Uh Oh! Quick Spicer get out there in front of that, and stop this thing!
Uh Oh! Quick Spicer get out there in front of that, and stop this thing!
—
Careful what you daily ‘scheme for’ Republicans — because your ineptness is showing, day after day, after another Do Nothing day. What was it that Comey wanted again …?
Reuters reports that newly named Special Counsel Robert Mueller is already expanding the scope of his investigation into the Trump campaign and possible Russian collusion during the election to include Michael Flynn’s undisclosed financial relationship with the government of Turkey.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation has expanded to include Paul Manafort, but it may grow further, encompassing the actions of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Associated Press first reported Mueller "has assumed oversight of an ongoing investigation involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort."
[...]
Report: Mueller Investigation Expands to Grand-Jury Probe of Flynn’s Turkey Ties
by The Daily Beast — June 02, 2017
The federal investigation of possible ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials now includes a grand-jury investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. According to Reuters, three sources said the investigation—led by newly appointed special counsel Robert Mueller—will expand to look into Flynn’s paid work as a lobbyist for Turkish business magnate Ekim Alptekin in 2016, in addition to the highly scrutinized contacts between Flynn and Russian officials before Election Day. [...]
Comey’s request to the DOJ, that scared the stupid out ofinto to Trump — enough to promptly fire him — was this:
Comey Asked for More Prosecutor Resources for Russia Probe
byTom WinterandKen Dilanian, nbcnews.com — May 11, 2017
What Comey said he asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for, the officials said, was more attention, focus and labor hours from Justice Department prosecutors.
Looks like James Comey’s request, is plowing ahead at full steam, and then some.
Unless Trump has another “stupid attack” — another tantrum that screams Cover-up — and he tries to Fire Robert Mueller, too?
Unfortunately for Trump, the U.S. system of checks and balances, doesn’t act like an episode of The Apprentice — where his decision, however lame it may have be, is the Final Answer.
Thankfully for us too, who must endure his stupidity day after day, after another Jack-assery day.
- a Democratic president who’d bragged that she’d fired the director of the FBI in order to relieve the “pressure” of a counterintelligence investigation would already have been impeached 37 times - Jon Schwarz
- a Democratic president who’d bragged that she’d fired the director of the FBI in order to relieve the “pressure” of a counterintelligence investigation would already have been impeached 37 times - Jon Schwarz
..That’s the headline from this article posted @ the Raw story by David Ferguson (with Ari Melber’s video segment @ the link — really worth a look see - imo)| June 4th, 2017
I’d post the video clip from Ari Melber’s new program ‘The Point’ featured in the above story, but unfortunately it remains unavailable online. After watching the same program with guests including chief of the Washington bureau for Mother Jones, author, and political journalist David Corn, and Atlantic magazine writer Steve Clemons, both guests made important points that are getting sort of sidelined by the beltway press corps and msm
Former FBI director James Comey, fired by Trump, is set to testify before the senate intelligence committee on Thursday (video @ link). That story is topping the headlines. A story less advertised is Wednesday’s scheduled testimony by NSA Director Michael Rogers.
Here is a statement by Steve Clemens from the June 4th, 2017 Ari Melber program ‘The Point’:
Rogers will testify Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is currently investigating whether President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian officials to sway the results of the 2016 election.
“While a lot of people have focused on James Comey and that’s obviously a huge anchor in this,”
I have been tipped off that Mike Rogers has a story to tell as well that goes right along the lines that our friend David Corn has shared.”
David Corn weighed with this statement during the program:
“We now know for certain that Vladimir Putin waged political warfare against America’s democracy with the election last year,”
said Mother Jones magazine’s David Corn.
“While that’s going on, Donald Trump is saying, ‘No, it’s not happening.’ It’s like a guy in front of a bank robbery saying, ‘Nothing is going on here.’ He was helping.”
“He made it easier for Putin to pull this off,”
Corn said.
“That in itself should be a big scandal.”
