of the e-mails we have copies of were written by women.

Community reactions to the verdict

Rebecca: the jury is deliberating green's guilty now.
i'm pulling for guilty. i think that's the finding the jury will make and i believe it's the finding most will expect if they've followed the case.

Stan: Are they going to find Steven D. Green guilty in Kentucky?
I don't see how they can't. (And he is guilty.) You've got eye witnesses testifying to his part in the gang-rape, to his part in the killings, to his part in planning it, to his bragging about it repeatedly after.
So I don't see an "innocent" verdict coming out of the jury.
But who knows, right?
I would vote guilty.
I think he'll be found guilty.
I'm not sure what the sentence will be, but I do think he's going to be found guilty. (And I think he is and that the prosecution established that.)


Thursday the verdict in Steven D. Green's War Crimes trial was announced and this feature is just gathering some of the community writing from last week. Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, the 14-year-old Iraqi girl who was gang-raped and murdered by US soldiers, has long been a topic at this site and at all community sites.

Kat: The jury found War Criminal Steven D. Green . . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

. . . guilty

and guilty.

All counts.



Marcia: Abeer got some justice today. It was a long time coming. March 12, 2006 she was gang-raped while her parents and kid sister were murdered in the next room and then Green joined the gang-rape and followed that by murdering her. Now Green's been found guilty and that is what we all knew to be true. C.I. analyzed the defense's bungled arguments and presentation perfectly this morning.

Betty: Abeer, I am sorry you were gang-raped and killed. I am sorry that you did not live to see 17. I am sorry you were gang-raped and sorry that it happened while you screamed as you heard your sister and parents murdered in the next room.
I am sorry that you, an innocent civilian, saw your life destroyed as a result of this illegal war.
I am sorry that you will never get to pursue your dreams.
I did not forget you over the last couple of years and I will not forget you now. You are my sister always and I do not forget what my country did to you.

Marcia: Abeer will be remembered. Those of us who care will not let her be forgotten.

Mike: That's Steven D. Green and we never dissect him on the news. He's not even mentioned. Elizabeth Edwards is trotting out her "Poor Me" act yet again and the press can't stop talking about that. Elizabeth, stop doing interviews, you are embarrassing yourself. Maybe if the junk news (like Elizabeth and John Edwards) could hit the trash bin, we could get serious talk about war crimes in our media?

Ruth: War Crimes took place.
And shame on all the people -- men and women -- who choose to ignore the ongoing trial in Kentucky of Steven D. Green. But it is especially appalling as a woman who saw the second-wave came alive, as a feminist who really throught the world was changing, to see what so-called 'feminists' of the third-wave choose to write about. It is appalling to notice all the silences. These are the 'feminists' who live on junk food and crap it back out online and want to call that 'doing their part.' It is disgusting.


C.I.: What was done to her family was horrible. What was done to her was even worse. Think about the gang-rape. It starts when her parents and sister are led out of the room. Abeer's fighting and screaming. And then she hears the gunshots. She knows her parents and her sister have been shot. She knows the bullets didn't 'bounce off' so they're either bleeding or dead and she heard screams. Who did Steven D. Green shoot first? Her kid sister? So Abeer heard her mother screaming after the first shot? Or maybe Green took out Abeer's father first in which case she heard her mother and her sister screaming?
As she was being gang-raped.
And then Paul Cortez and James Barker are done with the gang-rape as Steven D. Green enters the room. It's his 'turn.' And she's being raped again and by the man she knows has just killed her parents and her sister. Between the physical pain and the emotional pain, hopefully by that point she was in shock. If she wasn't, she knew he was going to kill her. He's killed everyone else in the house. He's raping her, she's been raped by two other men. He's killed her parents and her sister and now he's got to kill her because she's the last witness.
If she's not in shock, she may be praying they kill her quickly. Not just because of the pain she's in but because two of her brothers aren't home yet. She may be thinking that if it drags out any longer, her younger brothers will come home and they'll be the next murdered.
Who knows what was going through her head or if she was in such a state of shock that she wasn't even thinking at that point?
We don't know and none of our outlets have bothered to treat her like the person she was and to consider it from her point of view. They've largely ignored her. I'm glad the Times finally mentions her name today and, considering the paper's record, I won't blame the reporters for waiting until paragraph thirteen to mention her name. That's not what reporters generally do. They generally give a name and then use "she" and "her". They don't open with "she" and "her" and continue to use those for paragraph after paragraph. It's unnatural and it feels like editing. So I'm not going to blame them for it and I will applaud them for getting her name into the paper.
But even today, when she's finally in the paper, someone's made the call that she's not worth naming until pargraph thirteen of a fourteen paragraph story. Even when her name finally makes the New York Times, she's pretty much an unnamed extra in what should be her story.

