Talk Talk: WHAT'S NEXT IN AFGHANISTAN?

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Every week CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist/philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogues compiled on Sunday, August 2, 2009 after watching selections from "Hardball with Chris Matthews," "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" and several Charlie Rose interviews. Newman: There are so many definitional questions to be asked here, that it makes approaching the question very, very difficult. What you said is correct. The objective is to make it less of a terrorist base from which to target both the region and the world. But the cultural assumptions embedded in the approach can get you into trouble. Those assumptions might not bear any relationship to how the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or ordinary Afghans look at this situation. Take the notion of "nation building." Well, the insurgents probably say: We already have a nation. This is our kind of nation. What you mean by a nation is having democratic elections, the outcome of which favor Washington, DC. That's not our definition of a nation. Arguably, this is them being realistic. It's them saying:This is what we have. Force has always played a major role in who controls the land. And land is the primary source of wealth and power. Throw in the religious traditions and the long history of resisting any kind of centralized rule, and the bottom line is that you can't relate to this situation as if it were Painesville, Ohio. This is not Painesville, Ohio. This is so far from being Painesville, Ohio that even the talk about nation building comes off sounding comic. Salit: I imagine our military leaders feel the same way. Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Talk Talk: Law and Disorder

Personally, I love hearing from Fred Newman and Jacqueline Salit every Tuesday with their thoughts on the talk show talk, current events chatter, news of the day.  I especially like this week's "Talk Talk" for its word-play-fulness and its free-range-i-ness. All the issues, all the time! In a format that ordinary Americans can relate to: conversation among friends! You can subscribe to Talk Talk here, and join me on my weekly BlogTalkRadio show BlogTalkTalkRadio/Hankster, which will launch in August.  "If you have something to say, make sure somebody is listening!" or "If you're listening, make sure somebody is saying something." or "What are they talking about?".. . Well, you get the jist -- Let me know what you think! In the meantime, enjoy: Talk Talk: Law and Disorder with Fred Newman and Jacqueline Salit... Law and Disorder Sunday, April 26, 2009

Every weekend CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogues compiled on Sunday, April 26, 2009 after watching selections from "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," "The Chris Matthews Show," a Charlie Rose interview and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."    Salit: Well, there are basically two arguments to address what you're pointing to. One is that the information that you get when you torture somebody is not good intelligence. And, two, if we want to prevent it from happening in the future, we have to take a hard public look at why it happened in this last round.   Newman: No we don't.   Salit: Because?   Newman: It doesn't make a difference.   Salit: It doesn't make a difference if you understand what happened and why?   Newman: It doesn't impact.   Salit: Because?   Newman: This is how human beings are. Don't you watch soap operas?   Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Talk Talk: Pirates, Policy and a Pooch

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Every weekend CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogues compiled on Sunday, April 19, 2009 after watching selections from "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," "The Chris Matthews Show," a Charlie Rose interview and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."    Newman: When you look at the picture on the front page of the Times where Chavez and Obama are shaking hands, it seems to me that the first thing you see is that two people of color are shaking hands.   Salit: Yes.   Newman: And that overwhelms any of the substantive issues that they may or may not discuss in Trinidad. It's a very big change for them. And for us. That's a big cultural, human, psychological factor.   Salit: I had a similar thought when I looked at the photograph.   Newman: One's a communist. One's part socialist, part capitalist. But they're both people of color. One has enough oil. One has too little oil. But that's not the issue.   Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Talk Talk: Fuzzballs and Foreign Policy

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Every weekend CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogues compiled on Sunday, Fuzzballs and Foreign Policy, March 8, 2009 after watching selections from "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," "Hardball with Chris Matthews," and a Charlie Rose interview. Newman: That's who Limbaugh is laying down the gauntlet to. Limbaugh's message is We got creamed. And I'm saying we got creamed because we wouldn't go all the way with conservatism. And we can't take them on - the Democrats, the liberals, whomever - unless we are willing to go much further with that. And he might be right. I'm not supporting that. I'm not a Republican. But, he might be right.   Salit: He might be right that you can't compete with the Democrats by trying to play at the middle?   Newman: Yes. Limbaugh's advice is Don't go back to New England-style moderate Republicanism. That's exactly the wrong direction. We have to go the other way. Who was it who said today - and they're right - that Limbaugh doesn't represent the Republican Party?   Salit: Larry O'Donnell said it on Hardball.   Newman: Right. Limbaugh represents conservatism. And a conservative regime, which lasted eight years, did disastrous things to the country. Limbaugh's point is that conservatives have to go even more firmly to the right, and likewise for the Republicans, to be major players. Going to the center is futile, in his view. I think that's what he's doing and that's a fun fight to watch.   Salit: I liked when he called himself a "fuzzball."   Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Talk Talk: Doing Nothing

