The Middle East meant only Israel to many. Now the lives of millions of Arabs have been brought to Europe’s attention The Arab revolution is consigning skip-loads of articles, books and speeches about the Middle East to the dustbin of history. In a few months, readers will go through libraries or newspaper archives and wonder how so many who claimed expert knowledge could have turned their eyes from tyranny and its consequences. To a generation of politically active if not morally consistent campaigners, the Middle East has meant Israel and only Israel. In theory, they should have been able to stick by universal principles and support a just settlement for the Palestinians while opposing the dictators who kept Arabs subjugated. Few, however, have been able to oppose oppression in all its forms consistently. The right has been no better than the liberal-left in its Jew obsessions. The briefest reading of Conservative newspapers shows that at all times their first concern about political changes in the Middle East is how they affect Israel. For both sides, the lives of hundreds of millions of Arabs, Berbers and Kurds who were not involved in the conflict could be forgotten. If you doubt me, consider the stories that the Middle Eastern bureau chiefs missed until revolutions that had nothing to do with Palestine forced them to take notice. • Gaddafi was so frightened of a coup that he kept the Libyan army small and ill-equipped and hired mercenaries and paramilitary “special forces” he could count on to slaughter the civilian population when required. • Leila Ben Ali , the wife of the Tunisian president, was a preposterously extravagant figure, who all but begged foreign correspondents to write about her rapacious pursuit of wealth. Only when Tunisians rose up did journalists stir themselves to tell their readers how she had pushed the populace to revolt by combining the least appealing traits of Imelda Marcos and Marie-Antoinette. • Hearteningly, for those of us who retain a nostalgia for the best traditions of the old left, Tunisia and Egypt had independent trade unionists, who could play “a leading role”, as we used to say, in organising and executing uprisings. Far from being a cause of the revolution, antagonism to Israel everywhere served the interests of oppressors. Europeans have no right to be surprised. Of all people, we ought to know from our experience of Nazism that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory about power, rather than a standard racist hatred of poor immigrants. Fascistic regimes reached for it when they sought to deny their own people liberty. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forgery the far-right wing of the decaying tsarist regime issued in 1903 to convince Russians they should continue to obey the tsar’s every command, denounces human rights and democracy as facades behind which the secret Jewish rulers of the world manipulated gullible gentiles. Syrian Ba’athists, Hamas, the Saudi monarchy and Gaddafi eagerly promoted the Protocols, for why wouldn’t vicious elites welcome a fantasy that dismissed democracy as a fraud and justified their domination? Just before the Libyan revolt, Gaddafi tried a desperate move his European predecessors would have understood. He tried to deflect Libyan anger by calling for a popular Palestinian revolution against Israel. That may or may not have been justified, but it assuredly would have done nothing to help the wretched Libyans. In his Epitaph on a Tyrant , Auden wrote: “When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter And when he cried, the little children died in the streets.” Europe’s amnesia about how tyranny operated in our continent explains why the Libyan revolution is embarrassing a rich collection of dupes and scoundrels who were willing to laugh along with Gaddafi. His contacts in Britain were once confined to the truly lunatic fringe. He supplied arms to the IRA, funded the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, Vanessa Redgrave’s nasty Trotskyist sect, and entertained Nick Griffin and other neo-Nazis. We should not forget them when the time comes to settle accounts. But when Tony Blair, who was so eloquent in denouncing the genocides of Saddam, staged a reconciliation with Gaddafi after 9/11, his friendship opened the way for the British establishment to embrace the dictatorship. It was not only BP and other oil companies, but British academics who were happy to accept his largesse. The London School of Economics took £1.5m from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, money which by definition had to have been stolen from the Libyan people, despite being warned to back away by Professor Fred Halliday, the LSE’s late and much-missed authority on the Middle East, who never flinched from looking dictators in the eye. “I’ve come to know Saif as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values for the core of his inspiration,” purred the LSE’s David Held as he accepted the cheque. Human Rights Watch, once a reliable opponent of tyranny, went further and described a foundation Saif ran in Libya as a force for freedom, willing to take on the interior ministry in the fight for civil liberties. Meanwhile, and to the surprise of no one, Peter Mandelson, New Labour’s butterfly, fluttered round Saif at the country house parties of the plutocracy. Last week, Saif, the “liberal” promoter of human rights and dining companion of Mandelson, appeared on Libyan television to say that his father’s gunmen would fight to the last bullet to keep the Gaddafi crime family in business, a promise he is keeping. The thinking behind so many who flattered him was that the