David Corn was reiterating some of the points he made in one of his earlier articles with a timeline of events here (the graphic used above in this diary):
The Trump-Russia scandal is the subject of multiple investigations that may or may not unearth new revelations, but this much is already certain: Donald Trump is guilty.
We don't need additional information about the Russian covert scheme to undermine the 2016 campaign, or about the curious interactions between Team Trump and Russia, or about Trump pressuring and then firing FBI Director James Comey, to reach the judgment that the president of the United States engaged in wrongdoing.
From the start, Trump and his crew have claimed they had nothing to do with the hack-and-leak operation mounted by Russian intelligence to help Trump nab the presidency. They have dismissed the matter as fake news, and they have insisted there is no issue because there has been no proof that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. In May, for instance, Trump proclaimed, "Believe me, there's no collusion." Nothing to see; move along.
Explicit collusion may yet be proved by the FBI investigation overseen by special counsel Robert Mueller or by other ongoing probes. But even if it is not, a harsh verdict can be pronounced: Trump actively and enthusiastically aided and abetted Russian President Vladimir Putin's plot against America.
This is the scandal.
It already exists—in plain sight. [...]
This country needs a thorough and public investigation to sort out how the Russian operation worked, how US intelligence and the Obama administration responded, and how Trump and his associates interacted with Russia and WikiLeaks. But whatever happened out of public view, the existing record is already conclusively shameful. Trump and his crew were active enablers of Putin's operation to subvert an American election.
with just a couple of additional points that Daily Kos contributor Dartagnan brought up yesterday here, and I commented on here that also seem to be secondary issues for the msm.
Of course we wouldn’t even be engaging in this intellectual exercise at this point if a Democrat were President:
Even speculating about such a thing, however, is irrelevant,because a Democratic president who’d bragged that she’d fired the director of the FBI in order to relieve the “pressure” of a counterintelligence investigation would already have been impeached 37 times.
Calling out hypocrisy, used to be sufficient to define, expose and target a proper response leading to solutions. Not anymore it seems. This current maladministration has taken corruption, political malfeasance, and Constitutional violations to a new low level. And that’s not counting the ongoing obstruction of justice by the current executive regime nor the political party aiding and abetting both the obstruction of justice and the cover up — the GOP
Yesterday 124 Kogs posted 140 stories of which 140 were recommended at least once by a cadre of 2012 recommending readers; 98 stories were recommended by 10 or more readers, 47 by 30 or more, and 26 by 100 or more. Commenters (1937) visited 140 stories; 79 had 10 or more commenters, 32 had 30 or more, and 11 had 100 or more.
Recommendations and comments were collected Mon Jun 5 08:00:02 2017 UTC .
IMPACT STATISTICS FROM ALL 140 POSTS
MINIMUM
0.01
MEDIAN
0.22
AVERAGE
0.62
MAX
4.75
TOTAL
86.85 bharns
50% of total impact
earned by top 14 diaries, the lowest receiving 2.00 bharns
Story Impact Distribution
Stories with >=
0
1
10
30
100
recommendations
140
140
98
47
26
commenters
140
140
79
32
11
connections
140
140
113
63
27
KOG ACTIVITY*
KOGS WHO...
COMMENT
RECOMMEND
WRITE A POST
ONLY
ALL
COMMENT
1937
818
123
1061
65
RECOMMEND
818
2012
65
1194
65
WRITE
123
65
124
1
65
* (writes a post, recommends a post, or comments on a post)
User Interaction Statistics (Network)
OBSERVED WRITER-(READER OR WRITER) PAIRS
9928
MAXIMUM POSSIBLE SUCH PAIRS
3132 x 124 = 388368
NETWORK DENSITY (OBSERVED/POSSIBLE)
2.6 %
AVERAGE DEGREE (LINKS/USER)
9928 / 3132 = 3.17
Graph Summary Data
Up to 200 stories, those with impact > 0.15, are shown below.
The stories are sorted by number of recommendations (nrec); those in bold were on the front page recommended list.
The TableTools2 extension for the Firefox browser allows you to sort, copy and visualize tables.
