Sam Husseini

In-Office and Online Internships Available at the Institute for Public Accuracy

Noam Chomsky: "IPA has been regularly providing the media with informed and expert commentary on the crucial events of the day, compensating for the inevitable distortion and significant omissions that trace to reliance on official sources and on a narrow spectrum of opinion, among other factors. Apart from its constructive contributions to media comprehensiveness and accuracy, for individuals who are seeking a better understanding of evolving world events IPA has been an incomparable source of critically important news that had escaped notice or received inadequate or misleading coverage, as well as acute analysis that is hard to find or completely missing in the mainstream. Speaking personally, I have found it invaluable as a source of insight and information, and for leads to pursue that I would otherwise have missed."

The Institute for Public Accuracy -- http://accuracy.org -- is a non-profit organization that increases the reach and capacity of progressive and grassroots organizations (at no cost to them) to address public policy by getting them and their ideas into the mainstream media. IPA gains media access for those whose voices are commonly excluded or drowned out by government or corporate-backed institutions. As a national consortium of independent public-policy researchers, analysts and activists, we widen media exposure for progressive perspectives on many issues including the environment, human rights, foreign policy, and economic justice. 

The typical internship itself involves real hands on-work. Interns work directly with our staff and the experts whom we publicize. Through that interaction they gain valuable insight into how to work with the media and think more critically about the mainstream press. Interns are responsible for researching and compiling our news releases, fielding inquiries from working journalists, publishing our news releases, posting blogs and interviews from our "experts," managing our webpage and building our social media presence.

Our office is located in the National Press Building in the heart of downtown D.C., right next to Metro Center, but coming in might not always be required; we welcome applications from outside the D.C. area. 

We're looking for an intern to be available as soon as possible. Our schedule is flexible, and we can accommodate both full and part-time interns. We're looking for students with an interest in politics who are capable of thinking critically about the media and who can work well under deadlines. 

Responsibilities include:

* Following news to help put out editorial material
* Tracking down experts for news releases and helping put releases together
* Updating IPA's web page
* Building up IPA's online presence including twitter, facebook and a new IPA blog
* Structural improvements to IPA's web presence, such as building an online Daybook
* Using databases to add journalists contacts to IPA's email lists
* Attending and covering events at the National Press Club

Contact: Communications Director Sam Husseini at samhusseini at gmail.com, or call him at 202-347-0020.

Etta James "At Last" vs Peggy Lee "Is That All There Is?" #GreatSongDebate

Many have rightly given tribute to Etta James upon her death. I'd much rather associate "At Last" with her directly or with a wonderful scene on Boston Legal when, as I recall, Alan Shore and Tara Wilson finally shack up in a motel with the neon lights strunning into their room than the inauguration abomination. 

Just recently my dear friend Emily introduced me to more of the work of Peggy Lee, and especially "Is That All There Is?" -- which offers an appropriate rebuttal to Etta Lee's classic. Peggy Lee herself died exactly ten years ago yesterday.   

Note: I'd wrongly called Etta James Etta Lee initially, appologies; thanks Steve.

Ron Paul References the Golden Rule and Martin Luther King. We Must Stop This Madman and Deride His Followers

From last night's Republican debate. Transcript and video.

RON PAUL: My — my — my point is, if another country does to us what we do others, we’re not going to like it very much. So I would say that maybe we ought to consider a golden rule in — in foreign policy. Don’t do to other nations…
(BOOING)
… what we don’t want to have them do to us. So we — we endlessly bomb — we endlessly these countries and then we wonder — wonder why they get upset with us? And — and yet it — it continues on and on. I mean, this — this idea…
BAIER: That’s time.
PAUL: This idea that we can’t debate foreign policy, then all we have to do is start another war? I mean, it’s — it’s warmongering. They’re building up for another war against Iran, and people can’t wait to get in another war. This country doesn’t need another war. We need to quit the ones we’re in. We need to save the money and bring our troops home.

...

 

PAUL: Yes. Definitely. There is a disparity. It’s not that it is my opinion, it is very clear. Blacks and minorities who are involved with drugs, are arrested disproportionately. They are tried and imprisoned disproportionately. They suffer the consequence of the death penalty disproportionately. Rich white people don’t get the death penalty very often.
And most of these are victimless crimes. Sometimes people can use drugs and arrested three times and never committed a violent act and they can go to prison for life. And yet we see times just recently we heard where actually murders get out of prison in shorter periods of time. So I think it’s way — way disproportionate.
I don’t think we can do a whole lot about it. I think there’s discrimination in the system, but you have to address the drug war. You know, the drug war is — is very violent on our borders. We have the immigration problem, and I’m all for having, you know, tight immigration policies, but we can’t ignore the border without looking at the drug war.
In the last five years, 47,500 people died in the drug war down there. This is a major thing going on. And it unfairly hits the minorities. This is one thing I am quite sure that Martin Luther King would be in agreement with me on this. As a matter of fact, Martin Luther King he would be in agreement with me on the wars, as well, because he was a strong opponent to the Vietnam War.
So I — I — I would say, yes, the judicial system is probably one of the worst places where — where prejudice and — and discrimination still exists in this country.

