Scott Ritter will be in KC June 21; Al Sharpton in KC June 5

[proud2BlibKansan]

No details yet. Just wanted to let you all know to mark your calendars.

Sharpton is probably going to be speaking at a church in KCK. Ritter probably at All Souls in KCMO. I will post details when they are finalized.

[chat_noir]

1. Video: UN Inspector Scott Ritter: Fools would Bomb Iran

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XQan1qo8T4

Also..

Former Chief US Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh talk about IRAN, how policy has been hijacked and the prospect of nuclear war....Nov 8, 2006 but as potent, valid and as important as ever. Perhaps more so now than ever.

Target Iran - Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3777614199046042311

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. June 21 at All Souls

It's a benefit for KKFI.

[chat_noir]

3. Investigate This, by Scott Ritter

Investigate This
by Scott Ritter

"...This, of course, is journalism in its most puritanical form, the ideal that the reporter simply reports, and keeps his or her personal opinion segregated from the “facts” as they are being presented. While it would be a farcical stretch for David Gregory, or any other mainstream reporter or correspondent, to realistically claim ownership of such a noble mantle, it appears that is exactly what Gregory did when he set forth the parameters of what his “role” was, and is, in reporting on stories such as the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the Bush administration’s case for war. For this to be valid, however, the issue of journalistic integrity would need to apply not only to the individual reporter or correspondent, but also to the entire system to which the given reporter or correspondent belonged. In the case of Gregory, therefore, we must not only bring into the mix his own individual performance, but also that of NBC News and its parent organization, General Electric.

As a weapons inspector, I was very much driven by what the facts said, not what the rhetoric implied. I maintain this standard to this day in assessing and evaluating American policy in the Middle East. It was the core approach which governed my own personal questioning of the Bush administration’s case for confronting Iraq in the lead-up to the war in 2002 and 2003. I am saddened at the vindication of my position in the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, not because of what I did, but rather what the transcripts of every media interview I conducted at the time demonstrates: The media were not interested in reporting the facts, but rather furthering a fiction. Time after time, I backed my opposition to the Bush administration’s “case” for war on Iraq with hard facts, citing evidence that could be readily checked by these erstwhile journalists had they been so inclined. Instead, my integrity and character were impugned by these simple recorders of “fact”, further enabling the fiction pushed by the administration into the mainstream, unchallenged and unquestioned, to be digested by the American public as truth."

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/10/9537/

cross post from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3427523