The Interrupters

 

 

A film by Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz

From producer/director Steve James and author-turned-producer Alex Kotlowitz, The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising story of three CeaseFire “violence interrupters” in Chicago who with bravado, humility and even humor try to protect their communities from the violence they once employed.

Director Steve James
Producers Alex Kotlowitz and Steve James
Co-Producer Zak Piper
Edited by Aaron Wickenden and Steve James

 

Watch the trailer

Broadcaster's career from Pearl Harbor to 9-11

City, County and Congressional Leaders to Honor Luther Masingill for 70 Years in Broadcasting | WDEF News 12

Luther Masingill of Chattanooga, Tenn., has been broadcasting for WDEF since 1940.

Luther holds the record for being on the air at the same station for over 70 years and is believed to be the only announcer to have reported over-the-air both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the attacks of 9/11.

Amazing.

HT: Michael Silence.

Excellent online newspaper index

A great idea with great execution: List of Newspapers.

List of Newspapers is the largest directory of newspapers around the
world. We provide links to more than 25,000 newspapers in 201 countries
and territories.

List of Newspapers is an excellent resource and is included in the
Library of Congress's News & Periodical Resources.

Afghanistan is Vietnam redux

Afghanistan is the Vietnam war all over again. How? Michael Yon explains: "Afghanistan Update: Taliban Losing on Battlefield, But Making Progress in Media War."

The more things change, etc.

"Bill Keller’s Idiotic Questions"

The Captain's Journal » Bill Keller’s Idiotic Questions: Herschel Smith nails the ignorance behind Bill Keller's questioning of Michele Bachmann. The question in question:

You have said that watching the film series “How Should We Then Live?” by the evangelist Francis Schaeffer was a life-altering event for you. That series stresses the "inerrancy" ­— the literal truth — of the Bible. Do you believe the Bible consists of literal truths, or that it is to be taken more metaphorically?

Herschel goes on to disassemble the simplistic presumptions behind Keller's question, observing, among other things, "Any thinking Christian has to answer Keller’s question, yes and yes. It is both-and, not either-or."

Quite. But Keller doesn't know what he's talking about in another way,too. Keller thinks biblical inerrancy means "the literal truth." That is, to believe that the Bible is inerrant means that its texts must be read at face value only. And of course, fundamentalists do stress that.

But inerrancy does not have to mean only that. I believe the Bible is inerrant but I do not believe that literalism is a faithful reading of the Scriptures in every case or verse. In fact, literalism is not even possible in countless cases because of translation nuances. In many cases we cannot know what the verse "literally" says, and in countless others the cultural contexts are so lost that we can only guess what they might mean.

Even so, one can hold the Scriptures to be inerrant in the way that John Wesley did, but focusing on what he called the great chains of interconnected spiritual truths throughout the Bible.

Another point, that Herschel touches on as well: the form of the literature of the passages concerned is crucial to interpreting them. Historical passages should be taken at face value, For example, the story of young David slaying Goliath is a straightforward, historical account and there is no reason to doubt that it happened pretty much the way it is presented. But consider Jesus's parables throughout the Gospels, for example the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Is the parable literally true? Or did Jesus tell a stylized story to drive home a religious teaching? The story is parabolically true without regard to its "actually happened" truth. We do not have to take the Bible literally to take it seriously.

Tell ya what, Mr. Keller: I assert the inerrancy of the Bible a lot more confidently than you can assert the inerrancy of the New York Times.

"I inherit a mess every day"

This morning on Neil Cavuto's show, Amilya Antonetti, chairman and CEO of AMA Productions, responded to Neil's observation of how President Obama is claiming that regarding the economy, he "inherited a mess."

Sorry for the video quality, I captured it on my HTC Incredible on the DVR. Just listen.

CAVUTO: He [Obama] will argue that he inherited a mess.

ANTONETTI: He did. Doesn't matter. I inherit a mess every day as the CEO of my company. Every day I inherit a mess. That is my job title: to fix problems, to get people to work together in harmony for one common goal.

Update: Misspelling of Amilya's first name corrected.

Movies in the Park

A Better Life- screening!

Join the I-PAC family for a private, free screening of "A Better Life" on Wednesday, July 6 in Chicago.

