Statesman Blurs Immigrant vs Illegal Distinction

Statesman reports on "Immigration rights marches losing steam?".

Is this about legal immigrants and advocating for them? No! So why the dishonest headline? This is a story about getting the illegal aliens and their friends to march so they can get 'legalized'. When it happened in 2006, it backfired, as voting-entitled-Americans aka Citizens realized how dangerous the illegal immigration trend was, and they were not happy about surrendering to it. This is a sob story about how 'immigration rights advocates' see less enthusiasm by "unauthorized immigrants" (illegal aliens) because, horror of horrors, they might get picked up by ICE and deported.

It is very dishonest to call this "immigrants rights". These are not legal immigrants, and legal immigrants have zero to fear from enforcing the law and sending illegal aliens back to their home country. Consider this nonsensical statement in the article: ".. now every immigrant is threatened by being not only detained and deported but being put into jail, and that is pretty harsh."

Immigrant? My family includes (legal) immigrants; I work with immigrants; immigrants are friends of mine. And no, immigrants are not only are they not threatened by it, they welcome the USA enforcing the law as it should.

American Statesman journalists and the 'lamestream media' need to stop kowtowing to the illegal immigration activists and stop using euphemisms that blur the real distinction between legal immigrants and illegal aliens (e.g. copouts like 'unauthorized immigrants'; they are not immigrants at all, they are foreigners or aliens). These groups are *ADVOCATES FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS* not "immigrants rights organizations".

Letter to Editor on Editorial on Libby

Re: Editorial (6/6/07) on Libby.

Where is the evidence of an administration conspiracy to discredit Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson? He discredited himself before a Senate panel. His charge that CIA documents were falsified by the administration turned out to be lie. He offered the excuse that he may have been “confused” and may have "misspoken" to reporters.

Statements by Libby were also “memory lapses” and he should be punished for lying. However, the Libby trial should never have happened because there was no crime. The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, knew almost from the start that it was not Libby who revealed the name of the CIA “operative” Plame because Richard Armitage confessed to doing so.

Furthermore, this “outing” was not a crime because Plame was not protected by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Therefore, Armitage was not indicted but Fitzgerald continued wasting money on what became a perjury trap for Libby.

(150 words)

Rathergate

is more important to our current journalistic condition and current events that Watergate. Yet the oblivious media dwells on Watergate (the Statesmen had two Watergate stories in the past few weeks) and ignores the irony of Dan Rather keynoting SWSX Interactive.

Dan Rather was exposed by Free Republic and internet bloggers as being a biased and dreadfully wrong (to the point of slander and forgery) on an anti-Bush story in 2004. Dan Rather and his crew used forged documents to attempt to affect the outcome of an election - and got caught in a lie. This is more relevent to the dinosaur, falling revenue media today than a 30 year old coverup. Rathergate.com keeps the flames of media watching alive.

pro-Castro propaganda in the Statesman

A March 11 Statesman article by Mike Williams titled "Venezuelan oil helps fuel Cuba's eye care program" is a pro-communist puff piece in the propagandistic style of William Duranty (the now disgraced Pulitzer Prize winner who misled people in the 1930s about Stalin and the USSR). Williams, writing from Havana, gives us a story of the Cuban Government teaming with Chavez, the leftist oil despot, to provide an eye care program for kids called the "Miracle Mission", an example of "showcasing Cuban medical expertise".

Cuba is a land where human rights dissidents get 25 year jail sentences. As UN's Human Rights Watch says:

"Over the past forty years, Cuba has developed a highly effective machinery of repression. The denial of basic civil and political rights is written into Cuban law. In the name of legality, armed security forces, aided by state-controlled mass organizations, silence dissent with heavy prison terms, threats of prosecution, harassment, or exile. Cuba uses these tools to restrict severely the exercise of fundamental human rights of expression, association, and assembly. The conditions in Cuba's prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture. In recent years, Cuba has added new repressive laws and continued prosecuting nonviolent dissidents while shrugging off international appeals for reform and placating visiting dignitaries with occasional releases of political prisoners.

