Will the vastly improved response to Hurricane Gustav finally begin to heal some of the deep wounds of Katrina

This past weekend was pretty extraordinary for news. Yahoo! News saw a sizeable spike in news traffic, and that did also translate to my 60 Minutes projects. We had two extremely relevant stories over the weekend - a video retrospective on Hurricane Katrina, and 60 Minutes' exclusive interview with Barack Obama and Joe Biden (the first joint interview by the ticket).

And those two stories, naturally, led the 60 Minutes traffic and did very well over the weekend.

Interestingly, in our Obama segment, the most popular clip was that of Obama and Biden talking about McCain's running mate Sarah Palin. I wonder whether that means McCain succeeded in taking some of the thunder out of the Democrat's sails coming out of the DNC - at least temporarily.

Meanwhile, our Hurricane Katrina segment has sparked a vigorous debate on our comments section about culpability.

I found this comment interesting:

"Katrina was a tragic event that could have been handled in a better way by state and federal government but the blame also lies on people who are told to evacuate and ignore the warning. . . i realize some people had no means of transportation and shame on the government for not helping. Bobby Jindal sure did a great job for Louisiana during Gustav and naturally some people will complain but alas that's life!

I found the final part of the comment most interesting. It brought up this question in my mind. Will the vastly improved response to Hurricane Gustav finally begin to heal some of the deep wounds of Katrina - the feeling of betrayal by the government that was supposed to be there when it was most needed?

After what we have witnessed from the other side in recent days (and the last 8 years), how refreshing and comforting to know we have this team to elect to the White House.

60 Minutes Interview with Obama & Biden Part 1

60 Minutes Interview with Obama & Biden Part 1

This part made me chuckle:

You went and sipped beer, which I know you don’t particularly like — I mean you even…,” Kroft remarked.

“Steve, I had a beer last night. I mean, where do these stories come from, man?” Obama asked.

“I’m the one… [that] doesn’t drink,” Biden pointed out.

“Where does the story come from that… I don’t like beer? ...C’mon, man,” Obama said.

Good on Obama for nipping that one in the bud, so to speak.

(h/t Bob Cesca)

Part 2:

Part II:

The most revealing moment? Right in the beginning, Obama interrupting a giddy Biden extolling Obama's virtues right after Obama's speech at the convention. Even after going rockstar by nailing it in front of 80K, he's in complete control. This is the man we need now. Calm, deliberative, focused.

The Democratic Duo's first interview after Invesco Field speech and Palin for VP announcement.

 "It is absolutely true that I want to be the president for all America. You know, this is not a symbolic exercise on my part. I intend to win this race so that I can work on behalf of all families in America. If I can get healthcare for every American, if I can make sure that the economy is providing jobs that pay a decent wage. If I can solve this energy problem so that we're more secure, if I can make an education system work for every child, then that's going to be good for black Americans, that's going to be good for Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, white Americans. That's going to be good for everybody."  Barack Obama.

60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft conducted the first joint interview with the candidate and his running mate, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, this past Friday, Aug. 29, in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Senator Obama went into the Democratic convention locked in a dead heat with Republican rival John McCain and needed to do three things: introduce his running mate to the country, draw sharp distinctions between himself and his Republican opponent, and unify a Democratic party badly split by a bruising primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. By most accounts he accomplished all three.

He attracted 84,000 people to Invesco Field in Denver and another 40 million to their television sets all across America - more American saw his speech than watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

We began our conversation with the new Democratic candidates backstage just moments after the most improbable nominee had given the most important speech of his young career.

Asked if he ever doubted it was going to happen, Senator Obama told Kroft, "Of course."

When?

"Well, let's see. About a year ago we were down 30 in Iowa. But I never doubted that it could happen. I never doubted that if we were able to mobilize the energy that you saw in that stadium," Obama said. "All across the country."

"I knew it was going to happen before he did. I was running like the devil. I watched. I thought I was pretty good, but I watched. I watched. This guy just sort of grabbed the lightening, ya know, just grabbed it. And you could tell, Barack, I tell ya, my team knew, I knew in August," Sen. Biden told Kroft.

"We were doing okay. But this is exciting," Obama remarked.

"Were you surprised to be up here?" Kroft asked Biden.

"I was surprised; I'm truly honored to be up here. I'm a great admirer, we're friends and we fit," Biden said.

By the time Kroft continued the conversation with them the next day in Pittsburgh, the landscape had already changed: Senator McCain tried to steal the Democrat's thunder by announcing that Alaska’s conservative first-term governor, 44-year-old Sarah Palin, would be his running mate - a move widely seen as an attempt to try and siphon disaffected supporters of Senator Clinton and blue collar voters in battleground states where Obama has been the weakest.

And a few hours after McCain's announcement, Senators Obama and Biden seemed as surprised as everyone else.

