Levin Again Urges More Training of Afghans
Yesterday, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Michigan Senator Carl Levin, again made a plea for increasing US funding for training Afghan soldiers. Last week Levin made a similar plea to the administration with the hopes of limiting growing US citizen concerns about the US occupation of Afghanistan.
The Associated Press story that appeared in the GR Press quotes Levin as saying, “Our support of this surge of the Afghan security forces will show our commitment to the success of a mission that is clearly in our national security interests. But we would do so without creating a bigger U.S. military footprint, which provides propaganda fodder for the Taliban.” He added: “And we should implement these steps on an urgent basis, before we consider an increase in U.S. ground combat forces beyond what is already planned by the end of this year.”
The GR Press version of the story is much shorter than the original AP article and leaves out comments from both White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs and Republican Senator John McCain. Neither Gibbs nor McCain provide significantly different points of view, McCain agrees with the need to train more Afghanis, but also believes the US should not wait to send more ground troops.
The AP story frames Levin’s comments as a reaction to “mounting pressure on the White House to avoid escalating the war in Afghanistan,” but Levin is only suggesting a tactical shift not an anti-war position. Levin makes it clear in his statement that he wants the US mission in Afghanistan to succeed and that the mission’s success is “clearly in our national security interests.” The AP reporter does not challenge this premise nor ask the Senator to verify how the US occupation of Afghanistan is of nation security interest.
Conn Hallinan, writing for Foreign Policy in Focus, recently wrote an excellent response to the current posturing on Afghanistan coming from the White House. Hallinan argues that the US occupation of Afghanistan is not a war of necessity to prevent terrorism, the US can not win a traditional counterinsurgency war in that country, the “Surge” in Iraq was not a success and therefore will not be in Afghanistan, and the NATO forces in Afghanistan are not acting in the same capacity as the British troops were in Iraq.
In addition, the other perspective that is omitted from this story is that of Afghanis. More and more Afghanis are saying that the main source of Taliban recruitment and instability in the country is the US occupation, a view that dissident parliamentarian Malalai Joy expresses in a new book.
Immigration Reform Forum This Monday
The West Michigan Coalition for Immigration Reform is hosting a forum on the importance and necessity of changing the current immigration policy for this country. We believe that the system is broken and needs to be fixed.
“We want a new immigration policy that will keep families to together, provide a pathway for citizenship for millions who are already contributing in positives ways, protect workers, and send a message to the world that we are a nation of immigrants that welcomes people who believe in the American Dream.”
There will be speakers from all walks of life that reflects a broad base of support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, music and Action Kits – which will provide people with plenty of opportunities to get involved.
Monday, September 14 6:30 – 8pm
GVSU Loosemore Auditorium
Pew Campus/401 West Fulton St.
GRIID Announces New Fall Classes
We are pleased to announce that GRIID will be offering two classes this Fall. The first is A History of US Social Movements, a 6-week session using as a primary text Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the US. In the Social Movements class we will explore the rich history of social change movements, discuss tactics & strategies, and talk about what we can learn from those movements for today.
The second class that is being offered is a new one that will explore the current US occupation of Afghanistan. The class will also be a 6-week session where we will explore the recent history of US involvement in Afghanistan, from the Soviet occupation of the 80s, to the rise of the Taliban and the current US occupation. The primary text for this book will be Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence.
The Social Movements class will held on Wednesdays from 7 – 9pm, starting October 7 and the Afghanistan class will be held on Mondays from 8 – 10pm beginning on October 12.
The cost for each class is $20 and participants are required to get their own copy of each book that will be used. The classes will be held at 1134 Wealthy.
To sign up contact: Mike Saunders outobol@gmail.com or Jeff Smith jsmith@griid.org.
West Michigan Media Coverage of Obama’s Health Care Speech
The news coverage surrounding the health care reform debate has been center stage in recent weeks. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, health care was the dominant news story in the national news for the week prior to the President’s speech. So, how did the West Michigan news outlets report on the much anticipate speech from Barak Obama?
The Grand Rapids Press decided to get feedback from the community on the President’s speech, but limited it to a spectrum of those for or against. The story cites a businessman, someone who works at a low-income health care facility and a doctor. The businessman does not support the proposed plan from the White House, the low-income health care facility worker does, and for all practical purposes the doctor also does not support the President’s plan even though he admits there are problems in the current system. The Press also published an AP story that provided a summary of the President’s comments.
The local TV stations did straight up summaries of the President’s speech. WXMI 17 is a good example, where the reporter provides an overview of the speech with an a few excerpted quotes from the President. The channel 17 does not verify and of the claims made by the President and the excerpted comments were no doubt chosen because they were good punch lines, not because they provided viewers with any details of what the health care proposal actually is. WZZM 13 and WOOD TV 8 provided similar coverage, but they also chose to run additional stories that focused on Rep. Joe Wilson, who during the President’s speech yelled out “You Lie.”