Repression is increasing in Cuba as Raoul Castro takes over from Fidel Castro.

Cuba has a failed socialist economic model that has moved their standard of living from the top in Latin America to the bottom after 40 years of Castro. Before Castro, Cuba fed itself; today it imports food like rice that it once was self-sufficient in; Sugar production is below levels of 40 years ago. Cuba in 2002 was mired in economic despair. Cuba's economy is living in the past and not even living up to it - by 2004, the Cuban economy remained 12 to 15 percent below 1989 GDP levels.

What keeps Cuba afloat? For a long-time the USSR subidized Castro's failed Communist experiment. Now, it's Hugo Chavez, whose support of the Cuban Government is keeping afloat an otherwise failed system. Notes the Cuba commission: "The economic lifelines of the Castro regime are tourism; access to subsidized Venezuelan oil; commodities; and revenues and other support generated by those with family on the island." Felix Antonio Bonne Carcasses, one of the Cuban dissidents organizing the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, said in 2005:

"If it weren't for the 53,000 barrels of oil that Hugo Chávez sends every day to Cuba, it would be over." (Reported by Oscar Corral,Miami Herald.)

Yet the journalists continue to let themselves become channels of propaganda, and trumpet bogus PR campaign like this one as something 'newsworthy'. Castro's accomplishments are a hoax; his statistics have been fudged or fabricated:

Anecdotes abound of the government cooking the books to prove the glories of the Revolution to the world, with many academics distrusting the official government figures. A demographer from the National Academies of Sciences found that the Cuban government's own data was at odds with official overall statistics for child mortality: If anything, it indicated a growing, not a falling, infant mortality rate, a suspicion supported by other statistics from the Cuban Ministry of Health which showed high rates of several childhood diseases that generally correlate with high infant mortality. Other scientists doubt the claims made over HIV, noting the many Cubans who had served in African wars, the many African students in Cuba, the rampant sex trade in Cuba, and the high rate of HIV among Cubans who escaped from the island. A secret 1987 Cuban Communist Party survey of 10,756 respondents showed 88% of the public in one province to be disappointed with their health-care system. When the Cuban suicide rate skyrocketed -- it's now twice the typical rate in Latin American countries -- the Cuban government stopped reporting suicide statistics in a way that allowed international comparisons.

To the extent that the Cuban government's health claims are credible, the results often came at a price no civilized society could countenance. Patients with AIDS were forcibly removed from society and isolated in sanitaria. Expectant mothers with AIDS were coerced into aborting their babies. Abortions were similarly used to improve infant mortality statistics in general -- Cuba has twice the abortion rate of most countries -- by terminating high-risk pregnancies. To obtain co-operation from doctors, their compensation was tied to their patients' infant mortality rate. Many Cuban mothers claim that their doctors killed their baby at childbirth -- babies who die at birth do not show up in Cuba's infant mortality data.

At the same time that some of Castro's admirers deny claims that the medical system is failing Cubans, other admirers admit to the disastrous health outcomes, but blame them on food, drug and other shortages caused by the Cuban embargo. One such study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, lamented "several public health catastrophes [including] more than 50,000 cases of optic and peripheral neuropathy ... A 1994 outbreak of the Guillain-Barré syndrome in Havana was caused by water that had been contaminated with Campylobacter species because chlorination chemicals were not available for purification."

We are left with one true accomplishment of the Castro-led Communist Government of Cuba - propaganda:

Castro has claimed many achievements. Perhaps his greatest is convincing world leaders and journalists the claims are true.
Lawrence Solomon, National Post, February 01, 2003

Journalists who tell the truth are told to leave by the repressive Castro Government:

The Chicago Tribune said correspondent Gary Marx, based in the country since 2002, was told Wednesday that his stories were too negative. His press credentials were not renewed during an annual process, and he and his family were given 90 days to leave Cuba, the newspaper said.

