Bob Morris @ Mar 14th 2005 14:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
A San Francisco judge on Monday declared California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the first such ruling in the state’s history and the first in a legal battle that is now destined for the appellate courts.
Bob Morris @ Mar 14th 2005 11:22 - Category: Unfiled ;
From Danny Schechter, the News Dissector
Now I Know Why MoveOn Has No Use for WMD
It seems that MoveOn which played to anti-war sentiment to build its membership base has now decided to drop the issue on the belief it is not winnable. They cite some vague polls of their members as the reason.
Pragmatism strikes again to rationalize silence.
What’s next? An alliance with the DLC? I guess to win brownie points or access on the Hill and in the inner circule they feel they have to move like Hillary Clinton and the others into a centrist CONsensus. You could see this coming when one time anti-war hero John Kerry felt he had to out-Bush Bush on the war to win. It didn’t work, did it?
Whats especially troubling is that MoveON is dropping the war as an issue after a majority of the people (56% in a December poll) now say they now think Iraq was a bad idea. As anti-war sentiment grows and as the US military loses the initiative, MoveOn is pursuijng its own “ëxit stratgy.”
Anthony Lappe of Guerilla News was recently invited to spend three days at a swanky Maryland resort to “the future of the progressive movement” with an impressive group of lefty movers and shakers.
Mainstream Democrat-friendly ‘movers and shakers.’ Genuine progressives and radicals like ANSWER and NION. I’m guessing, were not invited. God forbid someone might mention the word “imperialism.’ It might offend the tender sensibilities of deep-pockets donors.
Over the course of the conference, the only time I heard the word “Iraq†was when I noted, that in case they hadn’t noticed, we are at war and that maybe we should discuss what we were going to do about it. I was met with blank stares.
Apart from a few recent grassroots efforts, the mainstream left has largely ignored the growing insurgency in Iraq. As GNN contributor Norman Solomon writes, nowhere is the left’s abandonment of the antiwar movement more clear than in MoveOn’s agenda. One MoveOner explained to me that weekend in Maryland, social security is their number one issue for 2005 because “it’s an issue we can win.” Iraq, he explained, “is not a winner”.
None of this should be a surprise. MoveOn is, and always has been, a PAC, a political fund-raising entity for mainstream Democrats. They are not antiwar and they are not progessive. They exist to raise money for corporate Democrats.
But, dear me, I’m so terribly sorry they don’t think Iraq is a “winner”, doubtless those in Baghdad whose homes are being blown up by assault helicopters will understand.
Bob Morris @ Mar 14th 2005 09:53 - Category: Unfiled ;
US bans Sinn Fein from fundraising in States
Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has been banned from fundraising in the United States, The Times newspaper reported on Monday, citing diplomatic sources.
Ted Kennedy cancels Gerry Adams talks
Leading Irish-American politician Ted Kennedy says he will not meet Gerry Adams during the Sinn Fein leader’s St Patrick’s Day trip to the US.
As reported here, the real problem with the IRA/Sinn Fein, is they no longer stand for anything, much less a struggle for national liberation, and instead have apparently devolved into being just a bunch of criminal thugs.
In Catholic Belfast, IRA becomes Public Enemy
Along the mean streets of this city soaked in blood and memory, something strange is happening. On a wall in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic neighborhood of Short Strand, two words of graffiti have appeared: “Disband Now.”
For those who haven’t followed the story, here’s what happened
On the night of Jan. 30, after a commemoration in Derry for the victims of 1972’s Bloody Sunday, some IRA men were drinking in the bar. So was McCartney, with his friend Brendan Devine.
According to family members, McCartney and Devine got into an argument with a leading IRA member, reportedly about a remark made to a woman in the bar. Despite offering an apology, McCartney and Devine were hauled out to the street. There, on the dark pavement, someone produced a knife from the bar’s kitchen, sliced McCartney open, gouged his eyes and left him for dead. Devine, beaten with an iron bar and stabbed, survived.
Associates of the killer went back in the bar, cleaned up physical evidence, took the tape from the bar’s security camera and instructed the patrons to keep silent because it was “IRA business,” McCartney’s family said.
That might have been the end of it. Like so many acts of violence in Belfast, where armed paramilitaries on both sides carry out “punishment” attacks in their own communities, police would normally add the killing to their files of unsolved cases.
In McCartney’s case, his sisters were having none of it.
His sisters, showing serious courage, organized, talked and gave interviews to anyone who would listen, and now the story is major headlines across the globe. It needs to be emphasized that they are Catholic and live in Short Strand, a hardcore IRA area. And that a former member who spent 18 years in prison says much the same.
Sinn Fein and the IRA have handed their enemies all manner of weapons to use against them.The real tragedy, along with the murder of McCartney, is that any genuine call for Irish liberation is now lost.
Bob Morris @ Mar 14th 2005 08:48 - Category: Unfiled ;
‘Influentials’ disproportionately read blogs
BlogAds’ second annual survey of blog readers showed the blog audience getting a bit older, a little richer a tad more female. Most interestingly, the survey showed that the blog audience contains a very disproportionate number of influentials, that minority that drives the opinions of the majority.
The recent fad of podcasting appears to be much overblown, with this very early adopter audience indicating almost no one actually listens to the audio readings of commentary. Three percent said they listened to one podcast per week. Two percent said they listened to a couple. The people indicating they listened to more than that were two few to make a blip on the graph.
Um, that would be me. Not even a blip now, but in six months, many more may be listening to multiple podcasts each week.
A plurality of the web audience spent said it spent 10 hours per week reading blogs, and the most commonly cited reason was “news I can’t find elsewhere.”
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