Category: Politics

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Air America having problems paying bills, filing bankruptcy

I had concerns when this network went on the air. The formula was a risky venture, and I can’t say that I’m overly surprised to see this happen.

Think Progress is reporting Air America radio will announce filing for bankruptcy protection on Friday according to three independent sources. The company has experienced financial difficulties throughout its existence, continuing to request infusions of capital and suffering the loss of several high-profile hosts. Five employees were laid off Tuesday without severance.

The network has had several controversies since its inception including a funding scandal involving Evan Cohen. Air America Radio funneled $875,000 dollars from Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, a not-for-profit, in the form of a “loan” to fund its operations. Due to of the less-than-ethical funding arrangement, Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club has been disbanded. […]

However, the progressive talk radio format did exist with the variety of IndyMedia projects as well as Pacifica Radio. Air America, however, was the first radio that put through an entire slate of radio shows instead of syndicating individual shows. This has largely caused problems with their expansion as it required stations to pick up the entire network for 24 hours a day instead of the most popular shows. [blogcritics]

Everything has to start somewhere, and this makes the network ripe for the picking in terms of a buy out of some sort. If that were to happen, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some things change.

At the same time, the content is something that I haven’t paid enough attention to. I’ve read numerous things about people being upset about their programming, and that says something. All press is good press, but presenting alternative views on a liberial or left wing radio program in a conservative, right wing controlled nation is a delicate task.

There’s always good and not so good ways to do things, and it’s the same way that I feel about political campaigns. Attacking the other side will never work. Education and strong, valid arguments will always be better, in my opinion, than some one yelling slander into a microphone.

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The climate is ripe for irony

There is too much going on in the world of terrorism, the Bush administration, and the coming mid-term elections in the U.S. to not wonder about all of its coincidence.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Al Jazeera television aired a video tape on Thursday showing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden meeting what is said were some of the September 11 attackers, days ahead of the fifth anniversary of the strikes.

The Arabic channel said the tape documented the “daily life” of al Qaeda operatives as they trained and prepared in the mountains of Afghanistan. Bin Laden was shown in long white robes walking through rocky terrain with aides carrying rifles.

Release of the five-year-old video was clearly timed to coincide with the anniversary of an attack that killed almost 3,000 and launched the United States on a “war on terror” from home shores to Iraq and Afghanistan. [reuters]

This makes sense. The five year anniversary is upon us, and I would bet that terror threat levels will rise over the next few days. What else is there?

George Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday the existence of a secret CIA prison network, and said the mastermind of the September 11 2001 terror attacks and other high-value detainees had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay.

In a robust defence of the detention regime that has brought condemnation around the world, the US president said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaida operative believed to have plotted the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, and 13 other terror suspects had been brought to Guantánamo and would be brought to trial. [guardian]

So the secret prisons, that everyone seemed to already know about, actually exist. Of course, everything has been humane and there hasn’t been any ill-treatment of prisoners. Whew! What a relief, but there’s more.

The terror suspect accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks also planned to crash hijacked airliners into Heathrow airport, according to documents released by the US government.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed conceived a plot to hit Heathrow after the attacks on America five years ago, the documents from the US office of the director of national intelligence said.

Another alleged al-Qaida member Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, described as a “key facilitator” in 9/11, was said to have been a “lead operative” in the UK plan, which the US said was disrupted in 2003.

The details emerged in profiles (pdf) of 14 terror suspects, including Mohammed and Bin al-Shibh, who, the US announced yesterday, have been transferred from secret CIA prisons around the world to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. [guardian]

It just so happens that this terror plot was averted five years ago, but the world is being told to be thankful that secret prison camps stopped it from happening. Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief, five years after the fact.

Bush made the surprise admission as he prodded the U.S. Congress to approve rules for military commissions to try such detainees and with national security a key issue for Republicans who face the possibility of losses in the November congressional elections. [reuters]

Combined with the five year anniversary of 9/11 and the potential of losing the majority hand in congress, there is way too much going on here to not say that the irony of the situation makes you scratch your head a little. Even if it’s too conspiracy for you, the coincidence is incredibly interesting.

I’ll toss in a recent CNN poll about former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani[wiki], being a heavy favorite for the Republican presidential nominee for 2008 as well. That’s a whole lot of 9/11 going on.

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Tired of the past-present-Kerry politics

I haven’t written a lot regarding politics in the history of this blog, and that could be a good thing. With the coming mid-term elections this fall and the run for the presidency starting to make more than whispers, it’s really hard not to think about. Perhaps I’m finding myself more inclined to talk about it now that I’m no longer a U.S. resident, so you’ll have to bear with me as I try to do more of this from time to time.

John KerryThe thing that pains me the most right now is the thought of John Kerry[wiki] running for president again. I haven’t liked the guy since he first came on the radar for the ’04 elections. I have this problem with politicians in general, but something about Kerry left me feeling less than impressed from the day he stepped up to bat.