Asked what he thinks of McCain's vice presidential choice, Obama told Kroft, "She seems to have a compelling life story. Obviously, she's a fine mother and an up-and-coming public servant. My sense is that she subscribes to John McCain's agenda."

"She's a life-long member of the NRA. She's a hunter. Her husband's a member of the United Steel Worker Union. Blue collar guy. Got a son on the way to Iraq. It seems like just the kind of person who would appeal to voters in states that you absolutely have to win," Kroft remarked. "And they have to win."

"Well, look, I am happy if this ends up being a referendum on what's going to be good for blue collar workers," Obama said. "I'll put my guy, Joe Biden, up against anybody when it comes to fighting on behalf of those families, because he's been there. He comes out of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He's been fighting for those folks ever since he got into the Senate. And he hasn't stopped. And he hasn't forgotten where he's come from."

"You know, I think we really underestimate people in the neighborhood. In the neighborhoods I came from, you came from. I really think we underestimate them," Biden remarked. "People get it. I think they're looking for more than whether or not Joe Biden's from Scranton and she hunts. I think that's you know, 'What ya going to do about it?'"

"But you tried really hard to reach these people. You went and sipped beer, which I know you don't particularly like - I mean you even…," Kroft remarked.

"Steve, I had a beer last night. I mean, where do these stories come from, man?" Obama asked.

"I'm the one… [that] doesn't drink," Biden pointed out.

"Where does the story come from that…I don't like beer? …C'mon, man," Obama said.

"You even tried bowling," Kroft remarked.

"Time out there," Obama said.

"I've got to defend my bowling honor here," Obama said, laughing. "It is true that my bowling score left something to be desired. The reason I bowled though, wasn't to try to get votes. If I had been trying' to get votes, I promise you I would have been avoiding a bowling alley. The reason I was there was to campaign. And we had great fun. But here’s the bottom line: I wouldn't have been elected to the United States Senate out of Illinois, which is only 12 percent African American if I didn't have some broad appeal. So, the mythology that's developed that somehow I can't get those votes is refuted by the very fact that I'm sitting in this chair."

"Is that one of the reasons you picked Senator Biden?" Kroft asked.

"What reason is that, Steve?" Obama asked.

"You said you've got Joe Biden working for you in Pennsylvania. …States like Pennsylvania," Kroft explained.

"Let me tell you the reason I picked Joe Biden. Number one, he can step in and become president. And I don't think anybody has any doubt about that," Obama said.

"Number two is that if I'm in the room making the kinds of tough decisions that the next president's going to have to make, both on domestic policy and on international policy, then I want the counsel and advice of somebody who's not going to agree with me a 100 percent of [the] time. In fact, somebody who's independent enough that can push back and give me different perspectives and make sure that I'm catching any blind spots that I have. And Joe Biden doesn't bite his tongue," he continued.

"You've had some differences over pretty substantial issues. Iraq for one," Kroft pointed out.

"Actually, we haven't," Biden said. "Look, Barack was right. He not only got it right about being' against the war, I got it wrong about underestimating the incompetence of this administration when we gave the president the power we gave him at the time. He knew accurately that even, not even being outside. Maybe it gave you a better perspective. That that meant he was going to war. Bush told me he wasn't going to war. I thought they meant it. You're standing outside. You knew they didn't mean it."

"Well, one of the reasons that I love Joe and one of the reasons I think he's going to be such an effective vice president is he's blunt when he's right, and he's blunt when he's wrong. And that means that I can trust his counsel. And that's what, I think, a president needs from a vice president," Obama explained. "Look there is no choice I could have made where the person's going to agree with me a 100 percent of the time. And I wouldn't want that person. Michelle doesn't agree with me a 100 percent of the time. You know, in fact with Michelle, if I can get to 50 percent, I'm feeling pretty good. What you want is somebody whose core values you believe in, who you trust; who you think is a straight shooter."

Biden acknowledged that from time to time, he had put his foot in his mouth.

"There was an issue in 1988 involving plagiarism which I'm sure the Republicans are working on a campaign commercial now about it," Kroft pointed out.

"I'm sure that's probably true," Biden acknowledged.

Asked what he's learned about politics and running for office in those 20 years, Biden said, "I made a mistake. I made a mistake 20, 21, 22 years ago. I was arrogant. I didn't think I had to prepare. I showed up at the debate and I failed to quote somebody. A guy named Neil Kinnock. And I just ask people and everyone else, look at the last 20 years of my career since that allegation occurred."

"But, I think that I have a record that people can go back and examine and decide whether or not I mean what I say. No matter how I say it whether I'm consistent with what I've asserted I care about. That's all I care about. But, you know, there's going to be a lot, I'm sure a lot of things said about it,"

"Have you talked? Have you spoken specifically about what your role would be in an Obama administration?" Kroft asked.

"Yes, he had just a few questions that were important to him, but were threshold questions. If we didn't pass that threshold, he wasn't interested," Obama said.