For a more complete description of the lists and statistics see this post.
nrec - Number of recommendations.
ncom - Number of comments.
impact - Calculated currently using nrec and cnx.
post - A hyperlink to the Daily Kos post displaying the title.
author - Hyperlink to the post authors Daily Kos home page.
time - Post time shown as time of day for daily lists and date for weekly stories.
Hacking the voter registration is an effective way to shape the vote. Information can be used to target active voters. Data can be tweaked to invalidate voters. Chaos can overwhelm staff so registrations are not completed on time.
theintercept.com/… NSA leak describes how Russians hacked VR Systems — company that provides IT for voter registration.
“According to its website, VR Systems has contracts in eight states: California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.”
www.newsworks.org/… WHYY upto 17,000 Philadelphia voter registrations were “lost”.
There's no allegation of partisan tampering or Russian hacking here, just bureaucratic failures that could have disenfranchised people.
Targeted chaos.
And a compromised election poll book system can do more than cause chaos on Election Day, said Halderman. “You could even do that preferentially in areas for voters that are likely to vote for a certain candidate and thereby have a partisan effect.”
Election hacking is not pursued by winner.
“The problem we have is that voting security doesn’t matter until something happens, and then after something happens, there’s a group of people who don’t want the security, because whatever happened, happened in their favor,” said Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert at Harvard’s Berkman Center who has written frequently about the security vulnerabilities of U.S. election systems. “That makes it a very hard security problem, unlike your bank account.”
Guest: John Nichols of The Nation | Plus: Trump undermines own 'travel ban', blasts London Mayor after attacks, ignores Orlando mass shooting...
Trump is Impeaching Himself, But Dems Should Help Make it Official: 'BradCast' 6/5/2017
Guest: John Nichols of The Nation | Plus: Trump undermines own 'travel ban', blasts London Mayor after attacks, ignores Orlando mass shooting...
By Brad Friedman on 6/5/2017, 6:10pm PT
On today's BradCast: How Donald Trump continues to be his own worst enemy (and, arguably, the world's) and the case for why Democrats should declare themselves "the accountability party" and immediately begin the effort to impeach the President of the United States. [Audio link to show follows below.]
First, the fallout from Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement continues as, CNN reports today that the Acting U.S. Ambassador to China, a 27-year career foreign service officer, has resigned over the decision. But he's not the only American diplomat Trump seems to have upset of late, as the acting U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. was also forced to publicly take sides against Trump following the weekend terror attacks in London.
At the same time, Trump seems determined to make certain he loses his own Department of Justice's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to restore his second Executive Order "travel ban" which has been put on hold, repeatedly, by federal courts from Maryland to Hawaii. In a weekend long Twitter tirade, continuing through Monday, the President offered one incriminating statement after another, blasting both the courts and his own DoJ, in a series of statements that will almost certainly be held against him and his own Solicitor General's case to lift the current injunction on his ban.
Trump also thought it wise, for reasons few can figure out, to disparage (now, at least twice!) the Mayor of London following the attacks in Britain on Saturday. And while Trump had plenty to say about London, it should be noted he had far less to say last week after two American men were killed defending Muslim women from an anti-Muslim tirade by a self-proclaimed "patriot" on a train in Portland, Oregon.
Moreover, Trump has, so far, had absolutely nothing to say following a mass shooting rampage on Monday morning in Orlando, Florida. That attack, with a semi-automatic pistol, allegedly carried out by a white, non-Muslim American, killed five of the shooter's former co-workers, all said to have been shot in the head multiple times by the assailant who then killed himself. Some suicide attacks, it seems, are worse than others to this President and his party which continue to insist on making firearms easier to obtain, even by the mentally ill.
Then, as Trump's approval ratings continue to fall, and a plurality of Americans, according to at least one poll, support his impeachment, we're joined by progressive author and journalist John Nichols of The Nation who argues that the time to begin the effort to impeach Donald Trump is now. Nichols details his case for impeachment, from both a Constitutional and historical point of perspective, and offers just some of what he believes should be investigated during impeachment proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"Congress doesn't have to wait" for the DoJ Special Counsel to complete its own criminal investigation, Nichols tells me. "In fact, it shouldn't wait...to allow the office of the Presidency to be polluted, to be undermined, to be warped in a way that might harm the country."