only issue in the Middle East worth taking a stand on was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the oppression of Arabs by Arabs was a minor concern. The longevity of the regimes presided over by the Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak families and the House of Saud ought to be a reason for denouncing them more vigorously, but their apparent permanence added to the feeling that somehow Libyans, Syrians, Egyptians and Saudis want to live under dictatorships. The European Union, which did so much to export democracy and the rule of law to former communist dictatorships of eastern Europe, has played a miserable role in the Middle East. It pours in aid but never demands democratisation or restrictions on police powers in return. That will have to change if the promise of the past month is to be realised. If it is to help with democracy-building, Europe will need to remind itself as much as the recipients of its money that you can never build free societies on the racist conspiracy theories of the Nazis and the tsars. They are and always have been the tunes that tyrants sing. Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East protests Middle East Egypt Israel Nick Cohen guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Democracy Now: Thousands Feared Dead in Gaddafi’s Crackdown on Libyan Uprising
February 26, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media From Democracy Now — Thousands Feared Dead in Gaddafi’s Crackdown on Libyan Uprising : The United Nations is warning thousands of people may have been killed in Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s assault on the growing popular uprising across Libya. The United Nations is also warning Libya’s food supply network is on the brink of collapse. Deadly clashes are ongoing as anti-government forces close in on the capital city of Tripoli. We get a report from Democracy Now!’s Anjali Kamat in Libya. Transcript below the fold. JUAN GONZALEZ: On Thursday, as fighting intensified around the capital city of Tripoli, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi planned al-Qaeda and hallucinogenic drugs for the uprising in the country. Fighting between pro- and anti-Gaddafi forces appears to be the most intense in al-Zawiya, 30 miles west of the capital. Clashes have also been reported in other parts of the country, including in Misurata, Libya’s third-largest city. The Obama administration has said the situation in Libya “demands quick action.” The U.N. Security Council is meeting today to discuss possible sanctions as the violence in Libya continues. Some rights officials estimate the death toll could be as high as 2,000. According to reports, protesters are preparing for their first organized demonstration in Tripoli today. The New York Times reports residents have received text messages informing them of a protest throughout the city. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera Arabic reports Gaddafi’s security forces are deployed around mosques to prevent protests after Friday prayers. Democracy Now! correspondent Anjali Kamat traveled to Al Bayda in eastern Libya yesterday. We reached her last night. ANJALI KAMAT: What’s special about Bayda is that the residents there say that it’s the very first city in Libya’s east that broke free of Gaddafi’s 42 years of authoritarian rule. People in Bayda are extremely excited to be liberated from Gaddafi’s rule. There’s no security forces to be seen on the streets. There’s no visible presence of the Gaddafi regime. Everywhere, there’s the flag of the pre-Gaddafi government, the Senussian flag, all over the city. Al Bayda was the site of very fierce battles exactly a week ago. And I visited the main hospital in the city. It’s actually the only public hospital, and it’s now called the Hospital of the Revolution. And I spoke to a number of doctors and nurses and patients there. And even though it’s been a week since the battle, there’s still dozens of critically wounded patients inside this hospital. These are mostly young men between the ages of 15 and 30. They’ve been very seriously injured, and most of them will probably be handicap for the rest of their lives as a result of these injuries. We saw some of the ammunition that was used against demonstrators by the pro-Gaddafi security forces and by mercenaries hired by the Gaddafi regime against these protesters. They included live ammunition as well as much larger—what doctors called anti-aircraft artillery, you know, incredibly large-looking bullets that were pulled out from the bodies of wounded and killed protesters. Many of the patients that I spoke to talked about being—coming out to the protests being very inspired by what they had seen on their televisions from the scenes from Tunisia and Egypt. And when they saw what happened in Tunisia and when they saw what happened in Egypt, they felt that they had to rise up, as well, against their dictatorship in their own country. And they talked about going out in largely peaceful protests. They were armed only with stones and rocks, and they were met with very heavy machine-gun fire. They were fired upon by Gaddafi’s security forces as well as mercenaries. And some of these mercenaries were captured by citizen groups in Al Bayda. And we talked to some of the hospital staff, as well as patients, about these mercenaries. They uniformly said that all of the mercenaries were foreigners, were not Libyans, but what we heard from some of the doctors and nurses was that some of the mercenaries had admitted to the doctors that they had been paid quite well by Muammar Gaddafi in order to come and attack protesters in Al Bayda. You