"I don't want to go and just hang out. I can help Barack a lot more from chairman from the Foreign Relations Committee or from the United States Senate," Biden explained. "But, when he indicated to me he was looking' for me to give my best judgment and for him to consider it, that's good enough for me. I'm not looking' for a portfolio. I'm not looking' for anything other than to be able to be part of the change this guy's been talking' about. And I very bluntly, I've been talking' about."

"What's your role in the campaign? Can you make a difference in this race? And how do you do that?" Kroft asked Biden.

"The thing I can do is hopefully go into Scranton and Wilmington and Sacramento and other places and say, 'I know the guy,'" Biden replied. "Politicians know quality when they see it in other politicians."

Biden said he meant that as a compliment.

"'Cause he's spent most of his campaign trying to separate himself," Kroft pointed out.

"He is separate. But here's the bottom line: the thing about him that everybody misunderstands and this boss, here we go. We may have our first difference here. But, all kidding aside, here's the deal: everybody knows the way he's caught on to this yearning in the American public. But, the second piece of that is it's not only the idealism - you got to be tough. You got to be tough to be the president of the United States of America. And if you don't have political good sense, if you're not politically tough, let me tell you something, I don't want you being my president," Biden said.

"And you think he is?" Kroft asked.

"Absolutely," Biden said.

"One of the weaknesses in terms of this campaign is that there are people out there who don't think that you have a punch," Kroft remarked. "A killer instinct. That you are a very deliberative, judicious person who prides himself on building consensus, but it's not in your DNA to be confrontational."

"The fact [is] that I don't go out of my way to call people names, or try to take cheap shots, and that I try not to throw the first punch. But, to see if I can find a way to work together with people, sometimes leads people to underestimate what I've got," Obama said. "I think it's fair to say that if I couldn't not only take a punch, but occasionally throw one, I wouldn't be sitting' here."

"You've just come through a very historic week. I mean, politically, this is a real milestone in American history. But, yet, there was also no mention made of it. You made no mention of it and the Democratic Party made almost no mention of it. Why is that?" Kroft asked. "I mean, you're the first black person ever to be nominated by a major party."

"Yeah, I think people notice that," Obama replied, laughing.

Asked if he didn't think he needed to bring it to people's attention, Obama told Kroft, "I think people understood the significance of it."

"Is part of the fact that you don't want to be considered as a black candidate?" Kroft asked.

"Well, I look it is absolutely true that I want to be the president for all America. You know, this is not a symbolic exercise on my part. I intend to win this race so that I can work on behalf of all families in America. If I can get healthcare for every American, if I can make sure that the economy is providing jobs that pay a decent wage. If I can solve this energy problem so that we're more secure, if I can make an education system work for every child, then that's going to be good for black Americans, that's going to be good for Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, white Americans. That's going to be good for everybody," Obama explained.

"One last question. You are running against the record of an administration that is one of the most unpopular in the history of the country," Kroft said.

"Good reason," Biden remarked.

"…And there are people that believe you should be much further ahead in the polls than you are. What do you say to that? And are you comfortable with the way this race is going and where you are right now?" Kroft asked.

"This is going to be a rough, tough battle," Obama said. "The Republicans don't govern very well. But, they know how to campaign. And, you know, what I would expect is that it's going to take-mid-October before a whole lot of people start making up their minds. And there's nothing wrong with that. This notion that somehow this should be a cakewalk and I should just walk into the election with, you know, a 10, 15 point lead, I think doesn't give the American people enough credit. They want to get this thing right."

Click Here to read the article  from CBS.com. Keep in mind, CBS has cleaned up the questioning and has chosen not to add video to the website. Interesting.

Basically, Pelley has an extremely condescending tone in his voice. It bothered me tremendously to watch Pelley, one who has served 0 days in combat judging Wuterich who killed 24 Iraqis in a combat zone, only minutes after 5 the men his squad were killed by an IED.

If I can find video of this, I'll post it here.

Apparently, there are others who feel as I do, including the writer of this blog who, like me, became so angry that he shut the show off and immediately began to write about it.  I also found another blog, where the writer to considerable time to analyze just how bad the line of questioning was.

Should you wish to subject yourself to a torture that the Bush administration would no doubt see as justified, you can view the updated interview here: 60 minutes interview (updated).

What I wrote is posted below - and I still feel horrible about the situation this morning.  It is profoundly depressing to think of how our country is treating its soldiers - those who are serving, have served, who were wounded, and of course those who died because of George Bush's push for war.  We will suffer as a country for years because of this war, and worse yet, many of those who served will suffer in isolation due to the lack of funding for treatment and assistance in putting their lives back together.