"Virtually half --- and I suspect after recent events it may get higher --- of Americans now say that the President should be impeached," he argues. "I know that a lot of people would like to begin with the list of particulars of what Trump did. But the fact that there is mass popular support for impeachment, [that's] the place at which we ought to begin. A representative branch of government should respond to that. It should recognize that there are tremendous numbers, tens of millions of Americans, who believe that this guy is governing in a way so atrocious, so damaging, that action should be taken to remove him from his position."
"We ought to stop fetishizing the impeachment power and start recognizing that it is a tool of governance that was established to make government work better. Not to create a Constitutional crisis, but to address the potential of a Constitutional crisis," Nichols says.
"If Democrats are serious about politics, they have to be about accountability," he tells me. "I think when you take [impeachment] off the table, as so many Democratic leaders have suggested we should, you really disarm. You put yourself in a position where holding a President to account is left to chance, left to long term processes that lack the urgency that the American people would like to see."
So, should Dems go so far as to promise impeachment to voters if they are elected to the majority in Congress in 2018? Or does such a promise risk political blow-back making it harder for them to take majorities in the House and Senate in the first place? And, frankly, should that even matter? We discuss all of that and much more along those lines today, and also the national Democratic party's failure to adequately support their own candidates in special U.S. House elections in recent weeks, in both Kansas and Montana, and whether they've learned any lessons on that in advance of still more U.S. House special elections set for both Georgia and South Carolina later this month…
While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!
POLITIFORMERS: Beyond Good, Beyond Evil, Beyond His Vilest Imagination
[ Part I - II - III - IV - V - VI ]
Little did you know, but many of our most prominent politicians are actually super-powerful robots, hiding in our midst. This series profiles the Politiformers in the first decade of the new millennium, the Republicons and the Demobots.
No one thought that, riding supposed popular demand, the Politiformers story would ever quite go so far as to exhaust all sense, stretch spectacle into absurdity, extract the last drop of profitabilty, and make it all the way to its (admittedly logical) imperial-collapse end state. But now, here we are. And it just keeps going!
EPILOGUE
Galvadon
FUNCTION: PRESIDENT*
“You know, half these guys [say], ‘Torture doesn't work.’ Believe me, it works. Okay?”
Well, don’t say the cartoon didn’t warn you. The saner of his compatriots issue blatant cries for help and try to tie him down with interventionist constraints, but his level of craziness is so off-the-charts that it’s no use. His earlier self didn’t think things would work out this way, but now that they have, he subjects everyone on the planet to his every wrathful whim. The only forseeable end is in destruction: his own presidency’s, his enemies’, or everyone’s. How will we ever get out of this one? Tune in tomorrow!
More interesting is how recent this leak occurred … within the last month, but more importantly it signals how much information was known in 2016 and how much information is available at the NSA.
The speculation about attempts to hack the US elections becomes verified yet again, even if it’s uncertain whether there were successful direct effects, even as we see various windbags claim micro-targeting victories by parallel efforts using data that might(sic) share similar provenance.
One implication is that elements in #TrumpRussia’s US cabal knew that the NSA or some IC asset had this information before the 2016 election and still plodded forward with perhaps only indirectly coordinated activities designed to both undermine opponents and/or the electoral process itself.
The continuing investigations as well as the state-level prosecutions will have the usual lawfare over evidence and the subsequent firewalling of secret data.
Reality Winner, arrested for alleged classified leak, is a former US Air Force linguist who speaks Pashto, Farsi & Dari, her mother tells me pic.twitter.com/SQjt13wRw6
The magazine serves as a platform to report on the documents released byEdward Snowdenin the short term, and to "produce aggressive, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues" in the long term.[5]
Covfefe (n. cov-`eff-ee)- a largely discredited management style in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a single leader or a small cadre. Leader(s) set arbitrary, obscure and confusing objectives and often change them without prior notice. It is believed that this constant shifting keeps lower ranks alert for the slightest nuance. Lesser personnel must constantly compete for the attention of those above them. Oddly it matters little if anything ever gets done; power for its own sake is the goal.