The Mexican newspaper El Universal said Cesar Gonzalez Calero, its Havana reporter since 2003, was told this week his credentials would not be renewed. Authorities told him his reporting was "not the most convenient for the Cuban government," the reporter said, adding he would be allowed to remain in Cuba as the husband of a Spanish journalist.

Mike Williams is one journalist the Castro Government let stay. And why not, his article had no mention of Cuba's repression, abuse of journalists and statistics, and no mention that the facade of Cuban health care is phony. Is he a dupe or a willing accomplice to propaganda? Does he not notice the "Miracle Mission" story about eyecare (for kids!) is a tailor-made and timed for propaganda effect, about as 'newsworthy' and balanced as a corporate ad campaign? In either case, he needs better eyesight and better insight into the reality of Cuba. Someone please get him some spectacles.

Op-Ed Response: "Bring Them Home" vs "Let Them Win"

The Austin-American Statesman has given up on Iraq:

... The best way forward in Iraq is to start pulling out U.S. troops ...

Along the way to their conclusion, they partake in poor logic, misunderstanding of facts, and strawman arguments:

1. "There are Islamic terrorists involved, too, but take them all out and there is still a civil war." This ignores the repeated provocations of the Al Qaeda insurgents to stoke violence, culminating in the Samarra golden Mosque terrorist bombing of February, 2006, that finally cascaded into the sectarian violence that is observed today. The authors of the bombing were foriegn terrorists associated with (now dead) Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq group. Three years of terrorism fanning flames of violence finally led to sectarian bloodshed. If the terrorist insurgency in Iraq ended tomorrow, the militias would stand down, Iraq would be more peaceful and Iraq's democratic Government would be secure.
   
2. "The risk of pullout is still more violence, but that very threat might also prompt the various factions to reconsider how they might fare without U.S. troops serving as a firewall." Our enemies and the forces of chaos would fare well, while our friends would fare poorly. It's disappointing that the Iraqi Government and people have not been strong enough to take over security. Training has gone well enough that most of the Iraqi army can stand on it's own, but Iraq's military cannot stand alone to stem the violence. The 'bring them home' approach is to let Iraq drown - in blood.
3. "Some good has come out of the invasion. Saddam has been overthrown and executed, and the Iraqis held their first election." Actually Iraq held 3 national elections: One to form the Constitutional Assembly, one to approve the constitution, and then the national elections.
   
4. "Keeping U.S. troops in Iraq, however, appears to be aggravating the sectarian violence that has the country in a death grip." When our troops go in force into neighborhoods, they are pacified. It's not the presence of our troops but the absence of reliable Government troops that is the biggest hole for Iraq's security.
   
5. "If the president insists that this nation must remain fully engaged in Iraq, then he ought to lay out the full price of doing so ... Yet he's already ruled out any tax increase." Iraq spending is less than 5% of total Federal Government spending. What about the other 95% of Federal spending? The Medicare drug bill cost much more, did they contemplate that or do they ever criticize domestic spending on the basis of the lack of tax increases to pay for it? And what of the fact that the Bush tax cuts have led to a surge in growth that in effect created a situation where many of hte tax cuts paid for themselves by making future Govt liabilities more tolerable.

Rather than abandon Iraq, we should pursue all possible options to secure Iraq and win a victory. The question then is whether the US can or will do what it takes to win. Some proposals for victory show that it is attainable, albeit difficult. Eliot Cohen and Bing West propose:

We prefer an offensive strategy based on three ironclad principles: take the offense immediately against the death squads in Sadr City, who are now unsettled; arrest and imprison on a scale equal to the horrific situation (or at least equal to New York City!); and insist on a joint say in the appointment of army and police leaders.

We knocked off a terror master and genocidal maniac, Saddam Hussein, and are daily knocking off terrorist wannabes in a small war that will dictate the course of Middle East politics (democracy vs dictatorship) for the next generation and thereby dictate if and how soon we can win the war on terror. This seems a more necessary mission than optional wars like Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia or Bosnia.

Let them win.