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Today's Stories September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation?   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

September 20, 2007 The Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton, and Blog Power Jim Crow's Children By CHARLES MODIANO Did you hear the good news on "The Jena 6"? The adult conviction and potential 22 year sentence of Mychal Bell has been overturned. This comes less than one week before widespread protests scheduled for this Thursday in Jena, Louisiana. Since this case and the fate of the other five boys are a looooong way from being resolved mass protests will continue as planned. The development of Jena story is only part of a much larger "Cyber Rights Movement" that has been gaining greater ground in America in 2007. Let's call it "BLOG POWER"! It goes a little something like this: yet another African-American teenager falls victim to Jim Crow-like criminal injustice; the injustice is covered in some local newspaper; national mainstream media completely ignores story; story spreads like wildfire across hundreds of predominantly African-American blogs; national media still ignores it; bloggers still blog; national media keeps ignoring; bloggers keep blogging on irresponsible national media; one national mainstream outlet might pick up story; bloggers keep blogging; other embarrassed national outlets might pick up story; bloggers keep blogging; finally, previously voiceless activists start to receive national media attention; bloggers keep blogging; more well-known activists such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are part of planned widespread national march; bloggers keep blogging; just days prior to the scheduled protest the charges against the young teenager have been reduced or thrown out. While there exist many examples of BLOG POWER, perhaps the greatest two in 2007 involve "The Jena 6" and Shaquanda Cotton. But before we examine what they represent, some context might be necessary. JIM CROW'S CHILDREN More than 40 years ago it took an unrelenting civil rights campaign and appalling television images of government abuse to wake up the wider and whiter nation from its slumber about the terrorism of the Jim Crow South. But something not-so-funny happened on the way to the freedom march. Jim Crow never really went away ­ like Madonna, he only reinvented himself. While Jim Crow has produced various offspring (see separate schools, health care, and employment access), Mr. Crow's two most successful children are America's criminal justice and juvenile justice systems. As the 1960s came to an end, a whole new set of laws were enacted in the 1970s and 1980s at a time when the term "gangsta rap" didn't even exist as a political scapegoat. As politicians became savvier, and policies became slicker, the signs of Jim Crow became subtler. Gone were the likes of George Wallace who proudly and unapologetically defended "the good ole days", and in came the likes of Trent Lott who only publicly reminisced about it at birthday parties. Political slogans such as "segregation forever" were buried forever as new mantras like "tough on crime" came into vogue. Brand new mandatory minimum sentencing laws for NON-VIOLENT drug offenders hand-cuffed judges and turned prisons from places that housed violent criminals into places that CREATED them. With the proliferation of private prisons in the 1970s, the term "non-violence" went from a protest strategy built on gaining rights, to a prison-building buzzword built on denying them. By the 1980s separate water fountains were officially replaced with drastic disparities in punishment between crack and cocaine. By the 1990's mayors in every depressed rural area in America were begging for a new prison as their economic-development strategy. When the 21st century came around, a nation that was once outraged at images of young children being hosed by water and bitten by dogs became fully comfortable with the more tastefully oppressive-images of kids walking right out of performance-reducing schools and right into profit-producing prisons. As a result, America's prisons have grown SIX-FOLD in a 30 year span after relative stability the PREVIOUS 50 YEARS. Of course, this completely dwarfs all other industrialized countries in the world. This statistic, in and of itself, would be cause for national crisis and wholesale prison reform in any other country. But the majority of new prisoners are not just non-violent, they are non-white. And if there is one subject that white Americans have collectively and historically been in denial about: it is about its own institutional racism (for more see The Absurdity and Consistency of White Denial by Tim Wise). Whether in 1776, 1896, the 1960s, or 2007. But while Jim Crow at least had the decency to put his race cards on the table, his children have not been so kind. Politicians want no part of prison reform for fear of being accused of "coddling criminals", and most white Americans have little outrage because it hasn't been their children being locked up. Even the best of anti-racist movements have failed in fighting the terror that is our criminal and juvenile justice systems. There are perfect foils or evil faces attached to Jim Crow's offspring. Martin Luther King had Bull Conner, FDR had Adolf, and George Bush didn't even need the right "evil guy" to garner public support. But when it comes to prison reform the collective white non-response for the last 30 years has essentially been "Data schmata. I'll believe in institutional racism when you show me some actual lynchings!" ENTER "THE JENA SIX" Jena Six in Context: No actual lynchings occurred, but just about everything else ­ rope included. Discussing the Jena Six is an exercise in determining just where to start: subjects like "the white tree"; tree permission slips; hanging nooses; school boards wrist-slaps; DA