A high and overt level of corruption and influence peddling is common.
See-Orwell, George (1984). Berlusconi, Silvio. Peron, Juan. Long, Huey. Chavez, Hugo, Trump, The Donald etc.
The Vinyl of the Day is ‘The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys’ by Traffic, 1971. One of the most underrated albums of the rock era, it’s a heady blend of rock, jazz and international music. Led by prodigy Steve Winwood, he and the boys employ not only standard rock, blues and jazz sounds, but also some unique African wind and stringed instruments to create a soft, almost dreamy atmosphere on several pieces. Despite not even charting in the band’s native England, this album became a platinum-selling American hit on the basis of three enduring FM radio staples–the expansive, jazzy impressionism of the near-12 minute title track, and the more straightforward funk of the R&B charmers “Light Up or Leave Me Alone” and “Rock & Roll Stew.” Those three very different tracks perfectly underscore Traffic’s rich musical appeal and its restless, sometimes problematic creative and interpersonal relationships. Winwood’s familiar vocal phrasings nearly take a backseat to his fluid, dramatic guitar work on “Rock & Roll Stew Roll” and “Many a Mile to Freedom,” while the Tull-ish, folk-madrigal sensibilities of “Hidden Treasure” and “Rainmaker” are further punctuated by Chris Wood’s deft flute and woodwind flourishes. While many contemporary bands were experimenting with various attempts at fusion, few achieved this collection’s rock-jazz-folk-R&B range or level of often subtle sophistication.
PS — the album sleeve is an unusual, but famous bit of design with artwork created to be an optical illusion, and die-cut to be a ….rhomboid?
AllMusic Review by William Ruhlmann
The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys marked the commercial and artistic apex of the second coming of Traffic, which had commenced in 1970 with John Barleycorn Must Die. The trio that made that album had been augmented by three others (Ric Grech, Jim Gordon, and “Reebop” Kwaku Baah) in the interim, though apparently the Low Spark sessions featured varying combinations of these musicians, plus some guests. But where their previous album had grown out of sessions for a Steve Winwood solo album and retained that focus, Low Spark pointedly contained changes of pace from his usual contributions of midtempo, introspective jam tunes. “Rock & Roll Stew” was an uptempo treatise on life on the road, while Jim Capaldi’s “Light up or Leave Me Alone” was another more aggressive number with an unusually emphatic Capaldi vocal that perked things up on side two. The other four tracks were Winwood/Capaldi compositions more in the band’s familiar style. “Hidden Treasure” and “Rainmaker” bookended the disc with acoustic treatments of nature themes that were particularly concerned with water, and “Many a Mile to Freedom” also employed water imagery. But the standout was the 12-minute title track, with its distinctive piano riff and its lyrics of weary disillusionment with the music business. The band had only just fulfilled a contractual commitment by releasing the live album Welcome to the Canteen, and they had in their past the embarrassing Last Exit album thrown together as a commercial stopgap during a temporary breakup in 1969. But that anger had proven inspirational, and “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” was one of Traffic’s greatest songs as well as its longest so far. The result was an album that quickly went gold (and eventually platinum) in the U.S., where the group toured frequently.
It is so nice to breath the thin air of Colorado! Many of you may not get to experience the heat, humidity, and mugginess of a Midwestern summer, but believe me when I say, it’s so nice to get back to Colorado. Now, having relatives in Kansas and Misery gives me a special reason to go there, but I don’t think I’d go if it weren’t for the relatives.
One of the few things I was reminded of that they have in Kansas but don’t have too often in Colorado are lightning bugs. Very nice to see those flying around in the evening. Back here since Saturday, I’ve had the chance to get re-acclimated by walking my woozles — they’re very good for making sure I huff up those small hills. Heaven knows what we’d do in the real mountains like what Thinking Fella does with his two. Still, it’s very nice to be back in this thin air.