My email to 60 Minutes:

Subject: Shocked and Dismayed!!! "The Killings in Haditha"

Where was reporter Scott Pelley during the whole run up to this terrible war (emphasis on war)?  As an individual who was against going to war with Iraqfrom the outset, I refuse to stand by and watch our soldiers be further victimized by cowardly reporters like Pelley.  Instead of questioning the Staff Sergeant Wuterich on what his responsibilities are during combat, perhaps Pelley should strap on a vest and see for himself how ridiculous simplifications are under real combat conditions.  I took the time to look at Pelley’s bio and notice that he has been to all the combat hot spots, including Washington.  Noticeably absent, however, was any service to his country (in any form) and experience that would warrant the type of judgmental questioning that he subjected the staff sergeant to.  

There is no question that the death of civilians is not only unfortunate - it horrible.  But, it is war!  We fire bombed Germany and Japan.  The time to judge war, is before it starts, not while troops are under fire from perspectives of a suburban Connecticut reporter who has tasted war from all the hot spots under the careful guard, no doubt of sergeants just like Wuterich.  I know that if Pelley had a son or daughter actually serving his country, he would not have engage in such stupid question.  How would anyone feel after rolling a grenade into a room and discovering casualties?  Yet we also know how impossible that situation is - especially us with gray hair.  As a kid, I remember delivering newspapers during the Vietnam War wondering what the hell we were doing there.  I knew how impossible the whole situation was because Time show pictures our dead young men every week - as PBS/Newshour does now.  What has CBS/60 minutes done to recognize the thousands - that have been killed, and many more who have been maimed.  Did Pelly read those names to the president or any leader who voted for the war?  NO!  Just a 25 year old sergeant.

Honest to god, this is the worse piece of journalism that I have ever seen and represents the second time I have written a CBS new department to protest your incompetence.  I am simply stunned at how incredibly unfair that interview was.  For your information, we shut it off and did not watch the rest of the “show” even though we were interested in the subject matter.

- John J. Garvey

Garvey Communication Associates Inc.

Springfield, MA

http://www.askmydog.com

John Kanzius at work in this 2007 photo (photo courtesy http://www.instablogsimages.com/)

BY DAVID BRUCE, August 19. 2008 John Kanzius used to have trouble getting government officials interested in his experimental cancer-treatment device.

John Kanzius, seed money, cancer, U.S. Rep. Phil English, external radio-frequency generator, House Committee on Appropriations, Gov. Ed Rendell, cancer-killing device, Sen. Bob Casey, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, human trials, Steven Curley, nanoparticles, Arlen Specter, 60 Minutes, worldwide attention, John Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation

Amazing Cancer Cure Research - Part 1 of 2
The Kanzius Machine is the most amazing new research into a cure for cancer that I've seen in years. Part 1 of 2, this machine was created by John Kanzius. Research continues at the MD Anderson Clinic and The University of Pennsylvania. See www.kanziuscancerresearch.org for more information.

Amazing Cancer Cure Research - Part 2 of 2
The Kanzius Machine - Part 2 of 2 is the most amazing cancer cure research that we've seen in ages. Thank you John Kanzius for your work! See www.kanziuscancerresearch.org for more information on the progress of this nonharmful cancer cure.

This past Sunday at 9am, I was watching CBS Sunday Morning as is my Sunday morning ritual. I don't know what the ratings are on this show, but in my opinion, not as many people know about this program as they should. If you're a fan of Pop Culture as I am, it's important to keep up on a little bit of everything, and after watching it religiously every Sunday for close to 10 years, I can tell you, it's the BEST way to spend a Sunday morning.

Sundays are important to me. I sit and have my morning coffee, my Sunday paper, and flip on CBS Sunday Morning to learn what's going on in the world. News, Art, Music, Entertainment, Everything Else. It's an exceptional 90-minute news program, leisurely-paced, and packed with mostly "good" news, celebrity stories, and amusing anecdotes. Think of it as 60 Minutes, lighter and longer.

An example of just some of their stories they covered this past weekend: Sunday Morning went behind-the-scenes at the National Enquirer (the John Edwards affair has brought the gossip rag into the national spotlight). They also did stories on the success of China's economy, 3D sidewalk artist Julian Beever, the passing of western wear entrepreneur Jack Weil, a review of Pineapple Express, and a cow-pie tossing contest in Beaver, Oklahoma (you can't make this stuff up). This was a very typical weekend. 

One of their segments was a shameless plug for their CBS late night talk show host Craig Ferguson. The segment discussed his life, his career as a comedian, his stint on the Drew Carey show, his recent American citizenship, right up to his present job as the host of the Late Late Show.

I've never seen the Late Late Show before, but after watching their segment, and hearing Ferguson's lush Scottish Brogue (I'm a total sucker for a handsome man with an accent), I decided to TiVo it and check it out. No question about it, I've been missing out!

