Listener suggestion: Sponsor a showing of "Bull Durham" in your community (even your home) as a fund raiser for your local peace group!

Steve Kelley (Sea Times) on Sarandon, Robbins and baseball

Iraq, a very literate country, was celebrating in the streets.

The population was filled with the hope that maybe, just maybe, it could celebrate the freedoms that have been denied it for a generation.

Freedoms like the freedom of speech.

Meanwhile, on this nation's sports pages yesterday, baseball's Hall of Fame president, Dale Petroskey, was declaring that, because of the politics of actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, the Hall was canceling its planned celebration of the 15th anniversary of the release of the baseball movie "Bull Durham."

Petroskey, who just happens to be a former assistant White House press secretary under Ronald Reagan, said in a letter to Sarandon and Robbins: "We believe your very public criticism of President Bush at this important — and sensitive — time in our nation's history helps undermine the U.S. position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger."

The decision is all bull and no Durham.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/134673417_kell11.html

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Who DARES to Criticize Our Great Leader

NZ PM under attack amid claims Bush is offended

Clark under attack amid claims Bush is offended

Prime Minister Helen Clark faced fierce pressure in Parliament yesterday over claims that United States President George W. Bush had taken personal offence at her comments on the Iraq war and that his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, had asked the Government for an explanation.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz

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Now they've done it... they've pissed off the JOURNALIST!

I guess that will kill the story of the gold fixtures in Saddams bathroom...

Press group slams US attack on journalists' Baghdad hotel

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemned a US attack on a Baghdad hotel that killed one cameraman and wounded four correspondents as a possible war crime.

The Brussels-based lobby group also accused the Iraqi regime of using journalists and other civilians as "human shields" and demanded that both sides in the war be punished under international law.

"There is no doubt at all that these attacks could be targeting journalists. If so, they are grave and serious violations of international law," said IFJ general secretary Aidan White.

"The bombing of hotels where journalists are staying and targeting of Arab media are particularly shocking events in a war which is being fought in the name of democracy," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s827705.htm

By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN

During the 43 days that comprised the Persian Gulf War in 1991, no journalists lost their lives in the conflict. The current war in Iraq, now just 21 days old, has claimed the lives of 10 journalists, three of whom were killed today in United States military strikes in Baghdad.

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t r u t h o u t: Show The Whole Truth

Show The Whole Truth

t r u t h o u t | Response to reader.

By John Cory

Thursday 3 April 2003

Editors Note: The following letter was written by TO contributing writer John Cory in response to a TO reader who questioned the patriotism of the TO staff. The reader, Steve is a Vietnam veteran, as is John Cory.

Dear Steve,

I read your letter to Truthout.Com and wanted to write to you. I too am a Vietnam Veteran.

You wrote, "Show the whole truth.'' And I agree. Show the World Trade Center and the Pentagon carnage and let the record reflect that no Iraqi, no Saddam Hussein, was involved in the despicable acts of 9/11. And in showing the whole truth, let us ask again: Why Iraq?

You referred to Truthout as a "tree hugging liberal.'' As soldiers, surely you and I share the tree hugging experience of dodging shrapnel and RPGs. We know what it is to hug a tree or wrap our ammo belt around a tree just to hold on as our legs floated in the river and the unseen "enemy'' tried to do us bodily harm. As I recall in Vietnam, tree huggers were not just liberals.

You and I are veterans. Veterans of military service and veterans of war. But I take exception to veterans who wrap themselves in the flag as a means to judge and bestow freedom, patriotism, and civil liberties on others. As soldiers, we did our duty as required of all soldiers, to uphold the Constitution. That was the oath we took. That oath did not specify that only those who believed as we did were covered by our tours of duty. In America, the freedoms enjoyed by its citizens are inherent. They neither have to be earned or deemed appropriate by anyone else. The American birthright was founded on dissent and freedom of speech long before you and I slogged through rice paddies. Black soldiers who fought in WW II served in a segregated military. Native Americans served despite the fact that many were not allowed to vote. And Japanese-Americans served despite interment camps. All of these men served with honor and heroism, fighting for freedoms that they were denied in that place called America.