We all know that a key component of wining the battle for rational and ethical reform is influencing the hearts and minds of our country. Popular culture matters and movies influence culture. That is why we are excitted to invite our supporters to join us for a free screening of "A Better Life."

This major motion picture by Director Chris Weitz (About A Boy, Twilight: New Moon) tells the modern immigrant story. A gardener in East L.A. (Demain Bichir) struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while trying to give him the opportunities he never had.

The film opened last week in Los Angeles and New York and will be coming to Chicago soon. This is a major studio release and we hope to engage our community by making sure our supporters get a chance to see the film.

If you can join us, please RSVP to info@immigrationpac.org with the subject line "A Better Life." Seating is limited, so please RSVP soon and only if you plan on attending. Limit 2 people per pass.

Regal City North 14

2600 North Western Ave.

Chicago, Illinois

Wednesday, July 6, 7:30 PM

Movies at DuSable Museums Sunken Garden

Are you looking for something to do with your family this summer? Come out and relax in DuSable Museums Sunken Garden for Music and Movies in the Park. The following movies will be available for you and your family to enjoy:

July 16, 2011

Let's Do It Again

starring Sindney Poitier and Bill Cosby

July 30, 2011

Coming to America

Starring Eddie Murphy

August 30, 2011

The Karate Kid

Starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan

Screening will include a karate demonstration for the kids by a representative from the Chicago Park District

Community Media Workshop:collaboration to take back black/brown media image

Essentially, it joins youth media and social justice programs, educators,
community organizations, free lance journalist, community based media ,
and everyday people to tell the positive stories about the things, people and
happening in our communities using many media forms (short writings,photos,
video, audio etc) and spreads them far and wide using our own
traditional and new media so that all generations see, hear,
learn,participate and
take hope and heart. The power is in the many voices sharing the stories.

Come to meet some of the key participants and media partners and learn more.

TUESDAY JUNE 28 - 10AM TO NOON
N.E.I University- Center for Inner City Studies 700 E. Oakwood Blvd. Chi. 60653
Host: Community Media Workshop - Chicago is The World

Actually, Revere did warn the British

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: So Now All These People Will Apologize to Sarah Palin About Paul Revere, Right?

Seems that Paul Revere's personally-written account of his famous ride includes his admission that he did, in fact, warn the British that American militia were waiting for them in force.

As long-time readers know, I am not a fan of Sarah Palin (link and link), and as Prof. Jacobsen points out, her words on the YT vid are not altogether clear. Ben Smith transcribes them thus:

"He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed."

Revere's own written account says this of his conversation with a British officer:

He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up. He imediately rode towards those who stoppd us, when all five of them came down upon a full gallop; one of them, whom I afterwards found to be Major Mitchel, of the 5th Regiment, Clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name, & told me he was going to ask me some questions, & if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out. He then asked me similar questions to those above.

Revere seems clear.

White House Enemies

The Boston Herald already figured out it was on the Obama White House enemies list. Now even a Washington Post columnist sees the light as...

... the president prepares to issue a far-reaching executive order that would require the government to collect detailed information about the political activities of anyone applying for a federal contract. The proposed order would require businesses to furnish, with each contract proposal, a list not only of their contributions to political candidates and committees, but also their contributions to groups that do not under current law have to reveal their donors. The president’s order would force anyone seeking a federal contract to declare whether they are a friend or an enemy — excuse me, “opponent” — of the Obama White House. Worse still, it would set up a central database listing those contributions at a federal government Web site — creating what amounts to an electronic, searchable “enemies list.” ...

And since Congress refused to go along with his Disclose Act, the only way he can compile such a list of his political adversaries is by forcing their donors who apply for federal contracts to provide the information. In other words, this effort isn’t about improving the integrity of federal contracting; it’s about Nixonian political intimidation. But with one crucial difference: Even Richard Nixon didn’t create his enemies list by executive order.

And now we learn that, "White House Adds New Position to Deal with Unfavorable Online Media."

The White House has named Jesse Lee to a new position within its communications department titled Director of Progressive Media & Online Response. According to The Huffington Post, Lee will essentially be responsible for building up Obama’s online presence as he prepares for his reelection bid, and squashing any negative stories:

The post is a new one for this White House. Rapid response has usually been outsourced to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), if not done on an ad-hoc basis by administration officials. And it signals that the White House will be adopting a more aggressive defense of the president and his policies as his re-election campaign gears up.

