Day: September 12, 2008

Hero By Any Other Name

We have all seen the dramatic pics of McCain returning from North Vietnam…you know…the one of him being carried on a stretcher. But…………….

Previously unseen footage emerged Thursday showing Republican presidential candidate John McCain as a proud, stoic prisoner of war in Hanoi on the day his Vietnamese captors released him to the U.S. military.

A former reporter from Swedish broadcaster SVT, 71-year-old Erik Eriksson, told The Associated Press he found the video in the network’s archives while researching a book he was writing about his experiences as a Vietnam War correspondent.

The footage was filmed by a North Vietnamese photographer with whom Eriksson had contracted to film the release of U.S. prisoners of war.

AP Television News acquired exclusive worldwide distribution rights to the SVT footage from March 14, 1973, and edited it into a 2-minute, 14-second video of a remarkable day in the life of the Republican candidate. SVT posted a 39-second clip on its Web site.

The AP footage begins with prisoners being led out of a Hanoi compound one by one, then climbing onto buses taking them to the handover area. Each prisoner is dressed in identical blue-gray, long-sleeved shirts and dark pants, and carries a beige jacket. Up to 16 U.S. POWs are seen.

McCain grimaces as he steps off a bus with other prisoners. He has a pronounced limp and needs to put both feet on the same step before continuing but is not using crutches.

The prisoners stand in rows until a Vietnamese official calls their name. McCain, like other prisoners, briskly walks up to salute and shake hands with U.S. military officers. Although only 37, he has prematurely white hair. Then the prisoners are seen walking to a U.S. plane.

Now with this story, it will be interesting to see just which media outlet picks it up. If I had to guess I would say none want to piddle on McCain’s heroship. For some reason, he is safe from scrutiny, especially the military aspects of his claims. Other candidates are not so lucky, but I have a feeling that McCain will be safe from any scrutiny.

Before the hate begins–this is a piece reported by the Associated Press…not something I made up!

Sex, Drugs And Oil

Been a slow day on the campaign trail because the two candidates have called a truce during the celebrations of the 9/11 thing. But never fear there is always a good, cheesy story coming out of Washington.

U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Thursday said he was “outraged” by department workers who had sex, used drugs and took gifts from employees at regulated oil companies, while one senator called for a Bush administration official to resign over the scandal.

The Interior Department’s inspector general issued a scathing report on Wednesday that found “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” at the department’s Minerals Management Service, whose employees handled billions of dollars in oil and natural gas supplies that were turned over by companies as in-kind royalty payments for drilling on federal lands.

“I am outraged by the immoral behavior, illegal activities, and appalling misconduct of several former and current long-serving career employees in the Minerals Management Service’s royalty-in-kind program,” Kempthorne said. “We will take swift action to restore the public trust.”

In response to the inspector general’s report, Luthi had said that “I do not believe Americans have lost financially,” but admitted “it is too early to tell” if government workers gave oil companies financial favors at the expense of taxpayers.

Today In Labor History

12 September

Eugene V. Debs, labor leader and socialist, sentenced to 10 years for opposing World War I. While in jail Debs received 1 million votes for president – 1918

Jobless workers march on grocery stores and seize food in Toledo, Ohio – 1932

United Rubber Workers formed in Akron, Ohio – 1935

Forty-nine people are killed, 200 injured in explosion at the Hercules Powder Company plant in Kenvil, New Jersey – 1940

Who Were The Rosenbergs?

Grand jury transcripts released Thursday from the biggest espionage case of the Cold War raise questions about whether Ethel Rosenberg was convicted and executed based on perjured prosecution testimony.

The Rosenbergs were convicted of passing nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union and were executed in 1953. Since then, decrypted Soviet cables have appeared to confirm that Julius Rosenberg was a spy, but doubts have remained about Ethel Rosenberg’s role.

At the Rosenbergs’ trial, the key testimony against Ethel Rosenberg came from her brother and sister-in-law, David and Ruth Greenglass.

They testified that Ethel Rosenberg had typed stolen atomic secrets from notes provided by David Greenglass. The testimony provided the direct involvement the jury needed to convict and that the judge in the case needed to sentence Ethel Rosenberg to death.

In fact, in her grand jury testimony, Ruth Greenglass says that she herself wrote out the secrets in longhand. That testimony is consistent with the subsequently decrypted Soviet cables from the time in which the Soviets describe material received from the Rosenbergs as being in longhand.

The grand jury testimony from Ruth Greenglass confirms that the trial testimony about typing is a complete fabrication, said Georgetown University law professor David Vladeck, part of the team of lawyers and historians who succeeded in gaining public release of the transcripts.

The government also had evidence that the Rosenberg ring gave the Soviets secrets about airborne radar, land-based radar, analog computers used for guiding anti-aircraft weapons and information for the first designs of U.S. jet engines, said Steve Usdin, an author who helped win release of the grand jury material.

Has The Middle East Been Changed?

