If You Want to Send a Message, Send Hallmark, Not Missiles

It boggles the mind how enormous the gulf between the war pushers in the media and the American public is getting to be in this debate.

Come to Our Fundraiser for Jim Sykes for Mat-Su Borough Assembly

Judy, Jim and Me - at a rally for Alaskans for Clean Elections

 On Sunday, Judy and I are hosting a fundraiser for Jim Sykes.  He is running for the Mat-Su Borough Assembly seat currently held by Warren Keogh, who is stepping down:

For assembly District 1, incumbent Warren Keogh announced he won’t seek re-election. By end of day Friday, a quartet of borough residents had filed paperwork to be on the ballot. They are Douglas Glenn, Jim Sykes, George Rauscher and Glenda Smith.

Jim is one of our state's most dedicated and knowledgeable public servants.  He has been active in many issues important to Mat-Su Valley residents.  Most recently, he was a key figure is local efforts to support the referendum to repeal Senate Bill 21, the big oil giveaway:

Jim (second from right) with supporters of the Referendum to repeal SB21

The fundraiser will be from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.  There will be refreshments, and goodies from our bounteous gardens.

What:  Fundraiser for candidate Jim Sykes for Mat-Su Borough Assembly Seat 1

When:  2:00 pm to 4:00 pm Sunday, August 25th

Where:  7127 Ea. Shorewood Drive, Wasilla, Alaska

What Have You Let Us Become, President Obama?

I just finished watching Democracy Now's interview from Tuesday with Lavabit founder, Ladar Levison, and with Levison's attorney, Jesse Binnall.  It was a compelling interview, with Levison reminding me of absolutely nothing I've ever seen before on a news interview about how someone has had to respond to Federal government pressure.


It was all a bit disturbing, close to scary.  This statement by Levison was, to me, the most troubling:

there’s information that I can’t even share with my lawyer, let alone with the American public. So if we’re talking about secrecy, you know, it’s really been taken to the extreme. And I think it’s really being used by the current administration to cover up tactics that they may be ashamed of.

 Please watch this interview:

Catching Up on the 2013 Vegetable Gardens

I've taken a major break from blogging this spring and summer.  I haven't posted garden pictures at all.  That is too bad, as this has been the best growing summer I can remember in Alaska.  Time to catch up!

Above is an image of the main garden.  The plants are easily twice as large in most cases than last year, which was chilly.  We've wet records this year for consecutive days over 70 degrees, and over 80.

Below are part of the beet patch:

Below is a flowering set of soy bean pods:

Green beans, ready to pick:

Runner beans, with snow peas in the background:

The potato patch, with ripening raspberries at the far right:

The burdock box:

The carrot patch:

A red cabbage, growing very fast!

The cabbage patch:

Pod peas ripening:

Red Aroch - great for salads, ready to be made into brilliant scarlet pasta noodles:

Cilantro, ready to be made into pesto:

Zucchini:

Ripe Stupice tomatoes:

Unripe Green Zebra tomatoes:

Eight-foot tall Green Zebra tomato plant:

Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup: Which Alaska Bloggers Qualify as "Journalists"

The U.S. Senate is in the midst of attempting to either define what it is to be a journalist in America, or to limit it.  This revolves around congressional concerns over the revelations of massive surveillance programs conducted by our government and its highly-paid contractors, by writers, radio announcers and television personalities.

These attempts to limit who qualifies as a journalist are meant to leave certain categories of people who publish information and ideas unshielded from retaliation, or exempt from so-called "whistleblower protections":

The Senate Judiciary Committee, looking to provide protections for journalists and their sources, ran into a roadblock Thursday when lawmakers couldn’t agree on the definition of “journalist.”

Under the legislation, journalists wouldn’t have to comply with subpoenas or court orders forcing them to reveal sources or confidential information unless a judge first determines there’s reason to think that a crime has occurred and government officials have exhausted all other alternatives. 

It’s the third time Congress has considered a “shield law” for journalists. Similar bills have failed despite bipartisan support.

"I’m hoping the third time’s a charm," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee’s chairman. 

The bill defines a journalist as a person who has a "primary intent to investigate events and procure material" in order to inform the public by regularly gathering information through interviews and observations. The person also must intend to report on the news at the start of obtaining any protected information and must plan to publish that news.

But senators disagreed on how to define journalists, since some thought the bill’s definition wasn’t specific enough.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wondered whether it could be used to provide protections to employees of WikiLeaks, an organization that allows anonymous sources to leak information to the public.

"I’m concerned this would provide special privilege to those who are not reporters at all," she said.

