Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
The Cadillac News is usually so bad that I want to give Dale Killingbeck credit for his story in today's issue, "Law allows recruiters access," about military recruiters and local high schools, but they managed to completely screw this topic up.
Summary of the article - two high school counselors think most people they see join the military because they don't have any better options - No Child Left Behind "gives recruiters access to names, addresses and telephone listings of all junior and senior students" - Pine River school board member Jim Peterson says "a pacifist group" approached him about getting the same access to high school students but he said no because the school a has a policy against allowing such access unless there is a law involved.
This is horrible journalism in any context but in the context of this area, it will be read by people who say, "well allabe that's good to know that our finest young people are still joining the military. God Bless President Bush and our troops... why would I give a damn about some cowardly group of treasonous pacifists?"
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"Iraq moved further toward a political stalemate today, as Shiite political leaders agreed on what they said was a compromise to include Sunni Arabs in the writing of this country's constitution, and Sunnis flatly rejected the offer," Sabrina Tavernise writes in a June 12 New York Times story.
FWIW, I'm not so sure. I do agree that the occupation is encouraging tensions in Iraq but those tensions are not new and it may be too late. There probably aren't any good options, in the sense of a "good" option being one where there is not a significant risk of disaster.
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Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher writes that more newspaper columnists in the U.S. are writing critical pieces about the occupation of Iraq (Alternet, June 8).
I can't decide whether to write, "about time" or "too little, too late."
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I'm sure glad that Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is worried about how contractors are a "hinderance [sic] to the war effort" in Iraq (dailykos.com, June 10). If that's his position, fine, but I don't ever want to hear or read about him as being against the occupation. posted by micah holmquist at 6/13/2005 09:52:00 AM