WOOD Radio also reported on the President’s speech. However, the local radio news channel also did a story on reactions from both Congressmen Pete Hoekstra and Vern Ehlers. Hoekstra seems to think that Obama will have a hard time convincing moderate Democrats on this issue and Rep. Ehlers doesn’t think the proposal will pass because there is already a substantial federal deficit.
Independent reporting on the President’s speech was significantly different that how the commercial media was framing it. The Progressive Magazine’s Matthew Rothschild called the President’s comments on the Public Option proposal “tepid.” Washington author and journalist David Sirota provides a brief but excellent analysis of the President’s speech and The Nation magazine’s Washington correspondent John Nichols reported:
When it came to the task of offering the explanations, arguments and details that have been so hard to come by during a frustratingly unfocused debate about how to develop a functional health-care system for a country where tens of millions of Americans have no insurance coverage and tens of millions more are under-insured, Obama remained unsettlingly vague.
A couple of other issues that have been either marginalized or omitted from the commercial news coverage during the recent health care debate are; a single-payer option, which Democracy Now made the focus of their post Presidential speech on September 10; and the financial lobbying by the health care industry of Congress. According to the Center for Responsible Politics, the health care industry has spent $3.4 billion dollars since 1998 influencing federal legislation. It seems that kind of lobbying by the health care industry would merit substantial news coverage. Unfortunately, that has not been the case to this point in the debate.
Immigration Interviews – Members of the Michigan Organizing Project
These interviews with members of the Michigan Organizing Project are the last in a series with people from West Michigan who are working to push for a new immigration policy from the federal government. The West Michigan Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform is working with the national group Reform Immigration For America (RIFA) to hold the new administration to its promise to reform immigration policy. You can join the local group by becoming a member on Facebook or contact Diane at dianelawkessler@gmail.com.
Media Bites – Health Care Ad
This week’s Media Bites takes a look at one of the recent political ads on health care. This ad was paid for by the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative group that opposes the proposed government health care reform plan. We look at the claims made by this ad and provide some independent analysis so that viewers can make an informed decision about the position taken by the Independent Women’s Forum.
So, the President spoke to school age children all across America today and he didn’t say anything that previous presidents haven’t already said. The main message was stay in school, stick with it, work hard and you too can make something out of your life…….like JK Rowling and Michael Jordan.
His speech didn’t exactly live up to the propaganda claims from media pundits like Glenn Beck. If fact, it was very similar to the student addresses that President’s Reagan and George Bush Sr. made during their tenure in the White House.
However, there is another broadcast that happened on September 8 that is also directed at education in this country that hasn’t received much attention at all. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the media conglomerate Viacom have put together their own education program called Get Schooled. Now, in my neighborhood, to get schooled is not a good thing, and that could very well be the outcome of this program, which has the backing of corporate money.
According to education researcher Kenneth Libby, “Get Schooled is a five-year partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Viacom – with sponsorships from Capital One, AT&T, and NYSE Euronext – will kick off with a thirty minute documentary about the role of education in the lives of NBA superstar Lebron James, American Idol’s Kelly Clarkson, and President Obama, and the role of education in the lives of their support staff.”
The “Get Schooled” website – which both compliments and advertises the TV event – offers us a glimpse into how corporate America and the Gates Foundation have subtly shaped the way the public views education. In attempt to connect young people with work, inspire social change, and encourage dropouts to return to school, the “Get Schooled” website has offered visitors three choices upon arrival at the initiative’s digital doorstep: “I want to find an awesome job,” “I want to change the system,” and “I want to get back in school.”
Once you navigate the slick website for Get Schooled you might come to the same conclusion that University Professor and education writer Henry Giroux called the Corporate Stranglehold on Education. What Giroux means by a corporate stranglehold is the increasing private/public partnerships’ with the public education system, which ultimately means that private/corporate entities have an increasing influence on what students will learn.
Other manifestations of the corporate invasion into the public education system have been Channel One – the hyper-commercial TV program that is pumped into hundreds of schools nationwide; supplemental “educational” resources that are provided free to teachers, such as environmental responsibility videos from Shell Oil; cafeteria food and soda contracts where chain businesses like Pizza Hut & Taco Bell food is sold to students and Coca Cola machines line the halls.
We mentioned last week the action that Stop Targeting Our Kids took to draw attention to back to school marketing pressures. STOK also has a useful document that looks at the back to school marketing they encountered in the Grand Rapids area and retail stores and advertising campaigns in West Michigan media.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been and will not likely be much coverage of this type of invasive propaganda targeting school age children. The President’s speech should be the least of our concerns on this matter.
The Grand Rapids Labor Fest & the State of Working People in America
Today millions of people across the country will celebrate Labor Day in the US. For many it is the end of the summer and an occasion to host a cook-out, not an opportunity to honor the history of worker struggles in this country. In Grand Rapids, the local unions decided to change from a their traditional parade to a festival, which they claim will be more beneficial to the community.