Angry Arab: Apparently Not Angry Enough @AngryArabNews

I love As'ad AbuKhalil and angryarab.blogspot.com but I have to say, pretty funny to have these back to back items, ahh the contradictions of media work, "makin out with Judas just to make your bail":


Saudi Arabia on Aljazeera

You know how much Aljazeera has changed when you see how it covered--or not covered--the shooting in `Awamiyyah in Saudi Arabia. The news ticker only reported the "news" that a police vehicle was set on fire. Not a single word about the shootings. Today, it only reported the official statement of the Saudi Ministry of Interior.  This is not the Aljazeera I know.  

Posted by As'ad AbuKhalil at 1:42 AM 
Labels: 

Aljazeera

I shall appear on Min Washington program (from London) on Aljazeera Arabic to speak about US policies.  It is recorded on Tuesday. Check your local listings.

Posted by As'ad AbuKhalil at 1:38 AM 
Labels: 

Honor Martin Luther King By Spreading His Message: Share Text and Audio of His Final Speeches

As corporate media disseminate the image of Martin Luther King as a "dreamer" who simply worked for the rights of "his people," activists, especially those around the occupy movement should get information out about the real Martin Luther King. 

Here's a PDF that people can print and pass out at places of work and worship; on the street or at the parks: "Martin Luther King Denounced Racism -- and Militarism and Exploitation." Audio from his strongest speeches and sermons is available to be played over local radio stations and streamed online. At a recent demonstration in DC, an activist streamed a speech over a phone and blared it through a loudspeaker. 

King first came out publicly against the Vietnam War at the Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was killed: 

"A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. ..." He noted that if militarism was not seriously addressed, people would be trying to stop future wars in countless other countries. See full text and audio.

After his Riverside address, King was widely attacked by the U.S. establishment media. Rather than backtracking, he responded even more strongly on April 30, 1967 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church: "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. ..." 

He then addressed his critics, especially the corporate media: "There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward [segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children' There is something wrong with that press! ... To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. ..." 

He also articulated a broad moral critique of the established economic order: "I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. ... When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. ... True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. ..." See full text and audio.

The message King articulated has great relevance to many of the ailments that remain with us today and the day set aside in his honor is a great gift to share this with others. 

How Media and Pollsters Pundify the Public and Marginalize Actual Ideas

As so many follow "the opinion polls" in New Hampshire, keep this in mind: They don't measure opinion. The tracking question being continuously asked is some minor variant of "If the election were held today, for whom would you vote?" This false hypothetical of a question compels voters to pick the candidate who they think is the strategic choice to beat President Obama, not the one they most want to be president.

The question as framed doubles down on the restrictions our electoral system imposes on citizens rather than freeing them from them. That is, the primary voters could want a candidate but we might not know it since they are not asked who they actually want for president, only who they would vote for in the primary; but they are not voting with who the necessarily want, but who they think -- think -- will beat Obama.

The process during the primaries is largely focused around the voters of one of the establishment party being guided by the media to back a candidate who ostensibly has the best chance of beating the candidate of the other establishment party. A recent Zogby poll found that nearly 50 percent of Republican New Hampshire primary voters would rather vote for someone who "shares some views but can beat Obama" as opposed to only 40 percent of those who would vote for someone who more more strongly "shares views [but] not strong vs. Obama."

But who is to say who would be a stronger candidate? Mitt Romney is frequently described as the Republican who would be most formidable to Obama in a general election and Ron Paul is frequently dismissed as unelectable, but Paul is probably the Republican best positioned to reach out to independents and Democrats.

Consider what a farcical exercise it was the last time we went through a primarily process with a sitting U.S. president on the other side of the two-party duopoly:

In 2004, Democratic voters were told over and over by the media that candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean were unelectable. This despite the fact that Kucinich consistently got the greatest applause in Democratic debates (when he wasn't excluded from them); but he got preciously few votes because he was deemed to be "unelectable" -- presumably because most every independent and Republican voter was a fire breathing pro-war corporatist. Endlessly played video of "The Dean Scream" effectively ended his candidacy. The media conventional wisdom was the John Kerry was somehow "electable" -- because he had "experience" -- never mind that part of that experience included voting for granting George W. Bush authorization to attack Iraq. So the Democratic Party ended up with a candidate who wound up saying it was "for the war before he was against it" and other inspiring statements.