Ferguson's monologues are as manic as they are genius and entirely unscripted—damned brave in today's entertainment field—it's a hysterical ride. Since summer began, I've been recording and watching a number of different types of shows including late night, and this beats all of them. Jay Leno may have the best guests (Conan has been surprisingly awful), but Ferguson has the closest thing to a perfect talk show since Johnny Carson went off the air. Of course, I'm judging this based on only two viewings, so my opinion may change somewhat over time. Of what I saw, Ferguson's wry sense of humor, often mugging at the camera, winking to a knowing audience he expects to be "in" on the joke, his occasional double-entendres, completely appeals to me. I'm hooked. I'll even sit through the music segments to get to the end to hear Ferguson tell us "What We Learned Tonight".

So, even though these shows are on CBS, check them out! You might be as pleasantly surprised as I was!

Post Script: I do think it was really shitty of CBS and 60 Minutes to air the story on the Olmsteads without talking to them first.

Sixty Minutes Becomes Israeli-Occupied Television

As Philip Giraldi points out in his article “America’s Israeli-Occupied Media,” the Israeli government is continuing its campaign to get the U.S. military to attack Iran or at least give a “green light” for a massive Israeli bombing strike. In pursuit of this reckless and ill-conceived plan Tel Aviv has a willing co-conspirator in the mainstream American media, who will present the Israeli world-view without criticism or qualification.

The recent CBS broadcast of the Sixty Minutes segment “The Israeli Air Force” provides a rather startling example of how the American news media will permit the Israelis to present their point of view to the exclusion of any competing narrative. The report, which is presented by correspondent Bob Simon, first aired on April 27 and was rebroadcast on August 10.

The message of “The Israeli Air Force” is clearly and succinctly communicated by the CBS report as: Iran is a threat to Israel’s existence and to the rest of the world; Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon soon; when it does, it will use it to destroy Israel. Thus it is apparent that if Iran does not quickly agree with the demands of Western powers to cease its uranium enrichment program, the Israeli Air Force can and will attack and incapacitate the Iranian nuclear facilities.

In order to produce this segment, CBS, by its own admission, accepted the “rigorous censorship” requirements of the Israeli Air Force (IAF). For a news organization to agree to censorship when covering a story is rather unusual. The explanation Mr. Simon gives for this arrangement is to quote the IAF’s dubious justification that “[i]f the Israelis blow their secrets, they insist, they’ll lose the next war.” Maybe Simon should have just confessed that because CBS believes that these Israeli pilots are such amazing men, Sixty Minutes let them tell their own story, in their own way, without network interference.....

Continue story here...

The article that serves as the basis of the above is entitled "America's Israeli Occupied Media" and is also worth checking out.

The civil war in Congo is an ethnic conflict, but gender has become a crucial factor, too, as women are bearing the brunt of one of the horrible weapons used in the war: rape. CNN's Anderson Cooper reports.

Women For Women International's Congo Program
International Rescue Committee Aid In Congo
Panzi Hospital

Right now there's a war taking place in the heart of Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and more people have died there than in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur combined.

You probably haven't heard much about it, but as CNN's Anderson Cooper first reported last January, it's the deadliest conflict since World War II. Within the last ten years, more than five million people have died and the numbers keep rising.

As Cooper and a 60 Minutes team found when they went there a few months ago, the most frequent targets of this hidden war are women. It is, in fact, a war against women, and the weapon used to destroy them, their families and whole communities, is rape.

---

Dr. Denis Mukwege is the director of Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo. In this war against women, his hospital is the frontline. One of the latest victims he’s treating is Sifa M'Kitambala. She was raped just two days before the team arrived by soldiers who raided her village."They just cut her at many places," Dr. Mukwege explains.Sifa was pregnant, but that didn't stop her rapists. Armed with a machete, they even cut at her genitals.

In the last ten years in Congo, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, most of them gang raped. Panzi Hospital is full of them.

"All these women have been raped?" Cooper asked Dr. Mukwege, standing near a very large group of women waiting.

All the women, the doctor says, have been patients of his.

Within a week, Dr. Mukwege says this room will be filled with new faces, new victims.

"You know, they're in deep pain. But it's not just physical pain. It's psychological pain that you can see. Here at the hospital, we've seen women who've stopped living," Dr. Mukwege explains.

And not all the people the hospital treats are adults. "There are children. I think the youngest was three years old," Mukwege says. "And the oldest was 75."

To understand what is happening here, you have to go back more than a decade, when the genocide that claimed nearly a million lives in neighboring Rwanda spilled over into Congo. Since then, the Congolese army, foreign-backed rebels, and home-grown militias have been fighting each other over power and this land, which has some of the world's biggest deposits of gold, copper, diamonds, and tin. The United Nations was called in and today their mission is the largest peacekeeping operation in history.

Since 2005, some 17,000 UN troops and personnel have cobbled together a fragile peace. Last year they oversaw the first democratic election in this country in 40 years. But now all they have accomplished is at risk. Fighting has broken out once again in eastern Congo and the region threatens to slip into all-out war.

Each new battle is followed by pillaging and rape; entire communities are terrorized. Forced to flee their homes, people take whatever they can, and walk for miles in the desperate hope of finding food and shelter. Over the last year, more than 500,000 people have been uprooted. A fraction of them make it to cramped camps, where they depend on UN aid to survive.