In the seven years since the September 11 attacks, both al Qa’eda’s violent attempts to establish a new Islamic ummah and America’s ambitious effort to redraw the Middle Eastern political landscape have failed dramatically, according to a French expert on Middle Eastern politics.
The professor argues that the lack of aprogress in America’s aggressive policies in the Middle East proves the US is not the world’s only major political actor and shows the limits of military might as a means of engineering social and political change.

But even as US efforts have been stymied in the Middle East, their declared enemy, al Qa’eda, has met with substantial failure as well.
Al Qa’eda’s stated goal of gaining support among Muslims for a global political ummah have “proved to be a failure”, as have their hopes of transforming Iraq into an “Afghanistan of the 1980s”, where jihadi guerrillas successfully expelled a Soviet invasion, he said.

Al Qaeda and other fundamentalist Islamic groups consider the ummah to be a pan-national “community of believers” encompassing the original Islamic caliphate that stretched, at its height in the 7th century, from Spain to South Asia.

Keep An Eye On Ukraine

The European Union has issued an official statement, and in it they have declared that they recognize Ukraine as “a European country”. While this comes as hardly a surprise to anyone with access to a globe, the relevant message of this statement was clear: that Ukraine might at some point be offered membership in the European Union. And while French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it clear that more needed to be done before membership was offered, this was just the latest sign that Ukraine is emerging as a geopolitical battleground between a resurgent Russia and the worried west.

But Ukraine’s problems go deeper than just what is happening outside their borders. President Viktor Yushchenko’s party has abandoned the coalition government, a move which is likely to lead to snap elections being announced early next week. President Yushchenko has a long-standing rivalry with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, whom he accused earlier in the week of treason for refusing to voice her opposition to Russia’s naval presence as loudly as he has.

The Russian leased naval base in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, the main base of operations for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet for centuries, is a contentious issue between Russia and Ukraine and a potential flashpoint between Russia and NATO. Russia’s lease on the base expires in 2017 and Ukraine has said it does not anticipate renewing it beyond that point. Rather, Ukraine aspires to NATO membership, and the port would be strategically valuable for NATO. Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated last week that the United States supports Ukraine’s NATO membership bid.

But many in Russia have contested the legality of Ukraine’s ownership of the Crimean Peninsula, and Russian Ambassador Yuri Fedotov has warned that the nation would consider the expansion of NATO into the Ukraine a “hostile act”. Ukraine and Russia share a long and virtually open border, and the presence of the nation in NATO would, according to the ambassador, lead to his nation reexamining its close economic ties. Its a move Ukraine’s government seems to want to make, but with Russia by far their most important trading partner, can they afford to?

A Pistol Packing Mama!

In her interview today with ABC News’ Charles Gibson, Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin stated in no uncertain terms “we cannot repeat the Cold War”. However, in a follow-up question about a possible hot war with Russia, the Alaska Governor’s answer was an unsettlingly non-committal “perhaps”.

The interview revealed today further aspects of Sarah Palin’s position on foreign policy, first explored in her RNC speech last week. She said she had already spoken to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and had given him assurances of her commitment to Georgia, and believed “we’ve got to keep an eye on Russia”. She said she was in favor of NATO membership for both Georgia and the Ukraine, and when asked if this would require the US to go to war if war broke out between Russia and Georgian again, the governor said “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally”.

On other matters, Palin declared her somwhat muted support for “anticipatory self-defense,” her commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran, and insisted she would not “second guess” Israel if it decided to attack Iran. In a question regarding the use of US ground troops in Pakistan without the permission of the Pakistani government she said “I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists”.

Sounds more like a GW clone.

National Service, Not Lip Service

Back in August I wrote a three part series on the “Civilian Response Corps” and posted it here.  The following is exerpts from a story run in the Boston Globe.

ONE THING Barack Obama and John McCain agree on is that each would make a new call for citizen service central to his presidency. Indeed, last night the two contenders were scheduled to appear (separately) at a televised forum to promote greater civic engagement as part of a Sept. 11 remembrance called the ServiceNation Summit. Done correctly, national service slices across partisan lines, appealing both to the self-reliant “thousand points of light” volunteerism favored by conservatives and the communitarian “it takes a village” ideals that animate liberals.

Today, Washington’s favorite bipartisan couple, Ted Kennedy and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, will file legislation to dramtically increase opportunities for Americans to volunteer, making it as integral a part of citizenship as voting. Using the model of AmeriCorps, the bill establishes five new “corps” for volunteers, including areas such as international service, disaster relief, and a green energy corps, as well as the traditional focus on education and poverty.

The bill creates tax breaks for businesses that give workers paid time off for service, and sets up “encore fellowships” for baby boomers seeking alternative retirements. In all, the goal is to expand the number of Americans who do regular service work to 100 million from the current 61 million.

Vast majorities of Americans say they want to volunteer but don’t know where to start. It is this social infrastructure that national legislation can fund and support – even though some may feel government involvement in volunteerism is a contradiction in terms. Someone needs to train and coordinate volunteers, and get them linked to projects that match their interests and skills. And the bill would provide grants to volunteer start-ups, encouraging the kind of social entrepreneurship that created City Year, and measuring their performance.

Back inj August I did not like the idea, and that feeling has not changed.