If you’re going to post something online about Obama that isn’t true, Lee is going to be the one to handle you. Considering that Lee’s first tweet about his new position included a picture of The Terminator, we suggest you watch what you say OR BE DESTROYED.

Okay that was a little dramatic, but you get the idea.

And that is, indeed, the idea.

Update: Michael Barone weighs in.

Punishing enemies and rewarding friends -- politics Chicago style -- seems to be the unifying principle that helps explain the Obamacare waivers, the NLRB action against Boeing and the IRS' gift-tax assault on 501(c)(4) donors.

They look like examples of crony capitalism, bailout favoritism and gangster government.

One thing they don't look like is the rule of law.

Obeying the law is for the little people.

The Boston Herald finally gets hit by the clue bat

The background is,

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

And the White House thinks that the BoHerald does not cover the news "fairly,' which is to say, the Herald is not sufficiently adulatory in its Obama coverage.

So the Herald has awakened to the fact that this president has an enemies list and they are at the top of the "media" section.

Boston Herald, welcome to the official “Enemies List!”

No, my Herald colleagues, you aren’t the first journalists to feel the wrath of President Richard Milhaus Obama. And you won’t be the last.

Giving a reporter the boot because you don’t like the Herald’s coverage — classic Obama, says David Freddoso, author of the book “Gangster Government,” who reminded me that during the 2010 campaign, the president promised that “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends.”

Well, welcome to August 2009: "The Obama Enemies List." But don't worry - once the pro-free-press liberal activists understand the situation, their protests will surely blow the roof off! yes, we are waiting!

Never argue with people who buy ink by the barrel

Boston is a tough town. It was a Boston newspaper, names escapes me, during the Civil War that became the object of a vendetta by a Union general, who banned the paper's reporter from his division. So the paper simply responded by running only negative stories about the general and generally ruining his reputation. He is said later to have remorsed, "Never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton."

And so the Boston Herald continues the tradition.

Here is the background.

White House Alinsky-ing of media continues

The Obama WHite House kicked off its "get in line or else" campaign against the media with it's now infamous assault against Fox News Channel, a post that the WSJ's OpinionJournal picked up and ran with.

But brashness of the White House's attack on FNC was (eventually) too much even for the rest of the W.H. reporters and they started to push back, perhaps understanding, as I wrote, that FoxNews Channel was the actual target. "The bullseye target of this campaign is all the public media."

But White House's war against a free press has continued. Just last month ago there was White House retaliation against the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper because its White House pool reporter - gasp! - used her cell phone to record and post online video of "a protest at a San Francisco fundraiser" for the Obama campaign. The White House's weak excuse was that reporter Carla Marinucci was a print reporter and had no business taking video of anything. Seriously, that's what the W.H. said.

And mind you, San Francisco is perhaps the most liberal media market in the whole country.

So today it is Boston's turn.

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

Glenn Reynolds gets the last word in the column:

Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who has followed White House-press relations at right-leaning Instapundit.com, said a pattern appears to be developing.

“It’s all about control,” Reynolds said. “At some point this will blow back on them. Most presidents behave in a more refined fashion. Experience has shown that acting presidential is good politics and to their advantage.”

But that's is all "progressivism" is about: control. And more than anything, they want to control discourse and debate. From such control, all other power can be gained.

Update: Related - "Veteran Journalists: Today's White House Reporters Are Too Timid"

And longtime NBC and ABC reporter Sander Vanocur: "You want to know what's wrong with the press? The press is what's wrong with the press.

What a guy!

Tampa Bay player Evan Longoria makes a bare-hand catch to save a reporter interviewing him from being beaned by a batted ball. Outstanding reflexes!



HT: Daniel Jackson, via Facebook

Update: Okay, seems this is just fake.

No one is more blind ...

... than those who refuse to see.

Found at http://americandigest.org/

Let there be - conspiracy theories!

Ding, dong, Osama's dead - or is he, really?