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William Pitt: Our Flag, Too - a report from the front lines of the Patriot Wars

by William Pitt

The residents of an unassuming house, tucked away in a quiet corner of a small New England college campus, have found themselves at the center of a disturbing fight for the basic right to express their opinion as Americans. Seven students at 44 Howard Street on the Wheaton College campus, located in the rural community of Norton, Massachusetts, have discovered, with suddenness and fury, how difficult it is today to speak your mind in a nation divided by war.

It started on the day the Bush administration took this nation to war in defiance of the international community and with little, if any, justifiable rationale. The American attack upon Iraq, fraught with all the terrors of American and civilian casualties, spiraling regional hostilities and the surety of reciprocal attacks here at home, convinced these students that their beloved country was in grave danger. The leadership of this nation, and the deadly course they chose, motivated the seven in this small house to make a large statement of disapproval.

And so, on that day, the young men and women of 44 Howard hung an American flag upside-down outside of their house.

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Art Spiegelman, Cartoonist for The New Yorker, Resigns in Protest at Censorship

Interview, Corriere della Sera (Milan)

13 February 2003

Art Spiegelman decided to leave The New Yorker in protest at what he calls "the widespread conformism of the mass media in the Bush era."

"The decision to leave was mine alone," the author of Maus, (the saga of Jewish mice exterminated by Nazi cats that won him the Pulitzer Prize -- the first ever awarded for a comic book), explained in an interview with Corriere della Sera. "The editor of the The New Yorker, David Remnick, was shocked when I announced my resignation. He attempted to dissuade me. But I told him that the kind of work that I'm now interested in doing is not suited to the present tone of The New Yorker. And seeing that we are living in extremely dangerous times, I don't feel like stooping to compromise."

(Q) Do you consider yourself a victim of September 11?

"Exactly so. From the time that the Twin Towers fell, it seems as if I've been living in internal exile, or like a political dissident confined to an island. I no longer feel in harmony with American culture, especially now that the entire media has become conservative and tremendously timid. Unfortunately, even The New Yorker has not escaped this trend: Remnick is unable to accept the challenge, while, on the contrary, I am more and more inclined to provocation."

(Q) What kind of provocation?

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Richard Perle Accuses Sy Hersh of Being a Terrorist

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

On the Sunday, March 9th CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Richard Perle accused New Yorker Magazine investigative reporter of being a terrorist.

Here is an excerpt from the CNN Rush Transcript

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/09/le.00.html

BLITZER:Let me read a quote from the New Yorker article, the March 17th issue, just out now. "There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war."

PERLE: I don't believe that a company would gain from a war. On the contrary, I believe that the successful removal of Saddam Hussein, and I've said this over and over again, will diminish the threat of terrorism. And what he's talking about is investments in homeland defense, which I think are vital and are necessary.

Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly.

BLITZER: Well, on the basis of -- why do you say that? A terrorist?

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SF Gate: The Lie Of The U.S. Military

Tough gritty American soldiers protect freedom of liberal S.F. columnist? Or the other way around?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, March 7, 2003

I get this a lot: Hey Mark, you know what you should do, you pathetic piece of liberal S.F. scum? You should kneel down right now and thank our angry God there's a hard-ass non-pussified non-wimpy U.S. military out there protecting your pathetic little butt, baby. Isn't that thoughtful?

You should be damn grateful, they scowl, that these fine men and women are risking their lives to ensure your right of free speech, your contemptible ability to scribble these pansy liberal words, to call Shrub a smirking daddy's boy, to suggest that God doesn't exist or that Lynne Cheney frightens small children and makes paint peel, all while remaining safe and cozy in your little hippie-happy tofu-licking gay-friendly S.F. cocoon, all protected and insulated and smug.

I get this a lot, too, in response to columns about, say, alternative religion, or spirituality, or progressive politics, or sex, or open mindedness or anything that rubs conservatives the wrong way, which is, of course, just about anything: How can you write such typical lefty liberal drivel while "real" men and women are out there making "real" decisions about "real" issues?

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Lawyer Arrested for Wearing a 'Peace' T-Shirt

From Reuters

March 4 -- NEW YORK (Reuters) - A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.

According to the criminal complaint filed on Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall," said Downs.

When Downs refused the security officers' orders, police from the town of Guilderland were called and he was arrested and taken away in handcuffs, charged with trespassing "in that he knowingly enter(ed) or remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises," the complaint read.

Downs said police tried to convince him he was wrong in his actions by refusing to remove the T-shirt because the mall "was like a private house and that I was acting poorly.

Contimued.

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