And the drive to have someone who is "electable" often trumps everything else. So actual ideas about war, the economy, jobs, society, families and whose policies people actually agree with all get sidelined. The endless horse race coverage not only eats up media time, it eats up viewers' brains -- turning citizens into pundits.

James Zobgy at a news conference last week wondered if we were not actually seeing with the success of Ron Paul in Iowa the "birth of a third party" -- especially since Paul had such success with young people who would likely not back any other Republican candidate (with the exception of Gary Johnson, who has been totally marginalized) and that so many of these young people were jaded with Obama.

The compulsion to vote for electability rather than actual belief in the ideas being expressed by a candidate in the primary season does not end as we enter the general election. Rather, it morphs into something perhaps even more insidious: lesser-evilism. Millions and millions vote in election after election for the Democratic candidate not because they affirmatively agree with them, but because they are driven by fear of the Republican. And millions more do the exact same thing in the opposite direction. They all cancel out each others votes. Many of these people would find they actually agree with third party and independent candidates from the Green, Socialist, Libertarian or Constitution Parties. But most of them don't even consider voting for them because they feel an over riding compulsion to stop the other major party at all cost, driven by a heard and brain-freezing fear. Add to the tragic farce that many of these people know each other, but effectively nullify their friends votes because they hate the candidate their friend is settling upon.

And similarly, the polls during the general election extenuate the problem rather than alleviating it. It's even conceivable that there could be a third party or independent candidate in a general election who would have majority support and we may not even know it, since everyone focuses around the question "if the election were held today, which of the candidates would you vote for" and the public -- unaware that an anti-establishment candidate -- someone who is opposed to the wars and Wall Street bailouts and corporate influence that the establishments of both major political parties have embraced and occasionally deride each other for -- could have majority support.

A simple suggestion for a test as to who people actually want: "The following candidates are all tied for the presidency. You have the deciding vote. Who would you cast that deciding vote for?" Such a question would get to who people actually want, like and perhaps even love, rather than grinding the public through a process of guessing and spinning and polling and pundifying as to who is in the best position to beat a candidate you presumably hate.

Resurrecting Christopher Hitchens

The Triangulations of Christopher Hitchens: Lessons for Journalism and the Left
by Sam Husseini

When the sleigh is heavy / And the timber wolves are getting bold
You look at your companions / And test the water of their friendship with your toe
They significantly edge / Closer to the gold
Each man has his price Bob / And yours was pretty low
 -- Roger Waters, "Too Much Rope" from "Amused to Death"
Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for. 
-- Bob Marley (attributed)
(I tweeted this the day Hitchens died, a day before his death was announced.) 

"Have you stopped vomiting yet, Christopher?" were the first words I ever said to Christopher Hitchens face-to-face, I'd bumped into him at some DC shindig, the type of thing I rarely went to and what he seemed at times to live off. It was just after the deaths of both "Princess Diana" and "Mother Teresa" and Hitchens seemed to be on Cloud 9. My comment stemmed from a recent quote of his on a chat show -- I think Meet the Press -- that the commemorations around Diana's death were such that he "couldn't stop vomiting". 

The adulation that followed Hitchens to his grave would be enough to induce serious regurgitation from the better demons of Hitchens' past self, if that still exists somewhere, if it ever really did. As gushing flattery poured out from writer after writer who recounting with swagger their interactions with Hitchens -- I've been left to figuring how to account for mine. There have been a few serious pieces noting his stark contradictions, but they didn't seem to account for how he was trusted by many who should have known better, and I certainly count myself among the guilty on this count, though with reason.

Despite our personal meetings, some meals and drinks, and my reading him since I was young, I'll forever associate Hitchens with email, and I've recently retrieved some, but not all, of my past emails with him off dusty harddrives, see below. For example, shortly after 9/11, I wrote him in a note titled "your pathetic question" in response to his first pro-war piece in which I wrote: "The fascists like Bin-Laden could not get volunteers to stuff envelopes if Israel had withdrawn from Jerusalem like it was supposed to -- and the U.S. stopped the sanctions and the bombing on Iraq." I should say this was rather similar to what Hitchens had himself been saying for years: "If the U.S. had stood for mutual recognition on the Palestine question and had directed its energies to a settlement of that dispute, Saddam Hussein would have been punching air when it came to recruiting support outside his borders." 
But Hitchens took the occasion of the 9/11 attacks to not only attack me -- as he had others, putting me in the splendid company of Zinn and Chomsky -- but to threaten me with the hand of "the authorities". He quoted my email to him from above in a column in The Nation and then wrote: "You've heard this 'thought' expressed in one way or another, dear reader, have you not? I don't think I took enough time in my last column to point out just what is so utterly rotten at the very core of it. So, just to clean up a corner or two: (1) If Husseini knows what was in the minds of the murderers, it is his solemn responsibility to inform us of the source of his information, and also to share it with the authorities. ..."