know, everywhere we went in Al Bayda, it’s quite remarkable to see all of the public institutions are guarded now by civilians. The traffic—there’s no traffic police, so there’s groups of young men directing traffic. The banks opened for the first time today in a few cities in the east, and all the banks are being guarded and operated by groups of civilians, taking control and making sure that there’s no looting. We saw signs in different places saying, “Protect Libya. Don’t loot. Don’t damage anything. We want a country that’s not going to be ripped apart by sectarianism, by tribalism. We’re going to stand together as Libyans.” People are very excited about having this chance for freedom. And I think at this moment, people are watching the scenes of extreme violence taking place in western Libya, in Tripoli and Zawiya, and everyone’s really hoping that these cities in western Libya will also fall and also be liberated in the coming weeks. Some of the doctors we met, we asked them, you know, what it is that they want from the international community at this point. And, you know, I think they were all very hesitant to make any sort of call for international intervention, quite aware of the history of international intervention in the region and quite wary of it. But they did say that they did want a no-fly zone imposed over Libyan cities in order to protect civilians from these devastating air raids. They also said they were dead against the kind of sanctions that the citizens of Libya, the residents of Libya, had suffered under for decades, economic sanctions. Instead, they wanted targeted sanctions, targeting Muammar Gaddafi and his family. But, you know, one of the doctors we spoke to said, “In the end, we want Libya to be freed by the Libyans themselves. We don’t want outside help. We just need to make sure that this kind of carnage doesn’t continue.” JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Anjali Kamat, Democracy Now! correspondent, on the phone yesterday from Tobruk in eastern Libya.
Continue reading …Joe Scarborough on Glenn Beck: He’s terrible for the conservative movement
February 26, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Joe Scarborough channeled tiny little tidbits of William F. Buckley this morning on his show after playing one of Glenn Beck’s more bizarro clips from this week, saying he was bad for Republicans, bad for Fox News, and bad for the conservative movement. Golly, ya think? I’m really glad Joe could take time out from his snackies to let us all know that, but I think it’s going to have to be said just a little louder and a little bit more clearly for anyone to really hear it, especially when we have the likes of Michele Bachmann saying (in public, no less), that Beck could balance the budget. The most interesting panelist reaction comes from Pat Buchanan, Mr. Racist Extraordinaire, who cannot bring himself to say it. The best he can do is to disagree with the clip Scarborough showed, but on the actual question of whether Glenn Beck is an idiot with a show, a dog whistle and an incoherent message that no one but Beck understands, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. I did appreciate Joe pointing out that his nonsense could get someone hurt or killed, but I’ve just gotta say, Joe, you’re no William F. Buckley. That role goes to someone else to play, yet to be determined. The fact that Scarborough ran with this at all, and did so while mentioning Karl Rove more than once exposes the deep rift within the Republican Party between the tea party contingent and the more traditional right wingers. Peter Wehner is no moderate and has been vocal more than once about his feelings when it comes to Glenn Beck. It’s clear there’s a subterranean power struggle inside the GOP between the wild, manic Beckian contingent led by the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman and Jim DeMint, and the usual conservative but not batsh*t crazy wing led by the Karl Rove contingent. It remains to be seen who will win.
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Click here to view this media Lawrence O’Donnell took a shot at these great “defenders” of marriage, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich for going after the Obama administration for their decision not to defend DOMA. Apparently the two of them have a little trouble telling the difference between enforcing a law and defending that law in court. Here’s Beck via Media Matters — Beck Falsely Claims Obama Won’t Enforce Law On DOMA; Adds, “He Has Made Congress Irrelevent” . And TPM has more on Newt — Gingrich: Obama’s DOMA Move Sounds Impeachable To Me : Newt Gingrich knows a thing or two about presidential impeachments. And after the Obama’s administration’s decision on the Defense of Marriage Act, Gingrich says the smell impeachment is in the air once again. Speaking with Newsmax, the former House Speaker and oft-rumored 2012 presidential contender said that the Obama administration’s decision to no longer defend DOMA in federal court is a “a violation” of President Obama’s “Constitutional oath and clearly it is something which cannot be allowed to stand.” The host asked Gingrich “is what Obama’s doing impeachable in your view?” Gingrich: “I think that’s something you get to much later.” Read on… Kudos to Lawrence O’Donnell for this: enlarge Credit: The Last Word O’DONNELL: To Beck’s point that the president really isn’t a friend of marriage, he could have something there. Barack Obama has only had the one marriage. Glenn Beck has had two. Newt Gingrich has had three. So how much of a friend of marriage can Barack Obama really be if he’s only done the marriage thing once?
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Click here to view this media Cable news is obsessed with the Tea Party. It’s not unique to Fox News, either. Chris Matthews did an hour-long special on them. CNN hires them as commentators, despite their ugly daily behavior online. and now Greta Van Susteren has gotten in on the Tea Party gravy train with an hour-long love song to them last night. There are some revealing moments mixed in with the usual nonsense from the likes of Dick Armey and Sarah Palin about how the tea parties are all organic and populist. Humbug and idiocy, that. But two segments in particular are worth watching, both from Utah Senators. Orrin Hatch looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He’s being squeezed hard by the Tea Party and moves farther right with each passing day, but this interview tells me he isn’t very happy about it. It’s interesting to hear him repeat several times in the beginning, middle and end of this segment how he believes most of them are good people who are ‘just fed up’. Here’s the revealer though: They’re good people. You always have the radicals in any organization , but the vast majority of them are honest, decent people who are sick and tired of what’s happening in our country. That disclaimer about radicals in any organization was an interesting one for him to make. I think Hatch knows he’s a goner in 2012 but will hang on as long as possible in the hopes of moving the Republican party back toward reason because he knows the truth: the majority of them are radicals with a few honest and decent angry folks on the fringe edges. Former Senator Robert Bennett is a very interesting man. There’s no question that he was (and is) very frustrated with how the Tea Party swept through the 2010 primaries in Utah leaving him high and dry. Click here to view this media Bennett is clear about his opinion of the tea party and the 2010 midterm elections. He blames Utah’s weird primary system — a convention of Republicos — for his loss last year . He also points out that the midterms resembled European-style elections where voters don’t really care who the candidate is as much as who the party represents. He points out that it worked well for them in the House races, but says Republicans lost the Senate because of them. One of the best moments is when he mentions Dino Rossi’s loss to Patty Murray, noting that while Rossi wasn’t a pure tea party candidate, he had “that odor around him.” I’m not sure I agree with Bennett entirely, but I do think his analysis holds up about the difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House, he says, is more fluid (and I would add, more populist), with people not necessarily even knowing who their Representative is or what they’ve done. The Senate, on the other hand, with the longer terms and higher statewide profiles, tends to be less of a party choice and more of a people choice. He likens the Tea Party to the difference between John Adams and Sam Adams . In response to where he thinks the Tea Party will be in two years: Well, let’s go back in history just a little and this may be too much of an analogy. But as I’ve tried to think about it, I think you know, this is kind of like Sam Adams and John Adams. Sam Adams — I don’t know that he was there at the first Tea Party but he certainly was their spiritual leader. He was THE patriot in Massachusetts that riled everybody up and let’s just take on the British. But when it came to putting the country together and making things work, that’s when they needed John Adams, not Sam Adams. You needed somebody who knew something about government and he became a leader. Right now you’ve got a bunch of Sam Adams. The question is, in the current House and Senate, are we going to get out of this Tea Party movement some John Adams? I’m betting not. How about you? A couple of the commenters on my Fox News lament yesterday referred to it as pure invention, a 24/7 propaganda machine that invents, promotes, and flogs narratives until they’re woven into the fabric of our politics. I consider the Tea Party to be one of those inventions. It was born from intentional strategies, caught fire because people’s anger was stoked and stroked daily on demand, and continues because of PR specialists and news networks willing to treat this group of unruly characters like a legitimate populist grass-roots movement when there is nothing at all organic about it at all. Finally, allow me one moment of snark: Dick Armey’s tanning salon must make a fortune on him. Whatever he pays, it’s too much.
Continue reading …WI Police Association Asks Governor Not To Close Capitol To Protesters, Requests Members To Sleep There In Solidarity
February 26, 2011 No CommentI have to say, this is pretty freaking cool . I hope the police win this round of political poker: MADISON—Following action by lawmakers to approve a rule change that clears the way for closing down the State Capitol and ejecting the people protesting Governor Walker’s bill to curtail union activity, the head of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association called on the governor today to keep the capitol building open and allow the peaceful protesters to remain. “The law enforcement officers from across the state that have been working at the Capitol and have been very impressed with how peaceful everyone has been,” said WPPA Executive Director Jim Palmer. “As has been reported in the media, the protesters are cleaning up after themselves and have not caused any problems. The fact of that matter is that Wisconsin’s law enforcement community opposes Governor Walker’s effort to eliminate most union activity in this state, and we implore him to not do anything to increase the risk to officers and the public. The costs of providing security can never outweigh those associated with a conflict.” Palmer also announced that, beginning tonight, the WPPA is formally requesting its members from across the state to come to the Capitol to sleep amongst the throngs of other union supporters. “Law enforcement officers know the difference between right and wrong, and Governor Walker’s attempt to eliminate the collective voice of Wisconsin’s devoted public employees is wrong,” continued Palmer. “That is why we have stood with our fellow employees each day and why we will be sleeping among them tonight.” Nobody seems to listen to Gov. Scott Walker these days. Hell, people don’t even want to eat in the same restaurant with him!
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My 2 year-old protesting against Gaddafi – 2-25-2011 LM3916 vumetro .mp4 Deet Media Promo The Media Consortium: Weekly Mulch: Why Natural Gas Companies Fear … by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger The natural gas industry is afraid that Josh Fox, director of the muckraking film Gasland, might win an Oscar on Sunday. CNN Reformats 'Parker Spitzer' Without Kathleen Parker – NYTimes.com CNN is reformatting “Parker Spitzer” as an ensemble program with Eliot Spitzer – and without Kathleen Parker, who has been his co-host for the last four months. Social Media Fundraising FTW! | BlogHer Through the powers of social media , one family was able to get an iPad for their non-verbal son. It’s not the first time it has happened either! KI Media : Cambodia vs. Thailand foments more conflict KI- Media loves to hear from you, and we’re giving you a bullhorn. We just ask that you keep things civil. Please leave out personal attacks, do not use profanity, ethnic or racial slurs, or take shots at anyone’s sexual orientation or … New Wave Media Hired to Develop Social Media and Online Marketing … New Wave Media Hired to Develop Social Media and Online Marketing Strategies for Ananda Landscapes. Ananda Landscapes turn to online marketing to promote their business – PR11334142. LoftyDream says: Internet/Online/New Media , Marketing, Mobile, Public Relations, Social Media http://bit.ly/h6K630
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Click here to view this media ( John L. Lewis mincing no words before Congressional hearings on Mine Safety – 1952 ) Editors Note: This is a repost from last year, the occasion being the recent Mine disaster in West Virginia. As part of this continuing look at the Labor Movement in America, I’m including it here as a reminder – G.S. With the news earlier today of the Mine disaster in West Virginia , I was reminded how much mine safety had been an issue during the days when John L. Lewis was President of the United Mine Workers Union. How accidents were a common occurrence some 60 years ago and how much of a struggle there was to ensure safe working conditions for miners in this country. That the accident in West Virginia was the worst of its kind in 25 years suggests that conditions have improved. But the danger is still the same and the loss of life is never different. The question if whether conditions have been relaxed in recent years is always up for speculation. The notion of cutting corners to increase profit is a consideration. Perhaps not to the extent in John L. Lewis’s day as is evidence by this excerpt from his opening statement during a Congressional investigation on Mine Safety in 1952 . John L. Lewis: “I sometimes wonder why the great God above don’t punish them while they’re speaking their brutal language before the Congress of the United States.” But then, John L. Lewis was never one to mince words.
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Click here to view this media [YouTube] Via CNN : A woman in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, speaks with Anderson Cooper and issues a plea for help to the rest of the world. This is an excerpted part of a 15min segment aired last night on A360 with Anderson Cooper. COOPER: Are you — you’re scared to go out in the streets? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Very scared. no, we close the door. We close the window. We don’t go out. But nobody is leaving the house and we all stay together in one room in the center of the house. COOPER: I hear fear in your voice and I hear sadness in your voice. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Very much — is very much stress, very much sadness and hopelessness, because, you know, we can’t go outside. I wish I can go outside and protest, say OK, they arrest you, they beat you, they do something. But the problem is, you go outside, they’re going to shoot you. This is not protest. You cannot protest. I wish we can protest. We cannot protest. I will have to find another way to say — this is not protest. This is massacre. COOPER: I hope you know that people around the world are watching and praying and wanting to do something. I hope you know that. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Thank you for your efforts for the scene and effort — thank you for the people who care. But I’m telling you — I don’t mean to be rude. Please, don’t misunderstand me. But the only way something can happen is to put the right kind of action, the right kind of movement. And the first step, make Libya a no-fly zone. If you make Libya a no-fly zone, no more mercenaries can come in. Then after that, because this crucial, real thing — you know, we listen closely to Mr. Obama. We listen closely to the European Union. We listen closely to what’s happening in South America. We listen to closely to all the Arab nations, what they are saying. They are not saying read between the lines. We are dying. And the problem is, OK, you are — I’m talking to you and you are listening to me and you are seeing the videos and people are talking to you from inside, outside of Libya. But the action — there needs to be action. How much more waiting, how much more watching, how much more people dying? COOPER: How much longer can you hold on? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don’t know. You know, I feel like — sometimes, really, like I’m going to go crazy. And then, sometimes, I have to say, no, no, you have to be stronger than that. Your freedom is not something easy. It’s not cheap. You have to fight for your freedom. COOPER: You told my producer before that you have reached the end point. What do you mean when you say you have reached the end point? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody has had enough. We have had enough a long time, not just this last week or this month or this year, or even before things happening internationally in neighboring countries. We have all had enough. But what I mean in the end point, that I don’t care. Like — like, I’m talking to you now, you know? This is not safe for me, not safe for my family. COOPER: You know you’re taking a great risk right now? You know you’re taking a great risk? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A great risk. And I ask — I ask of you and CNN and anybody to please just come and see what is going on, you know, because, even though this is great risk on anybody who comes inside of Libya, but you cannot believe, as much as we — we don’t even know how many people died. I’m expecting — not because I’m overestimating, but when we know how many people died — I just keep hearing names, names. I’m making a list of paper of each time I hear of people dying. And we can’t even get the bodies. We don’t even know who we should say I’m sorry for the loss of some — your family member. We cannot move. We cannot do anything. And the problem is nothing will change in Libya unless drastic, important measures taken from outside, because this man, he is crazy. He doesn’t care about you or what you think. You already understand he doesn’t care about his people. He doesn’t care if I die. He doesn’t care if he burns the whole city. He doesn’t care if all of us in Tripoli die, all of us in Libya will die. He doesn’t care. I don’t — he said this in his speeches. He is not even just saying. He is doing. His action is telling you what’s happening. He doesn’t care. He wants us all to die. COOPER: I can hear… UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the only way we can fix this is if somebody takes action, if you just make Libya a no-fly zone. He’s bringing African mercenaries because he has so much money. He can buy people with money. He don’t care. They go inside to kill us, to rape us, to destroy our country, to — enough. COOPER: I don’t want to keep you on the phone for too long, just for safety reasons. So, please stay safe. And we will talk to you tomorrow. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. Anderson. And I — I hope I was able to — I hope you understand me. And thank you for your patience with me. And thank you, CNN, and thank you, America, for listening and for caring. Thank you very much.
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Click here to view this media Yes, because every state needs its own official state gun, right? Do you know your state bird, state motto, state tree? Well, if you’re in Arizona, you’d better brush up and add that state gun to the top of the list. LA Times : Legislators in the Grand Canyon State currently aim to name the Colt Single Action Army Revolver as Arizona’s official state gun, allegedly in memory of its 19th-century frontier days. And what a meaningful honor that would be, right? Now, when some little item like this pops up in the news to break the hopelessly depressing monotony of faraway really important events, a cynic could suspect that…. …a lobbyist for some gunmaker was behind the stunt. And that cynic would be right on target, bull’s-eye, dead center. “Arizona was founded by rugged individuals,” says Todd Rathner, who does helpful political things for the benefit of a certain gunmaker who patented the revolver mechanism back in 1836, old Andrew Jackson’s day. “They took care of themselves and did so largely with a Colt Single Action Army Revolver on their hip.” But where are the jobs?
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