Trina: On the issue of getting the word out on the case, I want to take a moment to note three people.
I'll start with Brett Barrouquere of AP who has covered this story since 2006. He had not yet hit the three year mark but it was looming. A great deal of what the world learned about all the trials on these War Crimes came from Barrouquere. He was also the only reporter from the MSM who covered Green's trial each day.
I want to note Evan Bright. He covered every day of the trial as well. Bright is a high school senior. C.I. heard about him from friends at the US AG and they interviewed him for Third ("Evan Bright Puts Big Media To Shame"). Bright doesn't think he'll end up being a reporter after college but, if you ask me, he's a natural with real talents. I do hope someone's advised him to include his coverage of the trial as part of his college application.
Third? C.I. C.I. never let go of this story. She was on it when it started and she regularly called out the lies and the silences. For nearly three years. She knows the case incredibly well and has the facts down pat. In part due to a friend who needed help researching Green for a movie but also because that's C.I. She did an amazing job. When no one was covering it, she was on it. This month and last, her coverage included reporting on an analyzing court filings up through the court orders for some witnesses on the prosecution's list. She walked you through the judge refusing to allow some of the more ludicrous lines of defense Green's attorneys wanted to make. That was reporting. And she's the only one who did that. No one else went through those court documents and reported on them. When she started doing that in April, she was hoping to build some interest in Abeer outside the TCI community. Thinking covering Green's ridiculous requests would peek interest. That really didn't happen. But she covered Abeer and when the trial started, she made sure Abeer was mentioned each trial day repeatedly to ensure Abeer wasn't forgotten.


Like Cedric and Wally, in "Steven D. Green convicted" and "THIS JUST IN! CONVICTED!," we'll emphasize Trina's remarks. Jody e-mailed asking about that and Wally's mother saw Trina's post, called Wally and asked if he and Cedric had finished their joint-post? When Wally said no, his mother asked him to consider including Trina's comments in it. Wally and Cedric read the above and realized that said it all.

She sounds like an idiot

America is having economic meltdown and crisis. The Progressive elects to pull quote Naomi Kelein (page 126 of the April issue) stating, "This is an amazing moment for the left, for progressives. Because the free market ideology is truly in crisis."



As intelligent and sensitive remarks go, it's right up there with BullyBoy Bush declaring on 9-11, "This is a great opportunity. We have to think of this as an opportunity." (Bush At War, Bob Woodward, pages 31-32.)

Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ, Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.

"Abeer makes the NYT finally," "Iraq snapshot," "Steven D. Green convicted of War Crimes," "Iraq snapshot," "Closing arguments in the War Crimes trial," "Iraq snapshot," "Steven D. Green (public domain photo)," "Closing arguments today in the War Crimes Trial," "Iraq snapshot," "Prosecution rests in War Crimes trial" and "Iraq snapshot" -- Lewis and Amanda had the same idea. Both e-mailed Ty and asked him to ask us to highlight C.I.'s entries which cover Abeer. Unless we missed one, there were eleven.



Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Useless Blogger" -- Isaiah also found a way to note the trial via this clever and funny comic.





"Steven D. Green convicted of his War Crimes" -- A first, the most requested highlight was not by C.I. Trina was the most requested highlight and people are asking for this to be a truest. We haven't decided on the truest statements of the week yet; however, this is on the consideration list.



"Steven D. Green convicted" & "THIS JUST IN! CONVICTED!" -- Like so many of you, Cedric and Wally loved Trina's commentary as well and chose to include it ("to make it," says Cedric) their joint-entry.



"I Hate The War" -- 3 votes behind Trina, here's C.I.'s Thursday night entry.