He then sent me that column after 2 a.m. with a PS attached: "I am dead serious about my first point and will call you on 
it again. If
 you claim you knew what these people had in mind, I want you to show me that
 you contacted the authorities with your information before you sent your
 blithering little letter to me. Either that or you shut the fuck up - not that it matters any more what you say.
 And you claim to know how enemies are made....You have no idea." And I'm sad to say that, to an extent, that did help to shut me up -- or at least end up with me playing a more behind-the-scenes role. And it was somewhat understandable. A few days earlier, I was on Bill O'Reilly and he had cut my mic. And Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman and other great figures were weighing in on what Hitchens was spouting, I probably couldn't add much to the arguments they marshaled. And I had seemingly bigger fish to fry -- getting desperately needed material out to media outlets through my day job. But another factor was that Hitchens had serious government connections and had dragged Sid Blumenthal, himself rather well-connected, through the legal mud. And, after all it was just after 9/11 and the government was rounding up Arabs and Muslim with little legal constraint -- and those violations seemed immensely more important than Hitchens threatening me. 
Hitchens would later say he was against government wiretapping through the NSA with substantial fanfare. Apparently he preferred the more old-fashioned approach of people turning in their alleged friends to "the authorities". And for the benefit of cameras, Hitchens would make great show of coming out against torture by himself being water boarded. 
Never mind that were I to have thrown caution to the wind and he to act on his threat how distant he was from causing that to be done to me when liberty was most vulnerable. The positions Hitches took were a high form of triangulation of the worst sort -- and that gave him a fake sort of relevancy at times. Even my friends at The Real News this week plugged a video of Hitchens getting water boarded [in their "best of the web" section]. And Democracy Now just after his death proudly touted the debates they featured with Hitchens. 

In another email exchange, Hitchens mocks me for suggesting that the U.S. would attack Iraq just as Clinton was about to be impeached. I ask him for assurance that there will not be an attack within the next week, he dismisses that and -- within about 24 hours -- the U.S. launched the Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign. In another exchange, Hitchens writes to me: "vigilant as ever, but not as vigilant as you" -- a month later his book comes out with my ideas and without my name in it, an oversight he called "shaming" -- so he presumably has some. 

I almost think by the end of his life, though we'd not spoken in years, there was no one rooting for him to beat the cancer more than I. And for very Hitchens-like reasons. "Purify your hatred" he'd write me, an art form I failed in acquiring. It rather reminds me of a Kathy Kelly piece years ago quoting an elderly Iraqi man about the devastating effects of the sanctions, killing hundreds of thousands of children in the first phase of the 20-year war that is ostensibly ending now, saying that he wished George H. W. Bush -- yes, the revered father, not the despised son -- would go to heaven ... so that he could see all the Iraqi children he'd killed. 

In the end, I really wanted Hitchens to live long enough to face the full consequences of the wars he'd help wrought. After all, he did have moments of genius, though they were quickly forgotten, most likely, including by him. I recall a C-Span debate, with Morton Kondracke, just after the start of the Gulf War, in early 1991, as pundit after pundit was positing that that war would last two weeks -- no, perhaps as long as three or five weeks -- Hitchens chimed in: It would "last about a hundred years". And a tenth of the way into that, he'd set out to rather explicitly make the prediction a reality by outright backing the U.S. aggressions after 9/11. And then turning his back on his insights, claimed in 2003 that Iraq saw the end of a "long short war". 

A parable for our age is to contrast Hitchens' rise with Scott Ritter's descent. In the mid 90s, Ritter was the establishment media's golden boy -- an articulate arms inspector who reamed Saddam Hussein for alleged non-compliance. After coming out against attacking Iraq and saying that Iraq was basically unarmed before the U.S. invasion -- no matter how nationalistic his reasoning -- Ritter became an official enemy, shoved to political marginalization for the crime of being correct. And quite possibly driven to near madness, or at least to exchanging sexual material with females he thought were under 16. And so he's in jail, to the gleeful if muffled delight of much of the establishment. Hitchens by contrast land lauds from so many for his alleged courage -- yet, or exactly because, he had none when it mattered. Or actually Hitchens was good at displaying "courage" against those who were in the outs with the establishment who had no power, which is the same as none. 

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