Monday, December 10, 2007

Hillary Clinton's Previous White House Experience: May 1993 to July 1993

When the Clintons first occupied the White House, 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spent her time in the following way between May 1, 1993 and July 30, 1993:

In the evening of May 7, 1993, Hillary and her husband attended both a reception in honor of Bill Clinton and a Marine Corps evening parade at the Marine Barrack. Two days later, on May 9, 1993, the Clintons then spent the afternoon touring an exhibit of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art.

On May 15, 1993, in the afternoon, Hillary and her husband next attended the U.S. Air Force Thunderbird aerial demonstration at Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland. Afterwards, the Clintons traveled to New York City for the evening and, late that night, returned to Washington, D.C.

Two weeks later, on May 29, 1993, the Clintons again traveled to Camp David, Maryland for the weekend. Then, on May 31, 1993, Hillary and her husband returned to the White House from Camp David in the morning for a White House breakfast with representatives of veterans groups.

On June 9, 1993, the Clintons next attended their daughter Chelsea’s eighth grade graduation ceremony at the Sidwell Friends private school. Four days later, on June 13, 1993, Hillary and her husband then hosted an evening reception for members of the White House press corps. A few weeks later, on June 30, 1993, the Clintons and their daughter spent the evening attending a performance of “The Phantom Of The Opera” at the JFK Center for the Performing Arts.

The following evening, on July 1, 1993, Hillary and her husband had dinner with then-U.S. Senate Republican leader and 1996 Republican Party presidential candidate Robert Dole and Mrs. Robert Strauss. Then, on July 5, 1993, the Clintons traveled from San Francisco, California to Tokyo, Japan in the afternoon.

Three days later, on the evening of July 8, 1993, Hillary and her husband next attended a dinner at Japan’s Imperial Palace which was hosted by Japanese Emperor Akinito. Then, in the late morning of July 10, 1993, the Clintons traveled from Tokyo to Seoul, South Korea.

The following evening, on July 11, 1993, Hillary and her husband traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii from South Korea, crossed the international dateline going east, and thus arrived in Honolulu on the morning of July 11, 1993. After the Clintons participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial, they spent the evening attending a dinner for then-Hawaii Governor John Warhoo.

On July 21, 1993, Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, said the following after Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster Jr.’s mysterious death:

“Forty-two years ago…I lived with my grandparents in a modest little home around the corner from Vince Foster’s nice, big, white brick house. And our backyards touched.

“When I started my career in Arkansas politics, he was there to help me. When I decided to run for attorney general, he was the first lawyer in Little Rock I talked to about supporting me. When the Rose Law Firm hired Hillary after I moved to Little Rock, Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell became her closest friends.”


Then, on July 23, 1993, the Clintons traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas in the morning to attend the funeral services for their Deputy White House Counsel at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in the morning; and, in the afternoon, Hillary and her husband traveled to Hope, Arkansas where they attended a burial service for Vincent Foster at Memory Garden Cemetery. The following day, on July 24, 1993, the Clintons returned to Washington, D.C. from Little Rock.

The Clintons are now hoping to move back into the White House for another two terms in 2009—despite the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting U.S. politicians from occupying the White House for more than two terms as U.S. President.

Next: He Walked Up The Hill lyrics

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Hillary Clinton's Wal-Mart Connection Revisited

Although 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claims to be pro-labor and against the economic exploitation of U.S. working-class women, when her husband was the Governor of Arkansas during the 1980s and early 1990s, the former First Lady sat on the board of a corporation, Wal-Mart, that is notorious for exploiting its non-unionized women workers. As Liza Featherstone recalled in her 2004 book Selling Women Short:

“Her law firm represented Wal-Mart frequently, and she was a shareholder as well as the wife of the governor of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is headquartered…In November 1986…Hillary Clinton became Wal-Mart’s first female board member, a position…for which she accepted $15,000 a year…Her hourly rate was about 156 times that of a female Wal-Mart worker…Senator Clinton would not comment on her work with Wal-Mart…

“Wal-Mart cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. The Arkansas-based company prospered under the state’s native son Bill Clinton when he was governor and president. Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, were close friends with the Clintons, and for several years, Hillary Clinton, whose corporate law firm represented Wal-Mart, served on the company’s board of directors. Bill Clinton’s `welfare reform’ has provided Wal-Mart with a ready workforce of women who have no choice but to accept the company’s poverty wages and discriminatory policies…”

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Previous White House Experience: May 1993 to July 1993

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Big Media Newsroom Racism Historically

The U.S. Establishment’s press still seemed to be integrating its newsrooms at an extremely slow pace as late as the 1990s. As Media Studies Journal Editor Ted Peace noted in an early 1990s essay, titled “Philosophical and Economic Arguments for Media Diversity,” which appeared in Pluralizing Journalism Education:

“At the end of 1990, 8.7 percent of newsroom professionals—reporters, copy editors, desk editors, photographers, graphic artists, and so on—were minorities. The country, however, is more than 24 percent non-white…

“…People of color still are largely excluded from both newsrooms and news content, or are included only as second-class citizens…A variety of scholarly studies of news media performance show that coverage of minorities by those large metropolitan newspapers tends to account for only about 3 percent of their total news coverage. Further, more than half of white journalists and more than 70 percent of minority journalists, responding to a national 1991 study, said that their own newspaper covered minority communities only marginally or poorly.