According to a September 3 article in the GR Press, “The theme is unity in the community. We really want this to be a community event. This is modeled after a couple of Labor Fests in other places around the country,” said Sue Levy, a spokesperson with the UAW.
Levy was also quoted as saying “Last year, we consolidated our resources to get a good president in office. This year, we’re definitely celebrating.” The Press reporter does not explore how Barack Obama is good for organized labor, so readers are left to assume it is a given.
The reality is that just under 10% of the labor force in the US is unionized, which is the lowest it has been in 100 years. Traditional union sectors, like manufacturing and the auto industry, are growing smaller and losing their political clout. Since Obama took office, he has provided significant financial support to corporations in order to bail them out, but the same cannot be said for working people.
Writing for CounterPunch, labor reporter David Macaray provides us with a useful assessment of the new administration’s actions since January as it relates to organized labor. Macaray points out that Obama has done fairly when on the issue of appoints, particularly with the new Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, but scores low on the issue of the auto industry bailout and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
The Employee Free Choice Act was a proposal that the Obama Team campaigned in favor of, but has done virtually nothing to make it a reality. In fact, as reporter Adam Turl argues, the Democratic Party has in many ways done their best to prevent EFCA from becoming a reality.
The current struggle for working people also didn’t seem to be included in much of the activities today in downtown Grand Rapids either. Most of the booths were food or craft vendors. There were two booths for the Democratic Party and two for City Commission candidates, which are essentially Democratic Party candidates, even though the City Commission is a non-partisan election.
The Union Label Coalition had a booth promoting the benefits of buying US-made and union made products, but the only booth that had any information on current labor campaigns was the Kent-Ionia Labor Council, which had signs about EFCA. When I asked what was happening locally around EFCA I was greeted with a blank stare. In fact, the only organizing issue that the Labor Fest was actively promoting was the current Health Care Reform debate. For anyone interested there is a Town Hall meeting on Wednesday, September 16 at 7pm in the Kent-Ionia Labor Council Hall – 918 Benjamin NE, in Grand Rapids.
Unfortunately for working people this years Labor Fest didn’t seem to provide much of an opportunity for people who are negatively impacted by current economic policies to get organized and take action.
Senator Levin on Afghanistan
Today, the Grand Rapids Press ran an Associated Press story with the headline, “Democrats balk at troop surge in Afghanistan.” The article makes the claim that, “Key Senate Democrats signaled Friday that any push by President Barack Obama to send more troops to Afghanistan is likely to hit resistance on Capitol Hill.”
The article is framed in such a way as to suggest that there are elements in the Democratic Party that are hesitant to support any additional increase to US troop levels in Afghanistan. However, the only source cited in this article is Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin, who says,
“There are a lot of ways to speed up the numbers and capabilities of the Afghan army and police. They are strongly motivated. I think that we should pursue that course … before we consider a further increase in combat forces beyond what’s already been planned to be sent in the months ahead.”
Levin is not saying he is against more US troops being sent to Afghanistan, rather that the US should put more emphasis on training Afghani troops to provide security in their own country. This line of thinking for Levin is very similar to what he proposed in Iraq, which was to make the Iraqi government responsible for dealing with internal security matters. Now Levin wants to put the burden of responsibility on the Afghani government, even though there are those who have spent time in Afghanistan and say that the Afghan security forces are corrupt.
The article does not explore Levin’s position on Iraq or the fact that he has consistently voted for funding bills that were tied to Iraq and Afghanistan spending, like the last piece of legislation that allocated $106 billion for US military activities in Iraq & Afghanistan that passed in June.
Another omission in this story was a much stronger criticism of the US policy on Afghanistan from fellow Democratic Senator Russ Feingold. Earlier this week Feingold stated that after eight years he sees no evidence that sending more troops will improve the situation in Afghanistan. The story also doesn’t provide much information or analysis of Levin’s comments within a larger context.
Defense Secretary Gates and several US commanders are now calling for more US troops on top of the 21,000 additional military personnel deployed a few months ago. The Obama administration is expected to discuss this new report from Gates next week and make some decisions about long-term US policy in Afghanistan. Independent reporter Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent story on Thursday about the growing public opposition to the US occupation of Afghanistan and that it might rival health care as an issue that could greatly impact the future of the Obama administration.
Unfortunately, for readers of the Grand Rapids Press, there are no perspectives provided beyond Senator Levin and no analysis of a growing opposition to the nearly eight year occupation of Afghanistan. Instead, readers are led to believe that Senator Levin and other Democrats are in opposition to the President’s policy in that country. One should never confuse tactics with strategy. It appears that if there is a difference between some Democrats and their President it is on tactics, not long term strategy.
Immigration Reform Interviews – An Religious leader and Community Activist share their views
These interviews are part of a series that we will be posting with people from West Michigan who are working to push for a new immigration policy from the federal government. The West Michigan Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform is working with the national group Reform Immigration For America (RIFA) to hold the new administration to its promise to reform immigration policy. You can join the local group by becoming a member on Facebook or contact Diane at dianelawkessler@gmail.com.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 