Press Action

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Holocaust Victims Attorney Files Class-Action Lawsuit Against TVA

The law firm of Hausfeld LLP of Washington, D.C., and two Tennessee law firms filed a class-action lawsuit (pdf) on Jan. 7 in U.S. District Court in Knoxville against the Tennessee Valley Authority on behalf of landowners along the Emory and Clinch Rivers in response to the Kingston coal ash disaster.

Michael Hausfeld of Hausfeld LLP “is best known as the attorney who years ago brought action against Swiss Banks for conspiring with the Nazis in WWII. He got $2.3 billion settlement for Holocaust survivors and waived his attorney fee,” KnoxViews writes.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages in excess of $5 million.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/07.

Stand in Solidarity with Israel's Slaughter of Palestinians

Israel places the Gaza Strip under siege, restricting the flow of all goods into the region. The region’s inhabitants are deprived of food, medicine and fuel. They aren’t permitted to leave the region. And then, as it prepares to wage a massive assault on Gaza, Israel kicks out all foreign journalists in order to prevent news coverage of the terrible atrocities it plans to carry out in the region.

The air assault on Gaza begins in late December, killing hundreds of residents, injuring thousands and terrorizing the entire region. Israel’s military tells the local residents to leave their houses, which are then destroyed by Israel’s military. Israel then bombs the schools and other buildings where the local residents go for shelter and refuge, killing scores of people.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/07.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Eyeless in Gaza with the BBC

By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

On February 29 last year the BBC’s Web site reported deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatening a “holocaust” on Gaza. Headlined “Israel warns of Gaza ‘holocaust’” the story would undergo nine revisions in the next 12 hours. Before the day was over, the headline would read “Gaza militants ‘risking disaster’”. (The story has since been revised again with an exculpatory note added soft-pedalling Vilnai’s comments). An Israeli threatening “holocaust” may be unpalatable to those who routinely invoke its spectre to deflect criticism from the state’s criminal behaviour. With the “holocaust” reference redacted, the new headline shifts culpability neatly into the hands of “Gaza militants” instead.

One could argue that the BBC’s radical alteration of the story reflects its susceptibility to the kind of inordinate pressure for which the Israel Lobby’s well-oiled flak machine is notorious. But, as will be demonstrated in subsequent examples, this story is exceptional only insofar as it reported accurately in the first place something that could bear negatively on Israel’s image. The norm is reflexive self-censorship.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/06.

U.S. Backs Massacre in Gaza

By Larry Everest

Shortly after darkness fell on Saturday night, January 3, Israel launched a massive land invasion of Gaza involving 9,000-10,000 soldiers, tanks, helicopters, and heavy artillery, engineering and intelligence forces, with the support of Israel’s Air Force, navy, and secret police and spy agencies. The ground invasion came after Israel, for the first time, unleashed an artillery barrage on Gaza, striking a mosque and killing at least 11 people. By the next day, Israeli forces had reportedly cut Gaza in half, “bisecting” it between north and south.

Seven straight days of Israeli bombing before the invasion had already resulted in an estimated 460 killed and 2,285 wounded (with the numbers increasing by the hour). Now more carnage looms with The New York Times (January 4, 2009) already reporting “Wounded civilians poured into the emergency room of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Sunday, including women and children.” And Israel’s ban on journalists from entering Gaza means that much death and destruction has gone unreported.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/06.

Hope as Hype: Change We Can Bereave In

“Security officials might get one big break: Compared with some previous inaugurations, there are no indications that large numbers of demonstrators are coming to Obama’s swearing-in, authorities said.” – The Washington Post

George W. Bush hadn’t become George W. Bush, the most hated president in history, when thousands of people turned out in the streets of D.C. on that cold, drizzly day in January 2001 for a raucous gathering to demonstrate their disdain for what he represented, the path he followed to the presidency and the office of the presidency itself.

They didn’t need to give the former Texas governor a chance, 100 days to show his true colors. They knew Bush well enough to understand that he would uphold the same deplorable policies people had endured under Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter, Nixon and all other modern presidents. That’s why thousands lined the streets of Pennsylvania Avenue, expressing their outrage at a system that had perfected a formula for preserving business as usual.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/06.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Phony Anarchism, Bogus Research

The title of Chip Berlet’s piece in the January 2009 issue of Z Magazine, “Brownshirt Anarchism, Bogus Journalism,” has nothing to do with the article. It is plainly misleading. There is nothing in the article about “brownshirt anarchism.” In fact, Berlet’s article has nothing to do with anarchism. It is mentioned briefly in the beginning to make some broad point without a single fact to back the assertion.

The article is about a book written by non-anarchists, specifically a chapter written by Alan Bock, a libertarian. Berlet claims editors Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair in their book, Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, encourage an alliance between left and right activists. Neither of these people are anarchists.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/04.

Washington Post Refuses to Disclose Identity of Maryland Police Spy

The Washington Post has conducted some strong reporting on the Maryland State Police’s campaign to spy on activists from 2005 to 2007. But in its latest report on how the scandal was more expansive than originally thought, the Post decided not to identify one of the police officers who worked undercover to spy on various individuals and activist groups in the state.

According to a front-page article in the Jan. 4 Post, the reporters covering the scandal, Lisa Rein and Josh White, indicated that they are aware of the actual identity of this particular state police offer but are declining to disclose her name because the newspaper claims it might compromise her efforts to conduct future undercover operations for the Maryland State Police. Of course, these future operations could include spying on activists, similar to the surveillance work she previously conducted.

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Comments (1) | Posted on 01/04.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Israel and Palestine, Again, Forever

By William Blum

Nothing changes. Including what I have to say on the matter. To prove my point, I’m repeating part of what I wrote in this report in July 2006 ...

There are times when I think this tired old world has gone on a few years too long. What’s happening in the Middle East is so depressing. Most discussions of the everlasting Israel-Palestine conflict are variations on the child’s eternal defense for misbehavior—“He started it!” Within two minutes of discussing/arguing the latest manifestation of the conflict the participants are back to 1967, then 1948, then biblical times. Instead of getting entangled in who started the current mess, I’d prefer to express what I see as two essential underlying facts of life which remain from one conflict to the next:

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/03.

Until There Are No Beings Whom We Still Define as 'Other'

Norm Phelps and Steve Best exchange thoughts on their differences concerning direct action and alliance politics in the animal liberation movement.

Reprinted with permission from Thomas Paine’s Corner.

We include the following email and thoughtful exchanges between noted authors Norm Phelps and Steven Best in the hope that the yin-yang flow and point-counterpoint arguments might interest our readers and stimulate wider debate on these issues. Rather than pretend that controversial differences—such as over direct action and alliance politics—do not divide this broad “animal advocacy movement” into separate and conflicted zones, or, worse, suppress any mention of controversial debates in a way that brings the menacing chill of the Green Scare into our conference rooms, meeting halls, and mailing lists, as if differences had to be steamrolled by dogma, conformity, and bureaucracy.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/03.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Gaza and the World: Will Things Ever Change?

By Ramzy Baroud

In times of crisis, most Arabs tune in to Aljazeera television. Sometimes it’s comforting for the truth to be stated the way it is, with all of its gory and unsettling details, without blemishes and without censorship. When Israel carried out massive air strikes against Gaza on Saturday, December 27, terrorizing an already hostage and malnourished population, I too tuned in to Aljazeera.