Via American Digest, I find this post by Cobb, "Because he's not dead yet:"

C'mon. You don't get your mitts on Bin Laden just to kill him, and you don't have 40 SEALs who are too slow to tackle the dude. There's is no picture because he's not dead yet. They're twisting him on a spit and slow roasting him until he's so tender the secrets just drip of the bones. They've got him simmering in pentathol. ...

He's certainly not free or missing, that's for sure. He's never going to see the light of day. But is he dead at this very moment? You will never know.

Which makes me wonder about the bogus death photos that got shown to some members of Congress.

A day after the White House said it will not release the official photo of Usama bin Laden’s body, many are wondering how a handful of lawmakers were duped into believing they saw it. ...

The announcement came after at least three U.S. lawmakers claimed to have seen what they believed was an authentic photograph of Bin Laden, shot in the face and chest during a CIA-led Navy SEALs operation Sunday at a secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
But those photos appear to have been doctored images sent by an undisclosed source or sources to members of Congress, including Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., who admitted Wednesday he’d been fooled into thinking the picture was real.
After telling reporters he had seen an image that confirmed Usama is "definitely dead," Brown later said "the photo that I saw and that a lot of other people saw is not authentic.

Let us take Cobb's conspiracy theory to its logical limit! I can conspiracy conspire with the best of 'em:

Q: Why did the White house dither so long on whether to release photos of bin Laden's corpse and then announce there would be no release?
A: There are no photos of bin Laden's corpse because bin Laden is not a corpse. He was snatched, not killed. The bogus photos that some Members received came from the CIA. They were trial balloons of deliberately faked photos. The "leak" was actually a test of the photos' credibility. It was only after they had been quickly debunked that the White House pulled the plug on using them as "official" photos.

Q: What about the burial at sea?
A: There was no burial at sea off USS Carl Vinson, some of whose officers and crew, including the captain, are part of the conspiracy. As for the SEALs and crews of the Army's 160th SOAR who flew the mission, they won't even tell you what they had for breakfast this morning, much less the respiratory status of a body brought out of a mission objective.

Q: So why the elaborate cover story that OBL was killed?
A: We don't want his successors in al Qaeda to know that OBL, having been waterboarded before 24 hours passed, has spilled his guts just as fully as 9/11's mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did after he was captured.

Q: Wait! Bin Laden was water boarded? I thought that Obama outlawed that!
A: Yeah, right. Remember, there's an election coming up in only, what 550 days or so. You think that not water boarding OBL is going to stand in the way of a second term? Just wait until the three months before November when we are incrementally fed through a thoroughly compliant media story after story of terrorist plots stopped by analyzing the intel info grabbed during the raid.

And stipulating that all Cobb proposes is true ... does the president know? Or does he really think that OBL is chatting it up right now with Luca Brazzi?

Think it couldn't happen? Remember that naval intelligence actually removed FDR from the distribution list of intercepted, decoded Japanese signals in the months before Pearl Harbor.

The problem with all this, of course, is that "three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." As Chuck Colson, who did prison time for being part of the Watergate coverup, put it, a conspiracy always gets blown, and the more people there are in it, the quicker.

This is exactly why I still insist that proof of OBLs' death must be made public. Not only will it dampen some (not all) of the conspiracy theories already abounding in Muslim lands, failure to do so will make it more likely that similar conpsiracy theories will start to gain credibility here. This must not happen.

For the record: I believe that the SOF operators went into the compound knowing that there was a high likelihood that OBL was there - but that killing or capturing him was not the highest priority of the mission, though high indeed it was. To repeat myself,

The real value of this raid is less the death of bin Laden, as emotionally satisfying as Americans find it, than the trove of materials gathered. ... What the raid did was retrieve enormously important al Qaeda hard drives and documents from Osama bin Laden's house, incidentally killing bin Laden as they did so.

Even if bin Laden had not been there, the raid would have been a smashing success because of the intelligence goldmine, the capture of which was surely of no lower priority than confronting bin Laden. But OBL was there. The SEALs killed him. Could they have captured him instead? We'll never know. But dead he is at the close-up hands of the US military. And what's even better, the US Congress authorized it.

Defending Obama

I find myself in the unusual position of defending President Obama against his critics. The second guessing has begun about his apparent delay of 16 hours before giving the go order to raid Osama bin Laden's compound.