Yesterday and today I have been doing the yard work that has been ignored for a couple of weeks. I could have gone to the People’s Fair, but the guy I was hoping to go with wound up being dragged to it on Saturday, the day I got back. I also missed a crawfish boil Saturday, but that’s the breaks.
So, did anyone go marching over the weekend?
I noticed the following article in the Denver Post. Civil Asset Forfeiture is something that I’ve really been repulsed by — allowing assets to be seized without a guilty verdict and sometimes without charges being filed is absolutely outrageous and SHOULD be unConstitutional, but so far the USSC has allowed the process to continue. The people who are in favor of it make money off it, while the victims who aren’t guilty of a crime, either after a court trial or without even a charge to allow them to defend themselves, are out money and property. I see it as legalized theft. I don’t mind if a court decision has judged the person did use the property in commission of a crime, fine, they forfeit the house they cooked meth in, or the car they used to drive away from the bank robbery. I DO strenuously mind if someone is stopped in their car and the officer decides that the car might have been used in a crime and so the car is impounded and then no charge is filed, yet the car is not returned. Anyway, some quotes from the article:
Law enforcement and local government groups across Colorado say hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in crime-fighting dollars could be lost if Gov. John Hickenlooper signs legislation that changes how officers and sheriff’s deputies seize money and property suspected of being tied to illegal activity.
Boo Hoo.
The bill in part seeks to analyze how civil asset forfeiture is carried out in Colorado by mandating that police agencies report seizure information twice a year to the state. But the provision that opponents worry about most would prohibit local law enforcement from receiving forfeiture proceeds from the federal government in cases where property and money seized is less than $50,000. That’s aimed at steering more seizures toward the Colorado process, instead of the federal one.
But those against the legislation say that amount is an arbitrary threshold, and according to one estimate from the Colorado Municipal League, it could represent half or more of all seized assets. Carey said in the past five years alone, his department has received $2 million in seizures from investigations it worked on with federal law enforcement agencies.
“Of those cases, 85 percent of them did not meet the $50,000 threshold,” Carey said. “So that means 15 percent of that would be equitable sharing in the future.”
I’ll bet all those pushing to keep every dime have never had an asset seized under this process. I’m sure they’d change their tune if they ever experienced it. What would be the term for that? Blue privilege?
Let the Governor know what you think. The link takes you to not just the Denver Post article, but they also have the text of the bill.
Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments. As always, if you would like to publish a Colorado State Open Thread, please let me know as well, either in the comments or through KosMail. That would be one way to keep me from posting (heh).
I know that it is absurd to worry over whether I prefer Trump or Pence as president. But I do. Somewhere in the reaches of my mind, I feel a need to hope for something to change, but have felt that Pence was no improvement with his homophobic, antiwoman, etc. etc. history. But two incidents that I learned of this week led me to hope that we soon see President Pence. (Poor consolation, I actually hope we all fall asleep and don't wake until 2021 with a good candidate moving into the presidency, or at least a win in Congress in 2018).
First was the story of Trump willfully defying and not notifying the “adults” in his administration and, on his own or in collusion with Bannon, changing his speech to NATO, eliminating mention of our support for Article 5.
The immensity of this reflects all of the fears we have: a rogue President with no respect for allies, precedent, or even his own advisors, lashing out at essential friends in the world. The tantrums are beyond astonishing. I fear for our country under this man. Of course, I could cite pages of actions that are similar, but this somehow felt like the final straw. Story number one.
The second story is hidden in history but was revived this week. During the campaign, Mike Pence’s plane skidded off the runway at 45 miles an hour after a botched landing. Three flight attendants were checked for back injuries, but noone was seriously hurt. Still, this must have been a frightening experience. The report that just came back from NTSB describes confusion in the cockpit and among occupants, but the CNN report also says:
Once the plane had stopped, Pence came to the back of the aircraft to check on reporters and the Secret Service, asking if everyone was all right.
