Action Point with Cynthia Black 01-13-2008 The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• ENTERTAINMENT: Tom Hanks Tells Hollywood Whopper in 'Charlie Wilson's War':

  Charlie Wilson's War purports to be the true story of a hard-partying U.S. congressman from Texas who engineered the defeat of the Soviet Union by the Afghan Mujahiddin. Now there are true stories, and there are true-ish stories. It is a given that, in creating a film narrative, sometimes the truth gets a little bent, but it's against the rules to change facts that change the outcome of history. When telling the story of Antony and Cleopatra, they gotta die at the end, n'est-ce pas? It's inappropriate, for example, to tell the story of World War II and pretend that, because the United States might have given a box of guns to the French Underground, there was no Holocaust. That's a pretty good analogy for what's been done in Charlie Wilson's War.

• ELECTION INTEGRITY: We need to eliminate secret vote counting, not a recount:

  It's pretty easy to see what happened in New Hampshire: We had an election in which 81% of our ballots were counted in secret by a private corporation, and this resulted in an outcome that is called into question. That's what happened. No recount is going to change this. What will change this is to get rid of corporate controlled secret vote counting in our elections.

  And, What's Sexist and What's Fair Game When It Comes to Hillary Clinton?

  I decided to give some somewhat random examples in my own mind of the difference between inappropriate standard white-male chauvinism and actual candidate "fair game" issues.

• THE ANDREW MYERS FILE (UPDATES FROM A POST 9-11 WORLD): At Taser party, it's shock and awe:

  Before she lets them shoot her little pink stun gun, Dana Shafman ushers her new friends to the living room sofa for a serious chat about the fears she believes they all share. "The worst nightmare for me is, while I'm sleeping, someone coming in my home," Shafman said, drawing a few solemn nods from the gathered women. Shafman, 34, of Phoenix, says she knows how they feel and tells how she used to stash knives under her pillow for protection. Welcome, she says, to the Taser party.

• Campaign 2008: U.S. corporate elite fear candidate Edwards:

  Edwards suffered a blow on Thursday when Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry snubbed him and endorsed Obama. Edwards was Kerry's vice-presidential running mate in Kerry's failed Democratic bid for the White House in 2004. BUSINESS'S FAVORITE UNCLEAR: Asked which candidate their clients most support, corporate lobbyists were unsure. Clinton has cautious backing within the corporate jet set, as do Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and former Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, they said.

• ENVIRONMENT: Green At Work Magazine Premier Corporate Sustainability Publication: The latest green business website I've discovered.

• MUST READ: Stay Classy, Mike Huckabee: another excellent piece from David Sirota:

  "The uncool subject is class," author Bell Hooks once wrote. "It's the subject that makes us all tense." What an understatement, considering the two leading "change" candidates in the latest presidential polls.

• "I Just Want to Tear Out My Hair" Darfur peacekeeping set back by 6 months: If only Darfur had strategic oil reserves.

  U.N. peacekeeping forces lack the troops and equipment necessary to improve the situation in violence-wracked Darfur and will continue to be ineffective until mid-2008, the U.N. peacekeeping chief cautioned Wednesday.

• INTERNATIONAL: Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats:

  The Iranians have denied using the threatening language and are saying U.S.-released video is fabricated. Today, the Iranian government aired its own video of the event on state-run TV there.

• NO COMMENT: Suspicious Minds, How a ragtag group of conspiracy nuts is changing public perception of 9/11.

• Personal Safety Alert: World's Top Surveillance Societies:

  Experienced air traffic controllers are retiring faster this year than the government projected and their union said Wednesday the remaining veterans can no longer safely handle peak volumes in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Southern California.

Action Point with Cynthia Black 11-04-2007: The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• From the Giuliani File: Councilman Gioia "I will do everything in my power to get answers, to get the truth"

  "...we have been working with the good folks at Brave New Films to get the New York City Council to investigate the way the administration of Rudy Giuliani handled the replacement and deployment of the FDNY radios that proved to be such a source of tragedy on 9/11. We delivered a petition urging action with almost 20,000 signatures to Councilman Eric Gioia on Monday and were very pleased at his initial reaction. Today we have even more video of the Councilman stating in very strong terms that he not only supports such an inquiry but is doing all he can to get the ball rolling.

• MUST READ: Bush Threatens to Veto Aid to Workers Harmed by Outsourcing: another excellent piece from David Sirota:

  At the same time the White House is pushing to vastly expand the job-killing, wage-destroying NAFTA trade model, we get this from
  Bloomberg News (full story attached below):
  "President George W. Bush may veto legislation to expand benefits for
  workers harmed by international trade because it would cover more
  workers than necessary

• Framing the Debate: The Real Meaning of 'Free Press': from Jeffrey Feldman,
  

• From the "I Think I'm Gonna Scream Now" File: Theocracy Now! Max Blumenthal keeps his eye on the wackadoodles so you don't have to...

• Update to The Andrew Meyers File: Don't Tase Me 'Bro Student Won't Be Charged: and his future with Greg Palast!

• Foreign Policy File: Putting the 'Israel Lobby' in Perspective and from Iran Nuclear Watch: Another Letter to the President on Iran

• FASCISM WATCH: Debt and Development, Presidential-Style: in the not-too-distant past Greg Palast and I discussed just this topic:

  "Co-reported alongside the news that Hunt Oil Company of Dallas had entered into an oil development contract in Iraqi Kurdistan was the fact that Hunt Oil's head honcho was a multi-million dollar contributor to the planned George W. Bush Presidential Library project."

• No Explanation Needed: Scholar links Bush's US and Hirohito:

  A top US scholar of wartime Japan said Wednesday that the Bush administration's "war on terror" bore close parallels to Japan's past militarism through a defiance of international law.
  
  Herbert Bix, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his landmark biography of wartime emperor Hirohito, said he believed US aerial bombings and alleged use of torture in Afghanistan and Iraq constituted war crimes.
  
  "The current American rampage in Iraq and elsewhere, not to mention the Bush administration's threats of war against Iran, so clearly replicates Imperial Japan during the period when its leaders willfully disregarded international law and pursued the diplomacy of force," Bix said during a visit to Tokyo.