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  Killing
the Defanged TigerThe
View From IsraelHow
Do I Stop Being Comlicit?Briefs |
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Briefs
Support Chronogram’s Foreign Correspondent Fund
Since October 1999, when Lorna Tychostup and Todd Paul initiated our news and politics section Room for a View, Chronogram has featured independent voices every month, reporting and commenting on important local and global issues.
Chronogram is not owned by a media conglomerate, nor does it serve the interests of faraway stockholders; Chronogram is owned by people who live in your community. Our Hudson Valley community. As an independent publication, we lack the considerable resources and big-money backing of a media conglomerate to send correspondents on assignments across the globe to cover breaking news.
We are going to change that. This summer, we will be sending Room for a View editor and photographer Lorna Tychostup on assignment to Croatia to cover the Dubrovnik Peace Conference in early June and then to Israel to report on events there.
But we need your help. Chronogram is a free publication that relies on advertising support to survive and we offer it free every month as a community service. We now ask for your help in setting up our Foreign Correspondent Fund, which will enable us to offer more in-depth coverage than ever before. If you read Chronogram and wish to nourish local, alternative voices in a world mostly saturated with corporate-owned media conglomerates, please help us. If you’re tired of hearing the same stories, spun the same way on the nightly news, please help us.
Contributions to Chronogram's Foreign Correspondent Fund can be sent to PO Box 459, New Paltz, NY 12561. For more information about the fund call or e-mail Brian K. Mahoney at (845) 334-8600
bmahoney@chronogram.comSecret Government is Unacceptable
On April 11, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), ranking member of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans’ Affairs and International Relations walked out of a Government Reform Committee briefing with Governor Tom Ridge, Director of the Homeland Security Office. Why? Kucinich wants Governor Ridge to testify publicly about the workings of the Homeland Security Office.
Kucinich, who introduced legislation (HR 2459) in the US House of Representatives to create a Department of Peace in July 2001, said there was a ruling by the Chair that the meeting was not open because there was no official business being transacted. His request for a ruling from the parliamentarian went unanswered.
“This is a very serious matter: that a director who speaks for the president on matters of national security is not accountable to the Congress, not accountable to the press and not accountable to the people,” said Kucinich, who feels that the American public has a right to know how this money is being spent. “Homeland Security has a $38 billion budget. There’s been no public process to review this $38 billion budget.”
Championing the democratic process, Kucinich added, “I want to state that a free exchange of ideas behind closed doors may not in reality be free. It may in fact be a direct challenge to the doctrine of separation of powers that is a key and fundamental part of our democracy. And it’s a challenge to the position of Congress as a coequal branch of government. In a democracy, secret government is not an acceptable substitute for self-government. A wink is not an acceptable substitute for an oath.”
—Lorna Tychostup
Congresswoman Calls for 9/11 Investigation
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) came out swinging last month, calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had prior knowledge of terrorist attacks on 9/11 and did nothing to prevent them.
“The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle. Certainly, if the American people deserve answers about what went wrong with Enron and why (and we do), then we deserve to know what went wrong on September 11 and why.”
Citing various worldwide media outlets which have reported that warnings were received by the Bush Administration in advance of the attacks and that Bin Laden’s secure communications were broken by the US before Sept 11 (Der Spiegel, the London Observer, the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC), McKinney said, “I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9/11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case. For example, it is known that President Bush’s father, through the Carlyle Group had—at the time of the attacks—joint business interests with the Bin Laden construction company and many defense industry holdings, the stocks of which have soared since September 11.”
“On the other hand,” McKinney charged, “what is undeniable is that corporations close to the administration, have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11. The Carlyle Group, DynCorp, and Halliburton certainly stand out as companies close to this administration. Secretary Rumsfeld maintained in a hearing before Congress that we can afford the new spending, even though the request for more defense spending is the highest increase in twenty years and the Pentagon has lost $2.3 trillion.”
Bush Administration spokesman Scott McLellan spurned McKinney’s view as “ludicrous” and “baseless.”
“The American people know the facts, McClellan said. “The fact that she questions the president’s legitimacy shows a partisan mind-set beyond all reason.”
Undaunted, McKinney countered during an interview at a Berkeley, CA radio station. Referring to the 2000 election, McKinney said Bush forces “stole from America our most precious right of all, the right to free speech and fair elections.” Since the September attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, “an administration of questionable legitimacy has been given unprecedented power.”
In a released statement, McKinney added, “This is not a time for closed-door meetings and this is not a time for secrecy. America’s credibility, both with the world and with her own people, rests upon securing credible answers to these questions. The world is teetering on the brink of conflicts while the administration’s policies are vague, wavering and unclear. Major financial conflicts of interest involving the president, the attorney general, the vice president and others in the administration have been and continue to be exposed.
“This is a time for leadership and judgment that is not compromised in any fashion. This is a time for transparency and a thorough investigation.”
—Lorna Tychostup
EDITOR’S NOTE: DEFINING INTIFADA
While returning on the bus from the April 20 Washington, DC Peace March, I asked fellow passengers to define the word “intifada”. Most replied, incorrectly, that it meant jihad, or holy war, while others said they simply did not know. I then went on a quest to define this widely used word. I share my results with you here.
—Lorna Tychostup
1. Syllabication: in·ti·fa·da, Pronunciation: nt-fäd, Variant Forms: also in·ti·fa·dah. Noun: An uprising among Palestinian Arabs of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, beginning in late 1987 and continuing sporadically into the early 1990s, in protest against continued Israeli occupation of these territories. Etymology: Arabic intifa, shudder, awakening, uprising, from intifaa, to be shaken, wake up, derived stem of nafaa, to shake. Semitic Roots.
2. Intifada is an Arabic word meaning “a shaking-off.” It was coined during the first Palestinian Uprising in 1987, and underlines the central goal of the popular movement—a shaking-off of the chains of Israeli military occupation.
3. Excerpt from an interview with Columbia Professor Steve Rosenthal: What makes the recent uprising different from the intifada in the late ’80s? “It is a mistake to call both of these eruptions by the same name—intifada—which everybody is doing. The word “intifada” comes from an Arabic word, “to shake off,” as a dog shakes off fleas. That gives the connotation of spontaneity. In contrast to the first intifada, the second “intifada” is not so much spontaneous but appears to be a tactical political decision made by Arafat. He decided that he could not or would not conclude peace. Therefore, it’s not the same kind of spontaneous upswelling.”
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PO Box 459 New Paltz NY 12561