First up, Don Surber of the Charleston Daily Mail, citing the London Daily Mail (it's confusing - the former paper is in W. Va., the latter in England). The latter wrote,

Barack Obama kept military commanders hanging by declaring he would ’sleep on it’ before taking 16 hours to give the go-ahead to raid Bin Laden’s compound. ...

‘I’m not going to tell you what my decision is now — I’m going to go back and think about it some more,’ said Obama, according to the New York Times. He then added ‘I’m going to make a decision soon.’

To this story, Don offers a pithy, three-word comment.

Then there is a so-called "White House Insider" who says that it was CIA Director Leon Panetta who actually gave the go order, presenting the president with a fait accompli that he simply accepted.

Q: You stated that President Obama was “overruled” by military/intelligence officials regarding the decision to send in military specialists into the Osama Bin Laden compound. Was that accurate?

A: I was told – in these exact terms, “we overruled him.” (Obama) I have since followed up and received further details on exactly what that meant, as well as the specifics of how Leon Panetta worked around the president’s “persistent hesitation to act.” There appears NOT to have been an outright overruling of any specific position by President Obama, simply because there was no specific position from the president to do so. President Obama was, in this case, as in all others, working as an absentee president.

However, like Glenn Reynolds, "I’ll need a lot more convincing. This is telling too many people what they want to hear."

With only a hint of sarcasm, I would respond, "I don't care, Obama is awesome!" At least in this case.

The London Dail Mail also reports, "The delay meant that, in part due to bad weather, the earliest the attack could be carried out was Sunday."

Presumably, the paper means that had the president on Friday ordered the mission to proceed, it would have been carried out about 24 hours earlier than it was. What I want to know is exactly what difference this makes. Bin Laden is dead and a fantastic trove of invaluable documents and hard drives were snatched. What, exactly, is there to criticize?

Apparently, we are supposed to believe that the 16 hours Obama took to take the decision was terribly risky to the success of the operation. After all, what if bin Laden flew the coop between Friday and Sunday? But this is nonsense. No one from Director Panetta on down working the raid knew for a fact that OBL was even there to begin with. If the 16 hours was a window through which OBL might have fled, it was just as much a window through which he might have returned if he was absent from the compound.

Monday morning quarterbacks have no credibility. I do not fault the president for taking the 16 hours to decide. It's easy for straphangers to say how decisive and action-oriented they would have been, but there were incalculable risks to this mission as well as the obvious rewards.

This mission was accomplished with stunning, in fact perfect, success. That's it.

But I do fault the administration for agonizing with the media over whether OBL resisted the SEALs when they burst into the compound and who was the woman OBL reportedly used as a human shield and whether OBL resisted and if so was he armed, blah, blah, blah. These are trivial questions. Also, reports that the mission was a "targeted killing" are just bunk. As Blackfive points out,

Let me assure you right now that there is no such thing as a “Kill only “ mission. If that SEAL operator came through the door to find UBL with his hands up, compliant, and unarmed (including no evidence of a suicide vest) he would have taken a muzzle strike to the face, but not any rounds. He would have swallowed some teeth, been flex cuffed, and dragged roughly out to a marshalling area and then onto the helo. To start out with the story that UBL had used his wife as a shield while shooting at the assaulters and to devolve that into to a woman was wounded and UBL was unarmed and shot in the face is quite a large spectrum of “truth”. Add to that the false notion of the “Kill only” mission, and now you have the entire SEAL community being thrown under the bus as wonton killers of women and unarmed civilians.

And that's the problem. The White House is getting into the weeds with reporters who are political, not military specialists. The president should have thrown this whole issue over to the Pentagon to handle and let it be. In my view, the only answer that needs to be given is, "The SEALs would have captured Osama bin Laden alive if it had been possible. However, during the firefight, they shot bin Laden dead. Such is war. Next!"

Besides, "Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."

"This is supposed to be a happy occasion!"

Osama bin Laden is still dead

And now the news!

Francisco Franco is still dead.

Osama bin Laden is both freshly and still dead.

But President Obama is not dead and never was. Unfortunately, these two reporters didn't get that memo.




Okay, this is pretty good: