WAR & PEACE:
Deadly March of Folly
Written by Capt. Karen Boerboom to
The San Luis Obispo Tribune,
February 16, 2007

To the editor:
Will the people be able to stop the march to war with Iran? An ineffectual Congress and a majority of justices on the US Supreme Court sympathetic to Cheney/Bush seem unable to stop this march of folly. Despite people from around the world and in the United States, protesting, a Republican majority in Congress granted the use of war as policy.

What has changed? More than a hundred thousand Iraqis, US military, US citizens, allied forces and who knows who else are dead as the result of Iraq War 2. A country lies in ruin.

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POLITICS & PROPAGANDA:
Editing Africa
Written by Sean Jacobs to
The New York Times,
March 5, 2007

To the Editor:
If I could pass on any advice to Bono, who is about to guest edit Vanity Fair's “Africa Issue” (“Citizen Bono Brings Africa to Idle Rich,” March 5, 2007), I would suggest that he consult, for editorial guidelines, Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina’s manual on “How to write about Africa,” (“Land of Clichés,” reproduced from Granta in The Times on January 8, 2006.)

—Sean Jacobs
—Ann Arbor, MI

EDITOR’S NOTE:
See Granta article by Binyavanga Wainaina. Sean Jacobs is an assistant professor of communication studies and African Studies at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and was born, grew up and lived in South Africa before moving to work to Brooklyn,NY, and then to Ann Arbor. He is online editor of Chimurenga Magazine.

EDITORIAL
On Thursday, April 5th, a fascinating chain of events began to unfold. It all began when Bernard L. Stein—a colleague at Hunter College and editor/co-publisher of The Riverdale Press in the Bronx—sent a copy of RLTE’s “call for submissions” to the listserv of the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW).

The NCEW is an organization whose membership—among others—includes “professional editorial writers who prepare institutional opinion on a regular basis for newspapers or magazines of general circulation…” (Visit http://www.ncew.org for organization bylaws and other information)

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POLITICS & PROPAGANDA:
AARP’s Whitewash

Condoleezza Rice is an intriguing mix of boots, brains, and bravado.... Two women strained to see if she was wearing the sexy black boots she sported while reviewing U.S. troops in Wiesbaden, Germany, in February. That caused a global sensation and landed the legs that Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once blamed for making it “hard for me to concentrate” on the front page of The Washington Post.
————AARP, “What Makes Condi Run”

Written by Robert Boldt to
AARP Magazine
(American Association of Retired People),
September 2005.

Dear AARP,
I was really upset after reading your quite biased puff piece on Condi Rice (Ann Reilly Dowd, “What Makes Condi Run—How She Learned to Be Fearless,” AARP Magazine, September/October 2005). The Bush administration has set up a number of these show-persons of minority race/gender status in order to present the illusion of inclusively/ diversity and to falsely frame honest criticism of their policies as motivated by racism and sexism.

Some might find encouraging, that this administration has placed such people in positions of power and influence. A closer examination of Ms. Rice’s record and background reveal her to be no champion of democracy, feminism and racial equity, but to be, in reality, a sinister architect for Bush’s extremist policies of American imperialism.

It is not amusing to have such a fawning article about the present Secretary of State that gives the AARP readers little insight into the dark side of her “fearless” nature. Her blatant lies...

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