“From these examples, it is apparent that the news industry, whether intentionally or not, still excludes people from the media mainstream because of their race or cultural perspective. The news industry is not keeping up with demographic change in this country, either in terms of employing people of diverse backgrounds as information-gatherers, or in terms of providing content and coverage of people who are not white…”

(Downtown 11/10/93)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Wal-Mart Connection Revisited

Friday, December 7, 2007

The Military-Industiral-Academic Complex Revisited: A Review of `The University In Chains' by Henry A. Giroux

The University In Chains by Henry A. Giroux
(Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2007)

If you think the links between U.S. universities like Columbia and the U.S. war machine were cut forever after the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, then you probably need to read Henry A. Giroux’s new book, The University In Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.

In the tradition of Thorstein Veblen’s The Higher Learning In America, Upton Sinclair’s The Goose-Step, and James Ridgeway’s The Closed Corporation, Giroux provides his readers with an updated picture of how the 21st-century U.S. university system has become more closely tied to the U.S. military and the U.S. national security state apparatus and more openly subservient to external special corporate business interests in this post-9/11 “era of permanent war.” In addition, Giroux also describes how academic freedom on U.S. campuses is becoming increasingly endangered, now that well-financed external right-wing pressure groups are targeting U.S. campuses as a place where they feel U.S. right-wing ideological control needs to be established more deeply.

Giroux’s book on the 21st-century U.S. Military-Industrial-Academic Complex consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first chapter “focuses on the growth of militarized knowledge and research, the increasing development of academic programs and schools that serve military personnel and the growing influence of the CIA on college campuses.” The Pentagon, with a budget for research and development of $66 billion a year, funds, for instance, 55 percent of all federally-funded university-based computer sciences research and 60 percent of all federally-funded campus-based electrical engineering research.

Much of the Pentagon-funded university research is for the purpose of developing weapons like micro-wave guns, space-based lasers, electromagnetic guns, holograph designs, electric tanks and robot-type weapons. One of the largest recipients of Pentagon research money, MIT, for instance, is also developing remote sensing and imaging systems to help the Pentagon “nullify the enemy’s ability to hide inside complex mountain terrains and cityscapes,” according to Giroux. In addition, an increasing number of college degree programs are now being offered to U.S. military personnel in the form of on-line courses. At Central Texas College, for instance, “74 percent of its 63,000 students are members of the active-duty military.”

Giroux also provides his readers with some examples of the increasing presence of the CIA and other spy agencies on U.S. campuses since September 11, 2001. A CIA-sponsored program to train 150 analysts in anthropology on U.S. campuses, the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, was established, for instance, after 9/11. U.S. universities also have been developing high-tech gadgets for the CIA and allowing more and more of their faculty members to work as CIA consultants or become recipients of CIA grants and CIA research contracts.

The second chapter of Giroux’s The University In Chains book provides readers with a 21st-century update of how U.S. corporations have increased their special influence over U.S. campus life since Lawrence Soley published his book, Leasing The Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia, on the same topic in 1995. Giroux observes that “as corporate culture and values shape university life, academic labor is increasingly transformed into the image of a multinational conglomerate workforce.” The University of Illinois, for instance, “plans to launch a whole new college, which would be completely online, operate as a for-profit entity, and consist almost entirely of part-time faculty, with no tenured faculty at all.”

Already in 2004, 44.5 percent of all faculty members on U.S. campuses were just employed as part-time employees by their universities; and less than 40 percent of all U.S. professors were employed in 2004 in a tenure-track academic position. Transnational corporations like BMW and IBM are also being given more direct control over the curriculum and hiring procedures at academic research and training centers which they fund at U.S. universities like Clemson, North Carolina State and UC-Berkeley.

If you’re an anti-war professor at a U.S. university these days who criticizes the U.S. social system from a liberal or left perspective, you’ll probably find chapter 3 of Giroux’s book to be worrisome. Titled, “The New Right-Wing Assault On Higher Education,” the chapter indicates the similarities between the post-9/11 attack on Middle Eastern Studies at universities like Columbia by off-campus right-wing pressure groups and the McCarthyism of the 1950s that threatened academic freedom at that time. The role that right-wing foundation-funded conservative intellectuals like David Horowitz have been playing in recent years to try to pressure U.S. university administrations to replace liberal and left-wing U.S. academics with more politically right-wing academics is also examined in this chapter.