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Doing Nothing. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, February 1, 2009 after watching "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", a Charlie Rose interview and "The McLaughlin Group".   Newman: So, psychologically speaking, this is very misunderstood. We live in a culture which says you have to make something happen. Well, you don't. You simply don't.   Salit: I don't mean to suggest now that Obama is necessarily keyed into the precise thing you're talking about here. But I was struck in the interview that he did on Al Arabiya, talking about dispatching George Mitchell as his personal envoy to the Middle East, when he said that his instructions to Mitchell were to go and to listen to people and that the U.S. has too often begun by dictating rather than listening.   Newman: See, Obama could have cut to the chase here: You want to know what your mission is George? Just go. That's the totality of what we can do    Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.   If haven't already, check out the slide show from the CUIP National Conference of Independents at which over 500 independents from around the country participated.

SAMEH ABDELAZIZ: The Two Americas, Israel, and I

A GUEST POST

by Sameh Abdelaziz

There have been always two Americas, and you’d better believe it, because I lived in both.

There is America that you and I know and love. It is an optimistic young and powerful country. It is free, democratic, opportunistic, with big cars, large houses, green lawns, blue pools, handsome men, and beautiful women.

Our country has a place for everybody, black, white, yellow and brown. We even elected a black president. We are all Americans, white collars, blue collars, and no collars. We have equal opportunity as long as we are willing to work fifty to sixty hours a week, spend beyond our means, and live on plastic.

Our America sent men to the moon, earned three fifth of Nobel awards, created the new capitalism, invented the pop culture, and built the meanest arm forces in human history to defend freedom and promote democracy. Our America is flawless.

However, there is a different America. It lives outside our borders, in the mind of people young and old, women, children, and men. This America exterminated natives, enslaved blacks, invented McCarthyism, nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, burned villages in Vietnam, and left its own people behind in New Orleans.

This foreign America supported tyrants in Philippines, Chile, Egypt, and Saudi. It rejected the Kyoto protocol signed by hundred and eighty-three parties, to save the planet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol It under cut, and refused to sign an agreement establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). The goal of the ICC court was to create an international jurisdiction to prevent war crime http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/icc/crisisindex.htm

Over the last few days as I watched the live pictures of thick black smoke rising from residential buildings in Gaza, read my usual columns in the New York Times, and Washington Post, I felt reasonably at peace. The black smoke from a distance looked like a small backyard mishap. The thirty seconds devoted to the rising smoke in Gaza were smartly balanced by a camera shot of a hole, in a building in south Israel. The calm voice of the anchor describing the Gaza/Israeli conflict brought in mind the image of two adults sitting arguing while sipping their lattes. The message in short, Israel has the right to defend itself and thank god, they are not planning to reoccupy Gaza.

In the meantime, the world watched BBC and Al-Jazeera, read the associated press, and a few international papers on the web.

People living outside our borders learned about seven hundred Palestinians mostly women and children killed, and three thousand injured. They saw the images of hospitals without the most basic medical needs, and morgues where the dead had to share the same drawer. They watched as forty-five bodies lined up on the street after their hiding place -a UN school- was bombarded. The chief of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency insisted that the school was clearly marked, and the GPS coordinates provided in advance to the IDF. He called the Gaza violence a “horrific tragedy” and a result of “political failure.” “There is no safe haven,” he said. Probably people across the planet also learned that while all nations on earth demanded a ceasefire resolution, America decided it would veto it.

Over the years, we in the first America either didn’t care about the rest of the world or were too busy to try to understand it. We believed that people living in these far away places hated us for our democracy, freedom or both.

That is not the case, people worldwide would love to be part of our America, but they reject that America. The America that we created for them through double standards when it comes to human suffering, selective and sometimes unprovoked use of force, and our unilateral and unconditional support of Israel, is the problem that we need to address.

I believe we elected Obama not as Republicans or Democrats but as independents looking for real and pragmatic solutions to our deep-seated problems. I believe that he understands the critical need to create a single America, which is capable of taking its rightful leadership role in the world, but understanding is never enough.