threats; "deadly" tennis shoes; and outrageous sentences are all worthy of outrage in their isolation. Taken together, they form a coordinated web of systemic Jim Crow terrorism that even the likes of Rush Limbaugh can understand. It must be noted that "The Jena 6" is also happening in a town that needed a federal emergency court order back in 2000 to stop the abuse of children at the Jena Juvenile Justice Center, a facility where local Judge Mark Doherty told NPR "treats juveniles as if they walked on all fours."; and a facility, not surprisingly, that is owned by one of America's largest and often scandal-plagued private prison industries, Wackenhut Corrections (since renamed The GEO Group). And, of course, Jena is located in Louisiana: the state whose majority white population voted for David Duke for Governor back in 1991; the state where a town's very first African-American mayor was executed (immediately ruled a "suicide" of course) just two days before he was set to take office way back in 1957 2007; and a state that is essentially the prison-building capital of a country that is the incarceration capital of the world. Mainstream Media Coverage This CounterPunch article reports early local grassroots resistance and how the Lafayette public access TV show, "Community Defender," was the first media outlet from outside Jena's immediate area to give coverage of the case right after the arrests last December. For the next few months the story was kept alive largely by the efforts of non-corporate alternative media and, mostly, a vast network of predominantly African-American bloggers (called "the Afrosphere" amongst other names). By May you were still more likely to learn about "The Jena Six" living in England than in America. While the BBC posted an article on May 24th and aired a documentary on the case, it wasn't until July 1 that CNN investigated the story. And it wasn't until September where most mainstream outlets were domestically and internationally shamed into covering it. In this July 11 post, dna from Too Sense, one of hundreds of bloggers on the case, critiques the initial CNN coverage and the mainstream media's (non)coverage prior to July. "the mainstream media has felt absolutely no obligation to cover the story with appropriate depth. The New York Times has not covered it at all. Neither has the Washington Post, whose vast website carry a single AP article on the subject. MSNBC has twice the AP articles on the subject the post does, which brings the grand total to two, with no original coverage on their website. Fox seems to have found one more AP article than MSNBC, with the extra one titled "White Students Removed Over Nooses," the poor dears." ENTER SHAQUANDA COTTON Cotton in Context: If the Jena Six represent Jim Crow's son that is our criminal injustice system, Shaquanda Cotton from Paris, Texas is the daughter that representing our juvenile injustice. Unlike then-16 year old Mychal Bell, Cotton could not be tried as an adult as she was only 14 when she shoved that fragile school hall monitor. Instead she was merely sentenced to up to 7 years. The same judge sentenced a 14-year-old white girl to probation for burning down her family's house. With absolutely no assistance from mainstream media and an avalanche of BLOG POWER, Shaquanda Cotton was freed on the significant date April 1st. This day kicks off "April Fool's Month" a time that 30 years from now will a subject for some "Race and Media" college course's attempt to grasp American culture in 2007. You may recall April as the month that our national media dissected the grave racial injustices such as the job status of Don Imus, the trials and tribulations of the Duke boys [1], and those oppressive hip-hop double standards. While white rage seethed over issues like "why can't we all use the 'N-word' while that darn Snoop Dogg gets to run amok", you may have missed some other April news like: DNA evidence exonerated James Giles after serving 25 years; Jerry Miller was also exonerated after serving only 24 years (Miller marked the 200th person exonerated by DNA evidence) [2]; and Billie Ray Johnson won his civil trial after being racially mocked, knocked unconscious, and left for dead by four white men none of whom received more than 60 days of jail time. And for those wondering, yes, it was over 50 years ago that Ralph Ellison authored "The Invisible Man". Cotton Media Coverage The story -- first exposed March 12 by Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune (note: Witt was also reported "Jena 6" in May)-- led to an unprecedented blogging blitz. In a follow-up article, Letter from Cyberspace, Witt explains: "every once in a blue moon, you write something that literally explodes across the Internet in ways no one could predict. That has now happened with a story I wrote nearly two weeks ago If you had Googled Shaquanda Cotton, the day before the story was published, you would have gotten zero results. On Friday afternoon, there were more than 21,000 hits. The story has been picked up on more than 200 blogs around the country, many of them concerned with African-American affairs. It has generated thousands of postings to Internet message boards And now the story has jumped across the ethernet into the physical world: Dozens of talk-radio stations across the nation were buzzing about Shaquanda last week, protests on her behalf were held in Paris, a petition- and letter-drive aimed at Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the judge in the case, Chuck Superville, is underway, and civil rights leaders from the NAACP and the ACLU to the Rev. Al Sharpton are weighing whether to get involved. I've written thousands of stories for the Tribune over the last 25 years, from around the nation and across the world, and I've never seen a reaction like this before." Perhaps, Mr. Witt has never seen such a reaction in part because of the relative newness of BLOG POWER. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Cotton story was the virtual shut-out by the national mainstream media [3]. If you were to do another google search today, Ms. Cotton would receive more than 50,000 entries -- almost exclusively from alternative media and bloggers. However, a CNN website search only reveals quality links on cotton bedding. Want a good deal on "400 Thread Count All Cotton Sateen Sheet Sets"? Our national media will be there for you. Want to expose institutional racism within our juvenile justice system? BLOG POWER! In his Cyberspace article Witt would go on to write: "But what's particularly interesting to me has been the vehemence, and what it may tell us about the powerful new Internet communications tools we all now have at our fingertips but don't yet fully comprehend. I had no idea, for example, of the extent of the African-American blogging world out there and its collective powers of dissemination. But now, after reading thousands of anguished, thoughtful comments posted on these blogs reflecting on issues of persistent racial discrimination in the nation's schools and courtrooms, what's clear to me is that there's a new, "virtual" civil rights movement out there on the Internet that can reach more people in a few hours than all the protest marches, sit-ins and boycotts of the 1950s and 60s put together." This powerful observation is one that hundreds of other bloggers have also already made. In this context, it should be noted that reminiscent of this week's dismissal of Mychal Bell's charge, Cotton was released exactly one day before Sharpton and others had planned a widespread protest. This suggests that protest marches ain't dead yet, but have just been heavily augmented as part of a multi-pronged strategy toward achieving justice. A collaboration between new school blogging and old-school marching will allow thousands to "get on the bus" and get over to Jena, Louisiana this Thursday. BLOG POWER and THE CYBER RIGHTS MOVEMENT One must wonder if without the aid of the internet: would "The Jena 6" ever made national mainstream news?; would Shaquanda Cotton still be locked up?; or even, would we have experienced the meteoric increase in profit-inducing prisoners over the last 30 years? And what about all the other Bell's and Cotton's who never received a protest march in their name. Is it because we simply don't know their stories? Witt reports that thousands of juvenile cases in Texas are currently being reviewed "as part of a sweeping overhaul of the scandal-plagued system". While this is encouraging news, what will happen in Louisiana and the other 48 states? In 1964, grotesque television images helped coalesce just barely enough national support to get President Johnson to sign a new "Civil Rights Act" in the face of vitriolic segregationists. Is it possible for BLOG POWER to wake up America to deal with Jim Crow's children and get a "Criminal Justice Reform Act" signed at a juncture in American history that boasts a rise in hate groups? While such a suggestion may only be a pipe dream, BLOG POWER is not quietly hoping for Senators, governors, and other elected officials to do their job, nor is it patiently waiting for Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, or Joe Scarbarough to determine what is newsworthy. BLOG POWER is a place that demands an end to mainstream media's insidious practice of "racism-by-omission". It is a "cyber rights movement" that won't stop until widespread white denial is widely denied. It is a new virtual democracy at work and a voice for the voiceless. But perhaps the greatest contribution that a handful of committed local journalists and thousands of committed bloggers can make is not its ability to show that Jim Crow has returned, but only to demonstrate that he has never really left. Charles Modiano writes for the new sports media watch website COSELLOUT" and can be reached at: modi@cosellout.com." Notes [1] Of course, what happened to the Duke Lacrosse players is an injustice. However, it is important to note that case was NOT symbolic of racial and economic discrimination in our justice system. In and of itself and given the case's sensational backdrop, there is nothing wrong with the media coverage of their tribulations, but such coverage COUPLED with the virtual absence of any real mainstream coverage of exponentially worse AND symbolic criminal justice travesties detailed in point is a complete slap in the face to the suffering of Shaquanda Cotton, James Giles, Jerry Miller, and Billie Ray Johnson. Perhaps the worst effect of "racism-by-omission" in media coverage is it completely distorts the viewers understanding of racism embedded in the criminal justice system. Ironically, one of the few people to get it right was lacrosse player Reade Seligman when he stated: "This entire experience has opened my eyes up to a tragic world of injustice I never knew existed. If police officers and a district attorney can systematically railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can't imagine what they'd do to people who do not have the resources to defend themselves. ... all of us need to take a step back from this case and learn from it." Good luck to Mr. Seligman who started his first semester at Brown last week to become criminal lawyer. [2] One may ask the legitimate question if these African-American DNA exoneree examples of racial bias or just criminal justice failures as we can all point to individual white defendants who have been wronged. A look at The Innocence Projects Report "200 Exonerated: Too Many Wrongfully Convicted" will answer this question and show that black defendant are much more statistically likely (proportionate to racial incarceration rates) to be the victims of such system failures. [3] Cotton received a couple of token website articles and TV segments on the day that she was RELEASED. Your Ad Here

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