Feinstein wants to have whether or not one is paid to publish and distribute information to be a limiting factor:

Feinstein suggested that the definition comprise only journalists who make salaries, saying it should be applied just to "real reporters." The sponsor of the bill, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was against that idea, since there are bloggers and others in the Internet age who don’t necessarily receive salaries.  

"The world has changed. We’re very careful in this bill to distinguish journalists from those who shouldn’t be protected, WikiLeaks and all those, and we’ve ensured that," Schumer said. "But there are people who write and do real journalism, in different ways than we’re used to. They should not be excluded from this bill."

Not surprisingly, some, most notably from the on-line community, are concerned:

The debate comes amid a chilling climate for journalists and their sources who cross US power. Bradley Manning was found guilty Tuesday of over 20 counts including espionage and is facing a potential 136 years in jail for revealing documents to WikiLeaks that exposed US human rights abuses and corruption across the world.

"It is dangerous to rely on only those sources the government deems worthy of protection," said Nathan Fuller, writer for the Bradley Manning Support Network. "WikiLeaks is a serious news publication: it edits material and protects sources. Wikileaks has anonymous submissions because it knows its contacts don't get protection."

The bill advances following a May scandal in which Justice Department officials were publicly exposed for seizing phone records of AP reporters without due process or notice and monitoring communications of a Fox News reporter.

Meanwhile, journalists expressed outrage at Feinstein's denigration of unpaid reporters in a climate where journalism jobs are quickly disappearing and independent, and often unpaid, reporting plays a key role in exposing the truth and holding power accountable.

Alaska bloggers have been responsible, on occasion, for exposing egregious wrongs of government officials, and questioning various policies of the state of Alaska, and other government bodies or agencies.  The question of whether or not we are journalists seldom if ever comes up in such an acute way as it is during this U.S. Senate debate.

Is there a working definition of "journalist" in Alaska?  I don't think so.

During some criminal trials and civil proceedings, the people responsible for security at these proceedings seem to have been arbitrary in the past on how they treated bloggers or people not directly affiliated with a published newspaper, radio or television station.  Even though I am certainly unpaid for every article I've published at Progressive Alaska, I have seldom been excluded from a hearing, or from a press event.

Rather, the opposite has occurred:  Soon after I started this blog, I was asked to join the Alaska Press Club.  Soon afterward, one of the club's officers asked me to run for the board of directors, which I did.  I served a term, and part of another one.  Some reporters in Alaska certainly do look down on bloggers, but that's just them, not the prevailing culture.

Using Diane Feinstein's criteria of choosing "those who are not reporters at all" from any protections for uncovering wrongdoing, how many Alaska bloggers are "reporters," how many not?  Does it have to do with salary, number of hours spent per week on performing research or related efforts, and if one has a boss-editor?  Beats me.

Would my status change in Feinstein's eyes, if I started running ads at PA, like they do at The Mudflats and The Immoral Minority?  Or posted a Pay Pal button, like at The Alaska Commons?

Is Steve Aufrecht at What Do I Know?, author of by far the best series on Alaska's ongoing redistricting epic, not a journalist, merely because he doesn't beg for money, or have some other stipend related to the blog?

The Senate bill, while posing as something that will assure journalists of certain rights, is looking like it will end up limiting them.  We can also see, state statutes forbidding photographing animal abuse at meat packing plants, for instance, as doing the same - limiting rights held under the 1st Amendment.

There will be more of this, as the National Security State grows, hand-in-hand, with corporate kleptomaniacs.

America is a Tinderbox

Abby Martin Interviews Former NSA Operative Russ Tice - Watch This!

Journalism Summer Camp

click to enlarge

Mildred Munger - 1918-2013

My mom, Milly Munger, passed away late yesterday morning, south of Seattle.

She had been playing croquet with friends at the retirement home in Des Moines, where she had been residing since March.  She had won the first game, and was having a wonderful time, when her huge heart gave out on her.  She passed out and away on a warm, sunny morning.  She was happy up until the time she was called away.

She leaves her daughter, Judy Koenig, three sons - Phil, Steve and Bob, twelve grandkids and one great-granddaughter.  She was preceded by her husband, Gene, and son, Gene.

Judy and I got to spend Christmas break with mom.  Our kids, Julia and Alex visited her within the past two weeks.