The one issue that I keep coming back to is how Kerry would consistantly say what he would have done if he was president when (insert significant political issue or event, that occured prior to the date of making said statement, happened during the Bush administration, and occurred before the ’04 vote, here). This is what we call hindsight, and it was also banking on the anti-Bush sentiment that ran among those with the “anyone but Bush” method of voting.

It almost seems like his tactics haven’t changed.

Sen. John Kerry didn’t contest the results at the time, but now that he’s considering another run for the White House, he’s alleging election improprieties by the Ohio Republican who oversaw the deciding vote in 2004.

An e-mail from Kerry will be sent to 100,000 Democratic donors Tuesday asking them to support U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland for governor of Ohio. The bulk of the e-mail criticizes Strickland’s opponent, GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, for his dual role in 2004 as President Bush’s honorary Ohio campaign co-chairman and the state’s top election official.

“He used the power of his state office to try to intimidate Ohioans and suppress the Democratic vote,” Kerry says in the e-mail, according to a copy provided in advance. [cnn]

The article goes on to say that there have been groups not affiliated with the Kerry campaign contesting the results, even into present day. Granted that he lost and fighting the issue in Ohio might not have changed anything, don’t think that this won’t come up in the ensuing run up to the ’08 vote.

Here is what I want from a presidental candidate, and I mean candidate. Not an elected president, but from the people who want to be the final group of folks looking for the vote. Continue reading “Tired of the past-present-Kerry politics”

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The Mexican political situation

I witnessed a teacher strike last year in B.C. Maybe they could take a page from this, and let’s just hope ClearChannel doesn’t adopt this tactic in their attempt at owning all the radio stations in the world.

Teachers striking in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca have seized at least eight private radio stations.

They acted after unidentified gunmen opened fire on a government radio station already under their control, injuring one of their colleagues.

The strikers used the stations to tell parents to ignore Monday’s start of the school year and keep children at home. [bbc]

The situation in Mexico is increasingly concerning. When I visited at the age of 17, staying in a hotel just off of the Zocalo[wiki], there was a labor protest outside of the government buildings in the square. It was full of people, loud speakers, and non-stop protest. For the most part, it was peaceful, but it was enough to freak me out a little bit. The country seems to be noticibly different now than those days, and these folks are going further than before to make their voice on the matter heard.

Protests are taking place in Vancouver about the current, political situation in Mexico. I think it confuses a lot of people as to what they are demonstrating for. There is a growing population of Mexicans here, so it makes sense. Around the world, it seems that not a lot of folks are paying a lot of attention to it.

A couple of years ago television, radio and print media in the west just couldn’t get enough of ‘people power’.

In quick succession, from Georgia’s rose revolution in November 2003, via Ukraine’s orange revolution a year later, to the tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the cedar revolution in Lebanon, 24-hour news channels kept us up to date with democracy on a roll.

Triggered by allegations of election fraud, the dominoes toppled. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was happy with the trend: ‘They’re doing it in many different corners of the world, places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon … And so this is a hopeful time.’

But when a million Mexicans try to jump on the people-power bandwagon, crying foul about the July 2 presidential elections, when protesters stage a vigil in the centre of the capital that continues to this day, they meet a deafening silence in the global media. Despite Mexico’s long tradition of electoral fraud and polls suggesting that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) – was ahead, the media accepted the wafer-thin majority gained by the ruling party nominee, Harvard graduate Felipe Calderon.

Although Mexico’s election authorities rejected Lopez Obrador’s demand for all 42m ballots to be recounted, the partial recount of 9% indicated numerous irregularities. But no echo of indignation has wafted to the streets of Mexico City from western capitals. [malaysiasun]

The other thing to consider is that pretty much all of North America is now headed by conservative governments, excluding countries to the south of Mexico on that statement. I don’t have enough details to say that the Mexican elections were tampered with, but the similarities to the 2000 elections in the U.S. is interesting. Nothing in politics is ever innocent.

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But Daddy when you call me, you can call me Steve

Steve is the Prime Minister of Canada.  Steve is friends with Bush.  At least he doesn’t mind too much that Bush likes to call him Steve.

While his mother isn’t a big fan of the moniker, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he doesn’t mind if the leader of Canada’s biggest trading partner wants to call him “Steve.”

During an appearance on a Calgary radio program Tuesday, Harper was asked what he thought when U.S. President George W. Bush referred to him as “Steve” at least three times during a joint news conference in Washington last week.

Harper's belt buckle from the Calgary Stampede“I’m proud to have allies like Steve who understand the stakes of the 21st century,” Bush said during the televised news conference.

“It surprised me a bit,” Harper laughed during an interview on CHQR Radio. “I’m normally called Stephen … but a few people, close friends of my mine, do call me Steve.”

The prime minister joked that his mother isn’t a fan of the name.

“My mother doesn’t like that, and I’m sure that President Bush will be getting a letter,” he said with a laugh. [cbc]