Image by Michael Foley Photography via Flickr
Condolences and sympathies to Helen Thomas’ family and friends.
Pioneering correspondent Helen Thomas dies at 92
lord lord fec fec on Aug 13, 2013
Correspondent Helen Thomas spent 49 years covering the ins and out of the White House. Now the veteran journalist has died, aged 92. Thomas was a pioneer for women in the industry, putting tough questions to ten US presidents. Al Jazeera’s John Terrett reports from Washington, DC.
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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
June 15, 2010
The termination of Helen Thomas’ 62-year long career as a pioneering, no-nonsense newswoman was swift and intriguingly merciless.
The event leading to her termination began when she was sitting on a White House bench under oppressive summer heat. The 89-year old hero of honest journalism and women’s rights, the scourge of dissembling presidents and White House press secretaries, answered a passing visitor’s question about Israel with a snappish comment worded in a way she didn’t mean; she promptly apologized in writing (see Veteran White House Reporter Helen Thomas Retires After Israel Remarks). Recorded without permission on a hand video, the brief exchange, that included a defense of dispossessed Palestinians, went internet viral on Friday, June 7.
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By Jerry Mazza
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.jerrymazza.com
June 9, 2010
Thanks and hugs from all, Helen Thomas, 89-year old, oft-referred to “dean of the White House press corps,” who retired today, Monday, moments after the parroting White House Correspondents Association said it was considering stripping her of her front row press briefing room seat. What brought on their echoing ire?
Well, it was as simple as Helen suggesting back in May that Israeli Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and return to Germany and Poland “or wherever they came from.” Bless you, Helen, for claiming your rights of free speech and the press, constitutionally granted to you, and telling the violent if not psychopathic state of Israel where to go. I personally would have suggested hell, a more fitting place for these lying, two-faced lunatics.
by Eileen Fleming
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
7 June, 2010
Eighty-nine-year old Journalist Helen Thomas has taken a lot of heat for daring to address the fact that any Jew without any historical connection to Israel is encouraged to settle-as in colonize-upon legally owned Palestinian land.
I learned about, Aliyah, which means ‘going up,’ during my first of seven trips to Israel and occupied Palestine in June 2005 from an American Jewess who had taken the deal and she informed me: Continue reading
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by Paul Jay
Reality Asserts Itself
7 June, 2010
Helen Thomas was the dean of the White House Press corp. She has a fifty-year history of tough-minded journalism and is one of the very, very few journalists in the mainstream press who has had the guts to question US policy towards Israel. On Monday she was pressured into resigning, “effective immediately”.
On Friday she was asked by a guy who stuck a video camera in her face, for any comments on Israel and she said, “Tell them to get the get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people [the Palestinians] are occupied and it’s their land. It’s not Germany, it’s not Poland.” She was asked where they should go and she answered, “They should go home, to Poland, Germany and America”. The video has been making its way around the Internet.
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By Steven Thomma
McClatchy Newspapers
June 7, 2010
WASHINGTON — Helen Thomas, the longest serving White House correspondent, retired Monday after comments she made about Israel over the weekend drew condemnation from both the White House and the White House Correspondents Association.
Hearst News Service announced Thomas’s retirement in a news story transmitted Monday morning. The story said her retirement was immediate.
[…]
via Helen Thomas, under siege about Israel comments, retires | McClatchy
see
In Defense Of Helen Thomas – on apologizing to apologists by Paul Jay
Helen Thomas To Israelis “GET THE HELL OUT OF PALESTINE!”
If ANY Other Nation Had Done This We’d Be Up In Arms! Helen Thomas
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March 16, 2010 — exclusive interview with Helen Thomas, Veteran White House correspondent Continue reading
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March 31, 2010 — DC’s most experienced journalist on Feminism, McCarthyism and the White House Press Corps
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Thomas: Most press rolled over and played dead during Bush years, press was gung-ho to go to war
Helen Thomas is an American news reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and author She was the first female officer of the National Press Club and the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association. Her latest book, co-authored with Craig Crawford is Listen Up, Mr President: Everything you Always Wanted Your President To Know and Do.
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TheRealNews
March 27, 2010
White House Press Corps longest-serving member says Obama lost credibility when he dodged her question on Israeli nukes.
For more visit: http://www.therealnews.com
by Grant F. Smith
Global Research, February 12, 2009
antiwar.com
Since entering office, President Barack Obama has promised sweeping changes in three aspects of governance: transparency, law enforcement, and stewardship of American tax dollars. For a public weary of law enforcement forever prosecuting street but never elite crime, Obama’s many statements about holding all individuals accountable under the law have been encouraging.
He also called for government-agency compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in a White House mandate for transparency. Obama swore any bailouts of financial institutions and industries will hereafter avoid secretly funneling taxpayer funds into bloated Wall Street bonuses, executive junkets, and private jets.