A little thing, but it shows a measure of humanity that I long for now.
If Mike Pence becomes president, I will oppose most of his policies as strongly as I can. But, this small snippet of a story gives me a chance to see that he can be a caring human. He suffers from the same short sighted lack of empathy that I see in so many Republicans when they are asked to look beyond their circle of contact, but I cannot see Donald Trump going to the back of the plane in concern unless he saw something to gain.
So… proceed with the impeachment, with article 25, or with a brokered resignation. I am ready for a change.
There are 2,305 names. They are only "representative."
There are 2,305 names. They are only "representative."
.
Today I fulfilled a long-term pledge to myself, by attending the annual rededication of a memorial to slain journalists that is housed in the Newseum building -- the museum of journalism in downtown Washington, D.C.
This year, 14 more names are etched on the frosted-glass panels of the monument, for a total of 2,305 names dating back as far as 1837: reporters, photographers, broadcasters, bloggers, news executives. Speakers at the event emphasized, however, that the names on the monument are merely “representative.” Actual numbers must be far higher.
The personal pledge to be there dated back more than a decade, to a time when the Newseum inhabited Rosslyn, Va., near where I worked for the federal government.
At that time the glass panels of the journalists’ memorial composed a three-dimensional, open tower that spiraled up from an elevated plaza, looking out across the Potomac to the nation’s great monuments. The view stretched all the way to the Capitol dome. I would walk there at lunchtime and contemplate the memorial.
Nearby was more to think about: reproduced life-size in bronze, cobblestones from the Warsaw ghetto, Nelson Mandela’s cell door, and more of the same kind. Plaques mounted on granite bearing great quotations, such as the immortal words of Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never did, and it never will.”
Potent place.
Around a corner another wall, for a time, featured children’s paintings of Franklin Roosevelt’s historic “Four Freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The picture representing freedom from fear disappeared sometime in the early 2000s as I recall; perhaps it had been damaged; the blank space seemed eloquent in itself.
****
So today, I finally made it to a rededication ceremony. Getting there meant the Washington-area obstacle race of blocked lanes, stopped school buses, closed-off parking spaces, Metro outages, and construction, construction, construction. The air was sodden, the sky fish-belly white.
The frosted glass panes now form a wall in front of a tall window, curving overhead.
It was a simply ceremony in a limited space. In the front rows were quiet embraces among relatives and colleagues of the honorees. TV cameras leaned over the last row. The chatter of school children echoed off the ceiling from the main hall of the Newseum.
Michael Oreskes, NPR senior vice president of news and editorial director, who lost a photographer and translator to an attack by the Taliban, gave the primary address. “We’re here this morning to remember those we’ve lost...and to rededicate ouselves to the principles they believed in, and they died for.
“They were there on that road doing the most basic thing any journalists can do,” Oreskes continued. “They were there to find out for themselves the facts of America’s longest war as the Afghan army took over the fighting...”
Reading the names and stories of the murdered journalists.
The murdered journalists “lived the way they lived and died as they died because they believed in something very precious, very simple…," said Oreskes. “They believed that independent information in the hands of individuals helps make them free, that it empowers them to make decisions, and it liberates them from governments that can control them by keeping them ignorant. They believed that corruption and oppression thrive in darkness.”
NPR photographer David Gilke, he said was “sometimes described as one of his generation’s finest war photographers. That’s not quite right. He really didn’t photograph war. He photographed the men and the women, soldiers and civilians, caught in these wars…. streaked with sweat, edged with exhaustion, or fear, or relief.” Gilke's “own humanity was reflected back in those images....” said Oreskes. “He never, ever forgot the people he came to cover...It was a mission.”
His co-worker and translator, “Zabi was trained as a lawyer,” said Oresekes, and knew a vast array of local lanugages. He had chosen journalism because “in Afghanistan ,journalism was a more effective, more powerful, more immediate way to serve his country.”
In contrast Joao Miranda de Carmo “wasn’t a globe-trotting war correspondent.” He lived 30 miles from Brasilia and covered local issues on a website. “Most of the jouinalists honored at the ceremony “were killed while reporting on their own countries....That is the brutal of reality of the world we live in.