One camp Cooper visited sprang up just two months before. It was already overcrowded, but more people kept arriving. They would go there seeking refuge, a safe haven, but the truth is in Congo, for women, there’s no such thing. Even in these supposedly protected camps, women are raped every single day.

"Has rape almost become the norm here?" Cooper asks Anneka Van Woudenberg, who is the senior Congo researcher at Human Rights Watch.

"I think because of the widespread nature of the war, because there has been so much violence, rape is now on a daily basis - rape is the norm," Van Woudenberg replies.

"Women get raped in wars all the time. How is it different here?" Cooper asks.

"I think what's different in Congo is the scale and the systematic nature of it, indeed, as well, the brutality. This is not rape because soldiers have got bored and have nothing to do. It is a way to ensure that communities accept the power and authority of that particular armed group. This is about showing terror. This is about using it as a weapon of war," she explains.

It's hard to imagine this war happening in the midst of such breathtaking natural beauty and abundance. But after decades of dictatorship and corruption, the country is broken. Most of the fighting and the raping takes place in remote areas difficult to get to.

Cooper and the team headed to an isolated village in the mountains in eastern Congo called Walungu. For years there's been armed groups fighting in this region; thousands of men emerge from the forest to terrorize villages and steal women. Congo’s government seems unable or unwilling to stop them.

In the week before they arrived there were three attacks in which women were raped. The youngest victim was just six years old.

In some villages as many as 90 percent of the women have been raped; men in the villages are usually unarmed, and incapable of fighting back. In Walungu the team found 24-year-old Lucienne M’Maroyhi. She was at home one night with her two children and her younger brother, when six soldiers broke in. They tied her up and began to rape her, one by one.

"I was lying on the ground, and they gave a flashlight to my younger brother so that he could see them raping me," she recalls.

"They were telling your brother to hold the flashlight?" Cooper asks.

"Yes," she says. "They raped me like they were animals, one after another. When the first one finished, they washed me out with water, told me to stand up, so the next man could rape me."

She was convinced they'd kill her, just as soldiers had murdered her parents the year before. Instead, they turned to her brother. "They wanted him to rape me but he refused, and told them, 'I cannot do such a thing. I cannot rape my sister.' So they took out their knives and stabbed him to death in front of me," she recalls.

Lucienne was then dragged through the forest to the soldier's camp. She was forced to become their slave and was raped every day for eight months. All the while, she had no idea where her children were.

"Did you know if they were alive or dead?" Cooper asks.

"I was thinking that they had killed. I didn’t think I would find them alive," she replies.

Finally, Lucienne escaped. Back in her village, she found her two little girls were alive. But she also learned that she was pregnant. She was carrying the child of one of her rapists. Lucienne's husband abandoned her. That happens to rape survivors all over Congo.

"When a woman is raped, it's not just her that's raped. It's the entire community that's destroyed," says Judithe Registre, who is with an organization called "Women for Women." They run support groups for survivors of rape.

"When they take a woman to rape her, they'll line up the family, they'll line up other members of the communities to actually witness that," Registre says. "They make them watch. And so, what that means for that particular woman when it's all over, is that total shame, personally, to have been witnessed by so many people as she's being violated."

Many of the women in Dr. Mukwege’s hospital are not only blamed for what happened to them, they are shunned because of fears they’ve contracted HIV and shunned because their rapes were so violent they can no longer control their bodily functions.

Dr. Mukwege says he's doing about five surgeries a day.

His patients often have had objects inserted into their vaginas, like broken bottles, bayonets. Some women have even been shot between the legs by their rapists.

"Why would somebody do that? Why would somebody shoot a woman inside?" Cooper asks.

"In the beginning I was asking myself the same question. This is a show of force, of power, it's done to destroy the person," Dr. Mukwege says. "Sex is being used to commit evil. People flee. They become refugees. They can't get help, they become malnourished and it's disease which finishes them off."

For these women, Dr. Mukwege is both healer and counselor. Dunia Karani is an orphan. She has polio, and can’t walk, but that didn’t stop soldiers from raping her. Now she’s pregnant and has no idea how she’ll cope.

Asked what he can tell a young girl about her future, Dr. Mukwege says, "The most difficult thing is when there is nothing I can do. When I see a 16-year-old, a pretty 16-year-old who's had everything destroyed, and I tell her that I have to give her a colostomy bag…that is difficult."

Despite those difficulties, more often than not, Dr. Mukwege is able to repair the damage to these women’s bodies. They see him as a miracle worker, one of the only men they can trust.

While Dr. Mukwege gives Cooper a tour of the hospital wards, one of his patients gives him the thumbs up.

"And now she's very happy," he says, "Very happy."

That reaction not only gives him hope, he says, but also the strength to continue his work.

Strength is something that few women in Congo lack. They bear the burdens, farm the fields, and hold the families together, yet nothing it seems is being done to protect them.