"Cherie Welch go FUCK YOURSELF" -- And only 2 votes behind C.I.'s entry is this post by Ruth. Highly popular with people applauding Ruth. We applaud Ruth as well. That e-mail from Cherie Welch is not just rude smut, it's filled with lies. Stan brought a quote from Danny Schechter into a roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin many months ago and C.I. informed us, by hearing it, that Schechter didn't write that statement (C.I. broke it down into a linguistic analysis and told us a woman wrote it). Marica and Stan have pointed out other times since then (see Marcia's "Danny Schechter has been kidnapped" for what we believe is the issue's first appearance at a site online). Cherie Welch needs to be a good little sock puppet and move along.





"Waiting on the verdict," "the grab bag post," "What will the verdict be?," "Waiting for the jury," "Steven D. Green trial," "Steven D. Green and Mitch Jeserich," "What's it going to be?," "Some people need to learn to say goodbye" and "The criminals" -- Why no theme post last week? Because we didn't know when the jury was going to go into deliberation in the Steven D. Green case. We imagined that it would be difficult waiting on the jury to deliberate but we had no idea. Wednesday night's posts were the hardest to write. But anticipating that it could happen at any time last week, we all agreed not to offer up a theme post.



"Marilyn French" -- Elaine's post on Marilyn French was requested by several readers of this site. And their e-mail address here is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com. To help Ty, Dona and Jim (who read the bulk of the e-mails), if you're asking for a highlight put "Highlight" in your subject heading.



"Justice for Abeer" -- Which a few of you did with this by Betty. (Although we would have picked this ourselves. Betty's telling it like it is.)



"Bully is . . . being oblivious to everything" -- Each week, Isaiah offers a look back at his first year of doing comics for The Common Ills.



"standing with ruth," "Unacceptable," "Abeer and other items," "Danny Schecter's sockpuppet hurls insults," "The really-reals," "The Dumb Ass of the Week: Cherie Welch," "Strong words in the Kitchen" and "Friday"-- The community stands with Ruth. C.I. notes that in "Abeer makes the NYT finally" and writes, "I do not mean this as a negative criticism of anyone's post but I do know for a fact that Mike planned to write about the ACLU and torture and Elaine was going to cover Abeer at length. Stan was going to do his movie post. Because of the nonsense pulled, everyone got stuck in response mode. And they set their planned topics aside. To do that here, I would have to do a bonus entry and I don't have time. So we'll do our two Iraq entries and I'll table my own thoughts until I sub for Turh [Ruth] while she's on vacation. But for anyone who wonders, I love Ruth and I stand with her always." We wanted to do a roundtable but there's not going to be time, it's already been a long edition. But because Ty did have people e-mailing asking, we'll say, "C.I.'s right and no, it wasn't an insult and we didn't take it as one." We had our Friday posts planned. Especially everyone except Betty and Cedric! That's because they were all (everyone else was all) at the McKinnon house and going to have some fun with a bbq and more that was planned. So we had planned our topics out ahed of time and intended to do a quick post and get to partying. That didn't happen. Some of us (like Mike) were so ticked off by Cherie Welch's nonsense that we couldn't even think of things to write and had to go asking for topics despite having planned topics before. We were in response mode. And we needed to be because we're not going to let Ruth be talked to like that. But we were doing offense most of the week and had planned to continue that on Friday. Some people did (Marcia and Elaine to be sure) but most of us were just responding. And sometimes you have to. C.I. knows that. But she can't respond unless she wants to do it as a bonus entry because otherwise she will hear it in e-mails, "You wrote about an attack on Ruth. That has nothing to do with Iraq. You usually do two entries on Iraq on Saturday, where's the other one?" And one more thing on this entry by C.I. Mike: "I posted it. I'm the one who was supposed to edit Ruth's title so the f-word didn't appear. I forgot. C.I. wrote that early in the morning and I posted that a little after I got back from dropping C.I., Wally, Ava and Kat off at the airport. I mention that (a) to set the record straight and (b) to point out a point that's been made by Marica and others recently, C.I. has no problem owning a mistake. C.I.'s added a note where she says it was her fault and doesn't even mention me. Not only does C.I. have no problem owning a mistake, she'll own ones that are not even her mistakes. It was my mistake and my apologies if anyone was offended by the f-word."