But does Obama intend to follow these rules himself? Probably not. Obama’s entire facade momentarily crumbled under a single withering question – “Do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?” – launched by veteran reporter Helen Thomas during the president’s first evening press conference on Feb. 9, 2008. Obama dodged the substance of the question:
“With respect to nuclear weapons, I don’t want to speculate. …”
[…]
Clearly, if this quiet commercial and financial blockade were being waged by some powerful foreign entity against the United States, Americans would consider it a casus belli. But rather than slow or shut the operation down in preparation for promised attempts at U.S.-Iran diplomacy, Obama’s new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently announced that Stuart Levey will continue to lead this financial blockade unit at Treasury. This particular clandestine operations component of Obama’s Middle East policy may soon spark a senseless military conflict with Iran, but perhaps that’s the plan.
Obama’s policy, if honestly verbalized, may be the following: As your president, I will continue to deceive you about Israeli nuclear weapons, so that my administration can violate the Symington Amendment and deliver unwarranted amounts of taxpayer dollars to Israel. My administration will negotiate in bad faith with Iran while clandestinely attacking it, in order to preserve Israeli nuclear hegemony in the Middle East.
[…]
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see
Israel-Palestine-Gaza-Occupation
by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
February 12, 2009
Part 1
The president of the Associated Press (AP) was spewing venom at the Bush-Cheney administration for having turned the Department of Defense into a propaganda machine.
Americans “expect honest answers about what’s happening to their sons and daughters,” Tom Curley told journalism students and faculty at the University of Kansas. Listing innumerable ways the Pentagon had advocated Bush-Cheney political beliefs, Curley questioned if the United States should “be trying to influence public opinion through subterfuge, both here and abroad,”
An AP investigation had just revealed that the Pentagon budget for “influence operations” this fiscal year is at least $4.8 billion, with about 27,000 civilian and military personnel assigned to information dissemination.
The penalty for failing to agree to the Pentagon’s terms of reporting, said Curley, was that he was told by top commanders that “if I stood and the AP stood by its journalistic principles, the AP and I would be ruined.”
Note: The longer version was published on October 26, 2008:
Special Report: War or Peace? The World After the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election By Richard C. Cook
by Richard C. Cook
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
richardccook.com
November 22, 2008
The World After the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
INTRODUCTION
We Hold These Truths by Richard C. Cook
Originally uploaded by Lorri37
World war or world peace could be the blunt choice that will face either Barack Obama or John McCain when one of them is elected president of the United States on Tuesday, November 4, 2008.
For a major eruption of violence to be averted, the new president must deal positively with the reappearance of Russia on the world stage, the emergence of China as an economic force, and the aspirations of all the nations on earth for a decent and secure way of life.
Making matters much more dangerous are the ongoing financial crisis, along with what appears to be the start of a worldwide economic recession.
It is Europe, not the U.S., from which proposals are emerging for a transformative approach to the most compelling issues. But will it be enough?
THE DISASTROUS PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE W. BUSH
In December 2000, at the time the U.S. Supreme Court was intervening in the disputed vote count in Florida to name Republican George W. Bush president over Democrat Al Gore, the U.S. stock market began to crash. The “dot.com” bubble, based largely on foreign investment in internet companies and technology stocks, deflated. By the time Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, signs of a recession were appearing.
This did not prevent the Bush administration from initiating a $450 billion tax cut for the upper income brackets that Congress approved in March 2001. A similar cut was subsequently enacted in May 2003.
On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City were attacked by airplanes flying into them, followed that morning by an air attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Al Qaeda was blamed.
by Richard C. Cook
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
richardccook.com
October 26, 2008
With the presidential election only a week away, the financial crisis has been dominating the news, but behind it is an even larger question of war vs. peace. This article will appear in a forthcoming issue of Eurasia Critic magazine.
INTRODUCTION
World war or world peace is the blunt choice that will face either Barack Obama or John McCain when one of them is elected president of the United States on Tuesday, November 4, 2008.
For a major eruption of violence to be averted, the new president must deal positively with the reappearance of Russia on the world stage, the emergence of China as an economic force, and the aspirations of all the nations on earth for a decent and secure way of life.
Making matters much more dangerous are the ongoing financial crisis, along with what appears to be the start of a worldwide economic recession of as yet undetermined depth and duration.
It is Europe, not the U.S., from which proposals are emerging for a transformative approach to the most compelling issues. But will it be enough?
THE DISASTROUS PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE W. BUSH
In December 2000, at the time the U.S. Supreme Court was intervening in the disputed vote count in Florida to name Republican George W. Bush president over Democrat Al Gore, the stock market began to crash. The “dot.com” bubble, based largely on foreign investment in internet companies and technology stocks, deflated. By the time Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, signs of a recession were appearing.
This did not prevent the Bush administration from initiating a $450 billion tax cut for the upper income brackets that Congress approved in March 2001. A similar cut was subsequently enacted in May 2003.
On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City were attacked by airplanes flying into them, followed that morning by an air attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Terrorists from Al Qaeda, an organization of Islamic extremists associated with the Afghan mujaheddin, and a Saudi figure, Osama bin Laden, alleged to be their leader, were blamed. The wealthy bin Laden family had close ties to the U.S. and the Bush family.
Within a few weeks, the Bush administration pulled a battle plan from the shelves of the Pentagon and invaded Afghanistan. The object was to wrest control of that nation from the Taliban, supposedly Al Qaeda collaborators. A new U.S. Asian land war had begun.
Dandelion Salad 