Hi. It's old-friends' Friday. Here are two of them and this afternoon's will be Bob Zaugh's trip to Angola prison and Gary Tyler.
Jeff just sent this. I'd read Goldberg's column a few times when he replaced Robert Scheer, but found his ideas so ignorant I skip them, bemoaning how far the Times has fallen and shrunk, in every way. Fortunately, for purposes of this mailing, he wrote this dilly, Thursday. "http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg8feb08,0,5612072.column?coll=la-opinion-center Global cooling costs too much By Jonah Goldberg LA Times Op-Ed: Thursday, February 8th, 2007 What would you prefer -- increase temperatures by less than a degree, or give up all the world's wealth? February 8, 2007 PUBLIC POLICY is all about trade-offs. Economists understand this better than politicians because voters want to have their cake and eat it too, and politicians think whatever is popular must also be true. Economists understand that if we put a chicken in every pot, it might cost us an aircraft carrier or a hospital. We can build a hospital, but it might come at the expense of a little patch of forest. We can protect a wetland, but that will make a new school more expensive. You get it already. But let me just add that in the great scheme of trade-offs in the history of humanity, never has there been a better one than trading a tiny amount of global warming for a massive amount of global prosperity." ...and so on. Here's Jeff, taking on this potty brain and the bosses he panders to. Ed http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/47729/ Jonah Goldberg's Gambling Debt: Will Tribune Company Pay It? By Jeff Cohen Right-wing pundit Jonah Goldberg made a bet two years ago that by this time Iraqis and Americans would agree the war was worth it. Time to pay up. There are many shades of right-wing punditry in our country. Among the shadiest is Jonah Goldberg. With arrogance seemingly matched only by his ignorance, Goldberg was just being Goldberg when he offered this wager two years ago: "Let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now)." The two-year period comes due Thursday. Even Goldberg now realizes his prediction was totally wrong -- with poll after poll showing most Americans do not "agree that the war was worth it." (Not to mention what Iraqis think of the war or Goldberg's boast that "Iraq won't have a civil war.") So shouldn't Goldberg -- or somebody -- pay off the $1,000? The bet was offered near the end of an overheated blogo-debate between Goldberg (at National Review Online) and Dr. Juan Cole, the Middle East scholar from University of Michigan. In proposing the wager to Cole, Goldberg goaded: "Money where your mouth is, doc. One caveat: Because I don't think it's right to bet on such serious matters for personal gain, if I win, I'll donate the money to the USO." Cole reacted to the proposed bet with disgust -- calling it symbolic of "the neo-imperial American Right. They are making their own fortunes with a wager on the fates of others, whom they are treating like ants." Wrote Cole: "Here we have a prominent American media star ... betting on Iraqis as though they are greyhounds in a race." Just before Goldberg proposed his bet to Cole, the professor had fumed: "Goldberg is just a dime-a-dozen pundit. Cranky rich people hire sharp-tongued and relatively uninformed young people all the time and put them on the mass media to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, exalt mindless militarism, promote anti-intellectualism, and ensure that right-wing views come to predominate." "Relatively uninformed" seemed accurate to me, but I wondered about the "mindless militarism" charge -- although I knew Goldberg was one of dozens of pundits who mindlessly cheered on the Iraq invasion (and suffered no consequences). Then I saw a 2003 column in which Goldberg wrote of "bombing Afghanistan forward into the stone age" and relished this anecdote: In the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good friend of mine would ask me almost every day, "Why aren't we killing people yet?" And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill people. Since Goldberg felt compelled to tell us -- as he gallantly offered the $1,000 bet -- that it was money he "can hardly spare right now," you may wonder about his ability to pay. A look at his bio shows that Goldberg has had a high-flying career in mainstream media -- from CNN contributor to PBS producer to USA Today Board of Contributors. (Full disclosure: In 2000, he and I wrote relatively friendly point/counterpoint columns for Brill's Content.) One would think he could easily afford $1,000, especially for a charity like the USO. But who knows -- maybe Goldberg has racked up huge gambling debts from ignorant wagers like the one tendered to Cole. So I have a solution. Let the Tribune media conglomerate pay the $1,000. Not only does Tribune syndicate Goldberg's column, it was Tribune's Los Angeles Times that added the analytically impaired Goldberg to its columnist roster in November 2005 -- at the same time it fired renowned columnist Robert Scheer, whose Iraq analysis had been breathtakingly accurate. Despite financial upheavals, the highly profitable Tribune Co. has plenty of money, as it lays off journalists en masse and squeezes the life out once proud newspapers like the L.A. Times. Professor Cole may be right to dismiss Jonah Goldberg as a "dime-a-dozen pundit." But it's time to hold media corporations like Tribune responsible for elevating the Goldbergs and their reckless predictions -- as they strangle newspapers and silence serious journalists like Bob Scheer. === ----- Original Message ----- From: Jeff Cohen Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 1:17 PM Subject: I'm coming to So. Calif with Scott Ritter (tell friends) U.S. TOUR OF DUTY presents SCOTT RITTER and JEFF COHEN Fighting Disinformation with Real Intelligence Join former UN weapons inspector SCOTT RITTER (author of "Target Iran") and media analyst JEFF COHEN (author of "Cable News Confidential") for a discussion on the corporate media's coverage of the "War on Terror." Wednesday, February 21 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica 1260 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA . Suggested donation: $10 . sponsored by Take On The Media, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles and Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica Thursday, February 22 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM Victoria Hall Theater 33 West Victoria Street, Santa Barbara, CA Friday, February 23 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM Oak Park Community Center (Ventura County) 1000 Kanan Road, Oak Park, CA * A book signing with Scott Ritter and Jeff Cohen will immediately follow each event. For more information visit www.ustourofduty.org or call 310.842.8794 *** http://www.alternet.org/audits/47759/ How to Prevent a War with Iran By Phyllis Bennis, Tom Paine.Com Posted February 8th, 2007 To stop the looming war with Iran, Congress needs to pre-empt the possibility of the White House launching an attack. The secret weapon is the Boland Amendment In 1982, angered by a White House secretly escalating an unpopular war in Central America, the House passed the Boland Amendment, a rider to the Defense Appropriations Act of 1983. The amendment was crafted by Massachusetts Congressman Edward Boland, and was designed to cut off funds the CIA and other intelligence agencies were using to carry out sabotage attacks in Nicaragua and to support the anti-government Contra guerrillas. The Senate had a Republican majority at the time, but even members of President Reagan's own party were outraged when he launched his Contra-backing warfare without even notifying Congressional oversight committees. So far, the newly Democrat-controlled Congress has not been outraged enough to use its constitutionally-mandated power to force an end to the lethal war in Iraq. Perhaps they will still rise to the occasion, ending the war by cutting funds for the war. But there is still time right now -- before the Bush administration makes good on its rising threats -- to stop the looming war in Iran. We need a new Boland Amendment, one that will pre-empt any possibility of the White House launching an attack against Iran. In recent weeks the threat of war in Iran has qualitatively escalated. Provocative U.S. attacks on Iranian diplomatic offices, arrests of Iranian officials inside Iraq, and the installation of a second U.S. aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf seem all but openly designed to goad Tehran to respond. Repeated Bush administration threats about "dealing with" alleged Iranian involvement in attacks on U.S. soldiers resonate back to equally unproven claims about Iraq's WMDs. Both have been calculated to ratchet up public and media support for a U.S. attack -- on Iraq then, and on Iran now--and to undercut any potential congressional move to stop a new attack. Meanwhile, the White House appears oblivious to recent Iranian developments that should have lessened the tensions, including the diminishing domestic popularity of the provocative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Tehran's apparent technical failures in nuclear power technology. The timing of the recent intensification of threats against Iran is breathtakingly dangerous for the Bush administration itself. It is emerging even while debate continues in the administration about whether Iraq's U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is capable of leading the war-wracked country, or whether Washington should reorganize Iraq's government to give more power to the Iranian-backed forces currently at the center of Maliki's own coalition. It is also a moment in which the U.S. is again increasingly isolated internationally. Canada's right-wing prime minister and former Bush ally Stephen Harper is publicly excoriating the White House for keeping Canadian citizen Maher Arar on the U.S. "no-fly" list despite Arar's absolute exoneration (complete with an official apology and an $8.5 million settlement) by Canada. Germany and Italy are issuing arrest warrants against dozens of CIA agents involved in the kidnapping and "extraordinary rendition" of European citizens sent to be tortured around the world. And even in loyal Britain, Tony Blair's heir-apparent Gordon Brown has made clear he is considering a very different relationship with Washington than that of "Bush's poodle." Is this a new incarnation of the Old Europe of the months before Bush's Iraq War? Like so many carefully negotiated congressional moves, the Boland Amendment was in fact neither unequivocal nor absolute. It prohibited the U.S. government from providing military support "for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of Nicaragua." But it became the symbol of public anger and insistence on ending U.S. support for the Contras and their brutal war. And it thus came to embody an even more powerful check on the White House's war-making capacity than the resolution's actual language might have imposed. When the Reagan team decided to violate the Boland Amendment, to make an end run around the law, their actions lead directly to what quickly became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Both former war supporter Republican Congressman Walter Jones and the courageous California Congresswoman Barbara Lee have introduced different bills that take some steps towards prohibiting a U.S. attack on Iran. Either one, or perhaps a different bill altogether, could become the Boland Amendment for Iran -- capturing the breadth of both public anger and congressional opposition. It remains unclear whether the White House needs to be concerned about Congress actually cutting off funds for the war in Iraq. But it is certain that the Bush administration is very worried about the possibility of a new Boland Amendment to prevent an attack on Iran. As one former senior intelligence official told Seymour Hersh, "they're afraid that Congress is going to vote a binding resolution to stop a hit on Iran, à la Nicaragua in the Contra war." Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. She is the author of the forthcoming, "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy U.S. Power" (Interlink Publishing, October 2005). 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