She was finishing one of the finest of the hundreds of hand-stitched quilts she had made over the past decades.  She had hoped to enter it in the Washington State Fair, where she has won awards in the past.  We're going to try to encourage members of her quilting club to finish it for her, so it can be entered:

My favorite recent picture of mom was last August, when I accompanied her, Judy and Julia around Mt. Rainier:

From the Shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655 to the Aerial Interdiction of President Evo Morales - 25 Years

USS Vincennes radar plot room - c. 1988

As Bolivian President Evo Morales sits marooned in a Vienna airport on the dawn of July 3rd, 2013, having possibly avoided aerial interception over the Atlantic Ocean by U.S. fighters or missiles, it might be fitting to think about the fate of Iran Ar Flight 655, 25 years ago today (emphases added):

Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air flight from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. On 3 July 1988, at the end of the Iran–Iraq War, the aircraft serving the flight, an Airbus A300B2-203, was shot down by U.S. missiles fired by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes as it flew over the Strait of Hormuz. 

The aircraft, which had been flying in Iranian airspace over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf on its usual flight path, was destroyed. All 290 onboard, including 66 children and 16 crew, perished. Ranking seventh among the deadliest disasters in aviation history, the incident retains the highest death toll of any aviation incident in the Indian Ocean and the highest death toll of any incident involving an Airbus A300 anywhere in the world. The Vincennes had entered Iranian territorial waters after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats operating within Iranian territorial limits. 

According to the United States Government, the crew incorrectly identified the Iranian Airbus A300 as an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter (a plane made in the United States and operated at that time by only two forces worldwide, the United States Navy and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force). The Iranian government maintains that Vincennes negligently shot down the civilian aircraft. 

The event generated a great deal of controversy and criticism of the United States.

25 years later, we have another event that is quickly generating criticism of the USA - the forcing down of the aircraft flying the president of Bolivia back to his home state, after attending a conference of natural gas exporters last week, in Moscow (NOTE - if you are on a US military base overseas, you will not be able to link to the article quoted next.  To attempt to do so may lead to an investigation of you, so just read the excerpt, OK):

Bolivia reacted with fury after a plane carrying the country's president home from Russia was diverted to Vienna amid suspicions that it was carrying the surveillance whistleblower, Edward Snowden. 

France and Portugal were accused of withdrawing permission for the plane, carrying the president, Evo Morales, from energy talks in Moscow, to pass through their airspace. 

Officials in both Austria and Bolivia said Snowden was not on the plane. The Bolivian foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, said: "We don't know who invented this lie. We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales." 

In a midnight press conference, Bolivian vice-president Alvaro Garcia said Italy and Spain were also denying the plane permission to fly through their airspace. He described Morales as being "kidnapped by imperialism" in Europe. 

"The ambassador for Spain in Austria has just informed us that there is no authorisation to fly over Spanish territory and that at 9am Wednesday they would be in contact with us again," defence minister Ruben Saavedra said. The Spanish government had made "revision of the presidential plane" a condition of granting it passage, he said. 

Choquehuanca earlier told reporters Portugal and France had abruptly cancelled air permits. "They say it was due to technical issues, but after getting explanations from some authorities we found that there appeared to be some unfounded suspicions that Mr Snowden was on the plane." 

Choquehuanca said in a statement that after France and Portugal cancelled authorisation for the flight, Spain's government allowed the plane to be refuelled in its territory. From there the plane flew on to Vienna. He said the decision by France and Portugal "put at risk the life of the president".

Watching this story break and develop on twitter Tuesday evening, I was struck by how quickly Latin American leaders reacted.  Needless to say, we're still waiting on one of them to support the weird event, universally accepted to have been prompted by American actions, but which have yet to be (midnight 2-3 July PDT) acknowledged by the U.S. government.

Thinking back to the shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655, I remember being appalled.

 Just over two years later, we convinced Saddam Hussein that if he invaded Kuwait, we would only consider it a dispute outside our realm of serious interest.  So he invaded.

Since then, we've been killing scores of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, from the Philippines to Libya.  The resulting blowback has killed or injured Americans.  Our response has not made us tangibly safer.  It has directed a few trillion tax dollars into the pockets of people who aren't making us less vulnerable.  They're supposed to make us feel like we're safer, though, so they can keep conning us.  Hence the importance of keeping Snowden's independence throttled, short of capturing or killing him.

The Ticonderoga-class cruiser that shot down Iranian flight 655 was known by its crew as "Roboship."   The movie, RoboCop, had come out the year before the shootdown.

Defenders of Obama's illegal policies, which have been brought into the spotlight by Wikileaks, whistleblowers, independent fact finders and journalists, and that rare instance when MSM journalists actually uncover something through investigating, have less to stand on every day.  They're beginning to resemble robots.

Worldwide reactions to Snowden's disclosures are starting to snowball.  This face will not slow it at all.  In this case, the U.S.A. appears quite ludicrous, let alone irresponsibly arrogant.

It's almost as if we don't care who we piss off over this.

And - hey!  It isn't that Obama's denizens don't want to off Evo Morales.  They just don't want their bloodstains or DNA on the murder weapons.