The war is so widespread that rapes are increasingly being committed by civilians. A few washed out billboards tell men that rape is wrong, but there’s little evidence Congolese officials take the problem seriously.

In the prosecutor's office, the complaints pile up. We were told a $10 bribe could get a rape accusation investigated, but few cases ever go to court.

We asked the prosecutor to show us the prison, to see how many rapists were actually behind bars, but when we got there, we were in for a surprise. The prison had no fences, and the guards had been kicked out. The inmates had taken over the asylum.

"The fact is the justice system is on its knees in Congo," says Van Woudenberg, the human rights investigator. "I can count on one hand the number of cases that we're aware of that have been brought to trial. Literally here people get away with rape, they get away with murder. The chances of being arrested are nil."

There may be no justice in Congo, but there are organizations trying to help rape survivors get back on their feet. "Women For Women" teaches survivors how to make soap, how to cook - skills they can use to earn money. They also learn how to read and write. It is the first time many of these women have ever been in a classroom - it is their chance for a whole new life.

Remember Lucienne M’Maroyhi? She’s jumped at that chance. She hopes to start her own business one day.

She is also now the mother of a little baby girl, born a year ago. The father is one of her rapists, one of the men who killed Lucienne's brother. She named the girl "Luck."

"I named her Luck because I went through many hardships," she explains. "I could have been killed in the forest. But I got my life back. I have hope."

Hope is not something you’d expect Congo’s rape survivors to still cling to. But they do.

Each morning in Panzi hospital they gather to raise their voices, singing at a religious service. Our sufferings on earth, they sing, will be relieved in heaven.

Relief in Congo, it seems, is just too much to ask for.

Produced By Michael Gavshon and Drew Magratten
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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War Against Women, The Use Of Rape As A Weapon In Congo's Civil War - CBS News

Most people have heard Sudan periodically mentioned in the news over the last several years. Many will remember that Osama bin Laden (OBL) made Sudan his base of operations before he relocated to Afghanistan. Sudan was chosen by OBL because it has an Islamic oriented government with whom he had a friendly relationship until he became too much of a liability. That OBL and the Sudanese Government had much in common for several years speaks volumes about the nature of at least northern Sudan.

But Sudan is front page news in the twenty-first century for other reasons far beyond Sudan's ties to Islamic terrorism. The Sudanese Government and Sudanese Arab militias have been waging a long-term Jihad against the non-Muslim, non-Arab southern Sudanese population for decades. It is a classic Islamic Jihad of the type that has resulted in the slaughter of millions of people over the centuries. The Sudanese Jihad, which most reporters only refer to as "genocide," has killed an estimated two-million people and rendered countless other people refugees.

It is undisputed that the Sudanese Jihadists have engaged in mass slaughter, gang rape and other terrible atrocities. 60 Minutes reports, for example, that the men in destroyed villages are killed, cut to pieces, and thrown into the water supply in order to contaminate it. One village after another has been completely destroyed by the same combination of terror, slaughter, and expulsion so effectively used by Muhammad to gain mastery of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century. The Sudanese Muslims appear to be following Muhammad's example just as the Qur'an commands.

The Sudanese Jihad is being carried out in an age of communication ease and technological wonder that should make the reporting of the complete story, despite its remote location, quite feasible. But that is not happening. It is not happening because telling the world that a modern Jihad has been ongoing for years which has resulted in mass slaughter, rape and genocide does not fit the world view of the mainstream media.

The sad and disturbing reality that the media and academia are going to whitewash yet another Islam inspired atrocity struck me as I watched 60 Minutes air its July 20, 2008 story about the Darfur region of Sudan. I had eagerly awaited the segment, but had a nagging fear that it might be less than forthright about the relationship of the conflict to clear Islamic doctrine. (Please see my essays entitled "Islam Is It a Religion of Peace," "Internal Culture War and Self-hatred in the West Allow Islamic Inroads" and "Islam's Victims Deserve Better Than False Preaching 'Islam is a Religion of Peace'")

My fears were more than well justified. While I had expected some mention of Islam as a contributing factor, I assumed that 60 Minutes would make the usual false claim that the Jihadists had simply "hijacked a peaceful religion." However, 60 Minutes exceeded my expectations. Its story about Darfur was nothing less than an Orwellian cleansing of any relationship between Islam and the atrocities that was so thorough that even I was surprised and I have come to expect less than accurate news reporting by the news media.

I was disturbed as I listened to the 60 Minutes story unfold. The cause of the conflict was attributed to genocide resulting from "Arab racism." The words Islam and Muslim(s) were never mentioned even though the conflict patently has its genesis in Islamic doctrine and the northern Muslim southern non-Muslim divide.

