The Daily Background
| The Daily Brief for Friday, July 21st
by Arlen Parsa
No surprise here, today we’re leading off with (you guessed it)…
The Middle East
The Associated Press made a splash yesterday by headlining an article “Israel Hints at a Full-Scale Invasion.” I would be extremely, extremely surprised if this happened…
…But considering that there are already reported to be thousands of Israeli soldiers operating in southern Lebanon, and Israel has told citizens in southern Lebanon to leave the area or risk being killed– maybe it’s not so unlikely after all.
A United Nations observation post has been caught between the fighting.
The Associated Press published a detailed story yesterday explaining that Israel does not in fact have a free press, and that all reporters who work in the country (both foreign and domestic) are expected to abide by rules about what they can and can’t report– and the Israeli government actually imposes censorship on unfavorable stories. AP writes:
Reporters are expected to censor themselves and not report any of the forbidden material. This story was not submitted to a censor. When in doubt, they can submit a story to the censor who will hand it back, possibly with deletions. The AP will note in a story if any deletions have been made. If a reporter violates the rules, he or she suffers the consequences.
The AP writer notes that the censorship is supposedly only about the current conflict, but adds that the government has the power to throw reporters into jail for not abiding by censor rules.
Iraq: The U.S. military is experiencing a 40 percent rise in violence in Baghdad over the last week, and an average of 34 separate attacks occurring every single day. Major General William Caldwell admitted to reporters “We have not witnessed the reduction in violence one would have hoped for.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is now calling the situation in Iraq a Civil War.
Bits and Pieces (extra juicy edition)
According to a new poll conducted by Quinnipiac, Ned Lamont has actually surpassed Joe Lieberman in popularity among likely voters in the upcoming Democratic primary (51-47). The poll also predicts that in a general election where Lamont won the Dem primary and Lieberman ran as an independent, Lieberman would win.
However if Lamont wins the primary, he would be doing a ton of campaigning and a bunch of people would come in to help campaign for him, so it’s really hard to predict what would happen. The Dem primary is August 8th. Fingers crossed for Lamont.
According to Reuters “A federal judge declined motions on Thursday to dismiss a lawsuit against AT&T alleging the firm illegally allowed the U.S. government to monitor phone conversations and e-mail communications.” The judge referred to in the article actually wrote up a 72-page ruling explaining why he refused to dismiss the lawsuit.
Tom DeLay’s political action committee has been fined over a hundred thousand dollars by the FEC, and is now dissolving itself.
The blogosphere expands: almost 40% of American Internet users read blogs, which is 67 million Americans, according to a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.
A Harris Interactive/WSJ poll puts President Bush’s approval rating at only 34%; up one point from June.
According to the Associated Press, Democrats plan to spend a gigantic $30 million in preparation for the November midterm elections on advertisements.
Governor Schwarzenegger approved yesterday a loan of $150 million dollars to a stem cell research agency, about 24 hours after President Bush vetoed federal funding of a broad amount of stem cell research. The Republican governor, incidentally, is running for re-election this year. Gee, I wonder if the two of those are connected…
Question of the day
As you may have heard, the President spoke before the NAACP yesterday after refusing to speak to them for five years and made a lame speech to often less than excited applause. The largest amount of applause came with the President said he would approve the Voting Rights Act renewal (gee, big surprise), which congress approved overwhelmingly today (with opposition coming only from conservative Republicans).
The question is: with only a 2% approval rate among African Americans by the end of Hurricane season last year, would the President ever have agreed to speak before the NAACP if Katrina didn’t happen?
And finally…
I’m leaving for Texas today, to shoot more of the documentary down there. So expect some more documentary updates in the coming days. I’ll be back Tuesday, but I’ll be updating the blog as usual because I’ll have internet access.
Fun fact about Texas: it should be pronounced “Tehas.” In the 16th century, the spanish “x” made an (english) “h” sound. This is why the “x” in Mexico is pronounced like an “h,” and also explains why the “x” in Don Quixote sounds like an “h”, so sometimes it is spelled with a “j” instead, Don Quijote, to clarify.