Giroux’s final chapter proposes “a strategy to retake the university” from the U.S. war machine and special corporate interests that pretty much control the current political direction of U.S. higher education. Hopefully, more U.S. anti-war students and U.S. anti-war professors will read The University In Chains soon and then unite in a 21st-century anti-war movement of students, faculty and community activists which fights to end U.S. university complicity with the U.S. war machine in this current “era of permanent war,” before there’s yet another U.S. military escalation in the Middle East in 2008 or 2009.

Next: Big Media Newsroom Racism Historically

Thursday, December 6, 2007

`Hiding In The Shade'



How many times will the people be fooled
Before they awake from their daze?
Yes, and how many times will they fall for the lies
And consent to be treated like slaves?
And how many times will they cheer for their kings
Who exploit their frustration and pain?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.

How many seas can their bald eagles fly
Before they’re all captured and drowned?
Yes, and how many towns can their singers exploit
Before people hear their false sounds?
And how many times will the people just cry
And march passively to their graves?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.

How many years will the prisons be locked
Before all the people revolt?
Yes, and how many years will the poor walk the streets,
Their lives lacking food and all hope?
And how many years will it take till they fight
The class which provides them with chains?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.

To listen to the "Hiding In The Shade" folk song, you can click on the following music site link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Love+Songs+and+Others/Hiding+in+the+Shade

The Hiding In The Shade protest folk song was written in the late 1970s or early 1980s and can be sung to the tune of No More Auction Block/Blowin’ In The Wind. Unfortunately, in the 21st-century the questions still need to be asked, but the answer is still hiding in the shade.

Next: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex Revisited: A Review of The University In Chains by Henry A. Giroux

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Hillary Clinton's Previous White House Experience: January 1993 to April 1993

When the Clintons first occupied the White House, 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spent her time in the following way between January 20, 1993 and April 30, 1993:

Following her husband’s Inaugural luncheon at the Capitol on January 20, 1993, Hillary Clinton and Bill went by motorcade along the parade route to the White House, where they viewed the Inaugural parade from the reviewing stand. In the evening, the Clintons then attended several Inaugural balls.

The following morning, on January 21, 1993, Hillary and her husband held an open house in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room. Then, in the afternoon, Hillary and her husband hosted a reception in the White House State Dining Room for their family and friends from Arkansas.

A few days later, on January 25, 1993, Hillary’s husband announced that Hillary would work with three of Bill’s other advisers to drew up an effective health care reform plan. Then, on January 28, 1993, Hillary and her husband attended funeral services at the Washington National Cathedral for Justice Thurgood Marshall in the morning.

Two days later, on January 30, 1993, Hillary and her husband went to Camp David, Maryland for a retreat with her husband’s Cabinet and senior staff members of the Clintons’ White House. The following day, on January 31, 1993, Hillary and her husband returned to the White House from Camp David in the afternoon.

On February 12, 1993, Hillary and her husband then spent the morning touring the Fenwick Center health clinic in Arlington, Virginia.

Nearly two months later, on April 8, 1993, Hillary and her husband next travelled back to Little Rock, Arkansas in the morning. The following day, on April 9, 1993, Hillary and her husband then attended a memorial service for her father, a Republican named Hugh Rodham, at the First United Methodist Church in Little Rock.

The next morning, on April 10, 1993, Hillary and her husband then travelled from Little Rock to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where they attended funeral services for Hillary’s father. In the evening, Hillary and her husband again traveled to Camp David, Maryland for the weekend. Two days later, on April 12, 1993, Hillary and her husband returned to the White House in the morning from their weekend stay at Camp David, Maryland.

Later that month, on April 21, 1993, Hillary and her husband hosted a private reception at Blair House in the evening. A few days later, on April 24, 1993, Hillary and her husband next traveled to Jamestown, Virginia where they went sightseeing with several other Clinton family members. And on the afternoon of April 29, 1993, Hillary and her husband met with King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain.

The Clintons apparently enjoyed living at taxpayers’ expense in the White House for two terms during the 1990s so much that they’re now hoping to move back into the White House for another two terms in 2009—despite the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting U.S. politicians from occupying the White House for more than two terms as U.S. President.

Next: Hiding In The Shade lyrics

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Institutional Sexism In Hollywood Historically

Although the fantasy lives of many traditionally-minded U.S. women are still heavily-influenced by Hollywood-produced movies, U.S. women have generally not exercised much influence in Hollywood, historically. As the 1980 book Women And The Mass Media by Matilda Butler and William Paisley observed:

“Motion pictures are the most male-dominated of the media. June 1974 membership figures for the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences show that men are: 89 percent of the actors/actresses; 100 percent of the cinematographers; 99 percent of the directors; 98 percent of the executives; 99 percent of the producers; 92 percent of the writers; 89 percent of the editors; 90 percent of the art directors; and 94 percent of all members…

“Women are far less than 1 percent of the members of the Producers’ Guild (8 out of 3068). They are 1 percent of the members of the Directors’ Guild (23 out of 2366) and 5 percent of the members of the Writers’ Guild (148 out of 2976).”

(Downtown 3/31/93)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Previous White House Experience: January 1993 to April 1993