The overwhelming majority of people in northern Sudan, which includes the capital city of Khartoum, are Arab Muslims, but they are Arab in the sense that they speak Arabic, at least a unique form of it, and no doubt have some mixed Arab ancestors even though appearance-wise they often look quite similar to the southern Sudanese. Conversely, the southern Sudanese are non-Muslim, non-Arabs who mainly practice Christianity or Animism. The CIA World Factbook lists the population breakdown as follows: "Sunni Muslim 70% (in north), Christian 5% (mostly in south and Khartoum), indigenous beliefs 25%."

The 60 Minutes story did do a good job of describing the horrific reality of the "genocide" albeit stripped of its connection to Islam. A fitting analogy was made between "Nazi death camps" and the "death villages" in southern Sudan. 60 Minutes aired footage of destroyed villages and starving children. The story also acknowledged that the southern Sudanese are targets because "they are not Arabs." That is true enough, but the story does not explain that the significance of not being Arab is that they are not Muslim which I found quite hypocritical given that the mainstream media and academia generally like to praise Islam as having allegedly eliminated racism. 60 Minutes also placed some blame on Sudan's Muslim dictator al-Bashir, but never mentioned that he is also a Muslim.

60 Minutes managed to implausibly place some blame on the Bush Administration suggesting that it is soft on Sudan because it wants help with intelligence on OBL. 60 Minutes claims that our (U.S.) relationship with Sudan is "complicated" because of the prior OBL connection to Sudan.

It amazes me that Islam evaded responsibility for its clear relationship to the genocide in Darfur while 60 Minutes took a cheap shot at the Bush Administration. It is also frightening. It makes me fear that those of us that have realized just how deadly of a religion Islam is will never be able to educate the vast majority of people that have been deceived as to the true nature of Islam. If the news media can whitewash Islam's involvement in a long-term genocide that is occurring in a country whose national anthem begins with the words "[w]e are the army of God . . ." and wherein the Muslim Jihadists yell "Allah Akbar" as they attack, slaughter and rape non-Muslims, then it can get away with convincing the masses of anything.

With so many victims of Islam around the World, it is cruel to let anyone get away with doing what 60 minutes has done. A false public perception of Islam guarantees that Islam will create new victims into perpetuity. It is also important that we all know the truth so that we can properly exercise our democratic rights. It is ultimately the will of the majority (at least the majority of those who vote) that determines the long-term direction of a democratic society and if we are misinformed our votes will be equally misinformed and misguided.

The connection of Islam to the atrocities committed in Sudan needs to be further addressed and I encourage all of you to research and write further on this subject. Innocent people are suffering and the best chance of ending their suffering is for us to take the initial step of educating the world as to why the atrocities are occurring

http://usapartisan.blogspot.com/2008/07/60-minutes-fails-to-mention-islam.html

Technorati - Freedom 911 Al Qaida Al Qaeda Al Qaida Bin Laden Islamofascism Islam Apes and pigs Terrorism Terrorist oganization Hamas ‘palestinians’ Al Aqsa Alaqsa Muslims Christians Jews Arabs bombing Infidels Israel US Security Jihad Janjaweeds Al-Bashir Mosque MSM West non Muslims media bias Sudan CBS Islamic Threat Nukes Darfur Islamists Sudan China Genocide

I Can't Hear God Anymore tells the story of how the author and her husband in their quest for God mistakenly ended up in a cult when they became a part of the Trinity Foundation.  Ole Anthony is still the occult personality leader who used unethical tactics and twisted Bible doctrines to manipulate a following that would be a labor force enacting his current crusade.  Not a Bible crusade.  Not even a crusade to promote the advent of peanut butter  over coke and fries for a better lunch crusade.  Nope, Ole Anthony's crusade is to expose false teachers and gospel pimps.    The expression, "It takes one to know one" indicates that Ole Anthony is a pimp himself.  Throughout Wendy's account and testimony, the reader finds that Ole Anthony wanted to control who she married, amongst other areas of her, and other cult members' lives.  This book is truly a testimony of freedom, healing and the liberty that anyone who is bound by occultism can experience.  

Ole Anthony is still making his rounds in the major media.  Here's an excerpt from a 2006 press release:

"I CAN’T HEAR GOD ANYMORE also contains a detailed portrait of Anthony’s psychology and background, which Duncan spent months researching. Anthony is a well-known figure in media and religious circles, first gaining notoriety in 1991 when he assisted Dianne Sawyer in her exposé of three Dallas-based televangelists for the ABC news magazine PrimeTime Live. Since that time, Anthony has been involved in investigations of numerous religious figures, working with programs such as NBC Dateline and 60 Minutes. He and his group have been lauded in US News & World Report, The LA Times Magazine, and most recently, The New Yorker. He has been a near-ubiquitous commentator on all things religious for both local and national media outlets, but there is more here than meets the eye. Though Anthony can be charming and persuasive, Duncan’s book raises questions about his willingness to be accountable for his own practices. In short, who is watching the watchdog?"

To order the book and for more on Wendy J. Duncan's current work visit:

www.dallascult.com