“Whether it’s drug gangs or the corrupt police in Mexico, or the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Syria, murdering journalists has become a technique of control, a way of trying to prevent reality from reaching the outside world,” Oreskes said.
Post-truth era? “That claim is false. There is no greater proof of how wrong that idea is than the lives and deaths of these journalists...We live in an era when powerful organizations and governments know how much the truth still matters, and they are wiling to kill journalists, or jail them, or bully them or threaten them” to suppress the truth.
“I say these journalists died for a cause because at this moment in history there are clearly those in th world who would prefer a very different system. Ideologues and autocrats, and would-be autocrats, know it’s easier to get their way” if they “control the information the public receives…
“In the world we have inherited, libery is much more likely to be lost to ignorance than it is to jackbooted armies...We must resist efforts to limit the freedom to report, here or anywhere else in the world....american has stood as a light of liberty to the whole world.
“Attacks on journalists in this country,..sends a message everywhere that journalists are legitimate targets,” Oreskes said.
The fallen
Jeffrey Herbst, president and CEO of the Newseum also stated that, “Journalists face an ever more complicated world where...governments, terrorist organizations, narco traffickers and others seek to control the terrain of information. Where control of information has become a critical battlefield…. [the murdered journalists] chose to continue with this profession because they thought it was so important to report on what was happening, to inform their own communities and their world at large.”
There is a lot more to be said about current threats to journalists both here and abroad, but I’ll leave it at this, for now.
Names Added to the Journalists’ Memorial for the Year 2016
Afghanistan:David Gilkey, 50, photographer, and Zabihullah Tamanna, 38, translator, both with National Public Radio. Covering the Afghan conflict. Killed in a Taliban ambush one year ago today.
Brazil: Joao Miranda do Carmo, 54, blogger, SAD Sem Censura. Covered local corruption. Shot outside his house; head of city hall security and his son arrested.
India:Karun Misra, 32, bureau chief, Jansandesh Times. Investigated illegal mining operations. Gunned down by three men on motorcycles; two local mining contractors were named by police as instigators.
Iraq: Saif Talal, reporter, and Hassan al-Anbaki, cameraman. Al-Sharqiya television. Covering ISIS bombing of a café. Forced out of car by masked gunmen and shot. “At least four other reports were killed in Iraq in 2016,” the Newseum program stated.
Jeffrey Herbst, president and CEO, Newseum and Newseum Institute; Michael Oreskes of NPR; and Gene Policinski, COO, Newseum Institute, stand together before the ceremony.
Libya: Jeroen Oerlemans, 46, photographer, freelance. Covering battle between ISIS and Libyan troops; struck by bullet that found gap in body armor.
Mexico: Marcos Hernandez Bautista, 38, reporter, Noticias Vos e Imagen de Oaxaca. Covered local corruption. Shot in the head after leaving a bar. Local police chief convicted.
Somalia. Sagal Salad Osman, 24, producer and presenter, Radio Mogadishu. “One of the few female voices on the radio in Somalia.” Shot one year ago today, while leaving the university where she was studying for a degree in computer science; an Islamist militant group is suspected of the murder.
Syria: Moustafa Abdul Hassan, 28, correspondent, Shaam News Network; Samer Mouhammed Aboud, 33, reporter, Free Deir al-Zour Radio/Development Interaction Network; Mohammed Marwan al-Issa, 41, cameraman, Al-Nateq News Network; Sami Jawdat Rabah, 28, reporter, Syrian Observatory For Human Rights. Captured by ISIS in 2014, refused to pledge allegiance to that group, disappeared; gruesome videotape of their murders posted by ISIS last June. “More than 100 journalists have been killed since Syria’s war began in 2011,” the Newseum noted.
Ukraine.Pavel Sheremet, 44, radio reporter for website Ukrainska Pravda. Covered organized crime and corruption. Killed by a car bomb that may have been intended for his editor, whose car he was driving.
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