We need to exercise our human conscience and ability to mobilize for the sake of our children and the world future. The new administration will succeed only if all Americans understand that international relations influence our daily lives, from the gas we consume, to the people willing to die to hurt us.

It is only two weeks until inauguration, our country, president, and the world need to hear our voice finally. There is a single America, which is good, fair, and strong.

Sameh Abdelaziz, PMP is an Egyptian American born in Alexandria. He immigrated to the US in the late eighties, and has lived in many places in US and Europe. Sameh works as an IT manager and loves traveling, history, politics and human nature. "I love knowing people from different cultures; it never fails to amaze me how we all live in our little worlds that never meet." Mr. Abdelaziz publishes editorials frequently on OpEdNews and can be reached at sameh.abdelaziz@travelport.com

Talk/Talk: Slick About Oil?

Sunday, July 6, 2008




Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Slick About Oil?. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, July 6, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

Newman: OK, let's take one soldier. He or she is over there, and they are fixing a bayonet and heading towards a building to go kill someone. Now, if you take that same soldier, have her or him over there standing in front of an oil refinery to make sure that someone from Al Qaeda doesn't come and blow up the oil refinery, that's still having an American troop there. It's the same soldier. But it's a different mission and it means something different. I really don't understand what it is that McCain is saying. He seems to be saying that the surge worked because fewer American troops are being killed.

Salit: They're trying to make the point, I guess, that this reflects well on the underlying mission.

Newman: How does it reflect well on the underlying mission? Was the mission to have fewer American troops killed? If that was the mission, why go in at all? You'll have no casualties. I don't get the logic. What if we had 10 times as many troops killed in the most recent period of the surge, but they captured or killed Osama bin Laden? Is that a success or a failure by virtue of the current McCain argument?

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Talk/Talk: Where's the Latrine?...

Sunday, June 1, 2008
Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Where's the Latrine?... Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, June 1, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

Salit: Howard Dean said it's the media's job to search for the conflict in this. He added 'From where I sit, yesterday's rules committee meeting was the beginning of the Democratic Party coming together.'

Newman: Right. Actually, from where I sit and most Americans sit, we don't really give a damn.

Salit: OK.

Newman: I think most Americans think, You have your way of deciding this. At this stage, most Americans want to know who is your candidate? You've been through endless hours, endless days, endless news coverage. You've got two choices, so who's your candidate? Who you got? At the end of the day, the American people don't care about the rightness of an argument in a baseball game. They care who wins the baseball game. So, I'm just a simple minded old guy who has reached that point in the process. I want to know who are they going to run...

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Conversations on Ron Paul

Rob Kall (OpEdNews) endorsed Ron Paul for the Repub nomination and makes a good case for Why Progressive Dems Should Support Ron Paul with the observation that a strong showing by Paul's campaign early in the primaries can make him a contender for independent votes in a contest with Hillary or Obama, forcing those campaigns leftward. I'm all for that!

In my opinion, Ron Paul's statement on foreign policy on Meet the Press on Sunday (msnbc video here) was one of the most progressive statements we've heard yet in this campaign. More people need to be talking about whether the US should continue to be the Policeman of the World. To his credit, Dr. Paul has followed independents for at least 2 decades.

It was independent voters who raised the bar in 2006 in the midterm elections, making the war in Iraq the make or break issue, and leading the country in a mandate for the Dems to change the direction of our country. A mandate they have been unwilling or unable to fulfill.

Fortunately, the American people are leaning into this election, creating the basis for a real shake-up.

The Hankster Poll

Have you checked out? Check in on The Hankster Poll--it's not just an opinion... It's a voice for independent voters!

Go to the sidebar, and here are the early results:

As an independent voter, I would like to see:

Barack Obama reach out to independents as a partner to change American politics
2 votes
Chuck Hagel run as an independent.
2 votes
Michael Bloomberg run as an independent.
2 votes
An independent ticket with prominent candidates willing to take on the failure of US domestic and foreign policy.
3 votes
Rudy Giuliani recognize independent voters as an agent for change.
1 vote
Independents talking to independents.
1 vote
More philosophical dialogue about America's role in international politics.
1 vote
All of the above. Independents can have an impact everywhere.
3 votes
None of the above--it's hopeless.
0 votes
What can I do?
0 votes