Within seconds I learned of the tally: 290 deaths and climbing, with 700 more wounded, all in one day. But as dramatic as this event may have seemed—the highest Israeli inflicted death toll in one day in Palestine since Israel’s establishment in 1948—there was nothing new to learn. Tragedies anywhere—natural or manmade—tend to lead to social, cultural, economic and political upheavals, revolutions even, that somehow alter the social, cultural, economic and ultimately political landscapes in the affected regions, save in Palestine.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/02.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

TVA Manages Easy PR Victory in Kingston Coal Ash Disaster

The Tennessee Valley Authority gets high marks for preventing the Kingston coal ash disaster from cascading into a public relations nightmare.

The massive spill had all of the hallmarks of a public relations catastrophe: a billion gallons of toxic sludge breaks free from a 40-acre retaining pond near the Kingston coal-fired power plant, covering approximately 400 acres of Roane County, Tenn., destroying homes, killing fish and damaging wildlife habitat in its wake.

But with the help of indifferent local, state and federal government officials, as well as a complacent local and national news media, TVA’s crisis management team succeeded in keeping the disaster off the front pages of newspapers and generally out of the public consciousness. In particular, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen helped to downplay the incident by staying clear of the site and letting TVA control the message.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/01.

CNN: At Least 9 Dead Palestinians = 1 Dead Palestinian

Check out the accompanying screenshot, an incredibly deceptive headline that appeared on CNN.com’s home page at 6:12 p.m. Eastern time on Jan. 1, 2009.

Of course, a reader who already knows the back story to the massacre will understand that CNN’s intention with this headline, beyond deceiving its readers into thinking Israel is not killing scores of civilians, was to convey that Israel killed only “one” Hamas leader, that person being Nizar Rayan. On the same day, Thursday morning, Israel reportedly targeted another Hamas leader, Nabil Amrin, but that bombing apparently did not kill its target.

The family members and all of the other people killed in Israel’s two attacks don’t count in the minds of CNN.com’s headline writers. However, inside the story behind the headline, CNN reported “nine other people also died in the attack, Hamas and Palestinian medical sources said, some of whom were believed to be members of Rayan’s family.”

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Comments (0) | Posted on 01/01.

Shameless Propagandists

The Associated Press, like all other Western mainstream media outlets, is shamelessly serving as a mouthpiece for Israel’s regime in its reporting of Israel’s assault on Gaza. AP reporters Ibrahim Barzak and Amy Teibel gloated in their Jan. 1 coverage of Israel’s assassination of Palestinian leader Nizar Rayan and his family, cheering on Israel’s murderous campaign.

Let’s say the United States came under assault by global Allied forces after Obama takes office on Jan. 20, leading to the assassination of top officials of the Democratic Party, who control the White House and both houses of Congress. If this were to occur, would AP’s report read something like this fictional dispatch below, or does AP save its cheerleading only for the murderous campaigns of Israel, the United States and other Western states?

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Comments (2) | Posted on 01/01.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

A New Low for the New York Times: Ethan Bronner on Gaza

By As`ad AbuKhalil

I just don’t understand why dispatches of the New York Times from Israel don’t carry the official seal of approval and admiration from the Israeli terrorist occupation army. Really, I mean that. They might as well. But don’t you like it now when they add the name of a token Arab to the dispatches, as if that will add balance to the articles. That token Arab has as much input as that lousy token Zionist Arab at the Jerusalem Post who is known to make quotes and create stories all to appeal to the biases of his editors.

Don’t get me wrong: Taghreed El-Khodary may be permitted—just like those Arabs were allowed to work in the NYT bureau/fortress but were banned from staying overnight like other white man reporters—to fetch hummus and bread for the White Man who runs the bureau.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 12/31.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Torture Conviction Opens Door to Prosecution of Top Bush Officials

U.S. prosecutors last week asked a federal judge in Miami to sentence the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 147 years in prison for torturing people when he served as a Liberian government official during his father’s time in office.

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Charles “Chuckie” Taylor Jr., is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga. Taylor’s trial was the first to be brought in the United States using a law passed in 1994 under which anyone on U.S. soil, citizen or not, can be charged and tried for torture committed anywhere in the world.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 12/30.