michelle
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Post by michelle on Mar 20, 2006 3:37:36 GMT 4
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF PEACE Action Alert Talk show host Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed that Department of Peace bill would "Get rid of the Department of Defense." Dear Friend, The popular media watchdog website, "Media Matters," reported on misinformation that radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh spread on his show this past week about the legislation to establish a United States Department of Peace. From the March 16 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show:LIMBAUGH: Dennis Kucinich -- one of these wacko, lunatic-fringe lefties. He was in the Democratic presidential primary race in 2004. You remember him, Dawn? Yeah, he wanted to establish a Department of Peace. Get rid of the Department of Defense. Establish a Department of Peace, which is what the Department of Defense is.Media Matters is urging citizens to write Mr. Limbaugh and correct his misunderstaning of this bill, which is not designed to replace the Department of Defense, but to augment its efforts. Read more about this issue and how to take action to correct this misinformation, along with an audio clip of Mr. Limbaughs mischaracterization at Media Matters website: mediamatters.org/items/200603170018Please also send a note to Media Matters and thank them for taking this issue to task. You can write them on their website at: mediamatters.org/contact_usFrom Michelle, not the Department of Peace. The true face of Rush Limbaugh. And, please, feel free to sing along!www.bushflash.com/nazi.html
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Mar 20, 2006 19:23:35 GMT 4
Editorial Writers: The Silence of the Sheep By William Fisher t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 20 March 2006
As the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq passed into history, the White House continued to dumb down what defines "victory," Bush administration officials regurgitated their upbeat talking points, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote an op-ed claiming, "The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. Now is the time for resolve, not retreat."
We may or may not agree with the president and his people, but at least they have an opinion.
Sadly, the same can't be said of the editorial writers for America's most influential mainstream media.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle all were silent on the subject. The Wall Street Journal touched on the anniversary as part of an editorial praising the Bush administration's decision to release most of Saddam Hussein's secret documents, and said, almost en passant, "The Iraq War is a long way from being over, and anything we can know about the accuracy of our judgments before and during the fight is well worth trying to uncover and understand."
But the vast majority of daily newspapers that published editorials marking the anniversary were long on facts and analysis, excellent in their syntax, but virtually mute on solutions beyond "stay the course" and "support our troops."
Proffering solutions was pretty much left to the op-ed punditocracy and, on television, to the seemingly endless parade of journalists, academics, and retired military generals who have learned how to increase their incomes as talking heads.
As for newspaper editorials, a few examples:
The Chicago Tribune: "Iraqi leaders are meeting, and some progress is being reported by [the US Ambassador to Iraq]. The reality in Iraq now: The path to security is mainly political, not military. All must give, or all will lose."
The New York Times: "Our goal must be to minimize the damage, through the urgent diplomacy of the current ambassador and forceful reminders that American forces are not prepared to remain for one day in a country whose leaders prefer civil war to peaceful compromise. While we are distracted by picking up the pieces, there is no time to imagine what the world might be like if George Bush had chosen to see things as they were instead of how he wanted them to be three years ago. History will have more time to consider the question."
The Los Angeles Times: "As it enters its fourth year, the war in Iraq defies simplistic characterizations from both ends of the political spectrum. The heroism of US forces and of ordinary Iraqis going about their daily lives is inspiring. But the future of Iraq remains shrouded in gray uncertainty."
Only two major dailies offered any ideas about the future - both totally predictable: "Stay the Course."
The New York Daily News said, "America has been spared another terrorist attack, perhaps because the enemy is otherwise engaged. Libya has given up its nukes. Pakistan's atomic bazaar has closed. Resistance to despotic, terror-sponsoring regimes, like Syria's, has blossomed. There's been a great cost, of course. More than 2,000 US troops have lost their lives, with thousands more injured. Americans - and the world - owe a huge debt to these heroes. Alas, in this Age of Terror, the choice not to fight can be disastrous; 9/11 proved that. As Iraq stabilizes and terrorists are eliminated, a recurrence of that day's horrors seems less likely. That's worth fighting for, anyway."
And Mr. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post opined, "Three years later, Iraq has a formalized government - after a fashion, anyway - and the very fact that it is there at all is the worst possible news for the gangsters who labored so desperately to prevent its arising. For all the heartbreak, for all the despair, this is still a fact, and it is one worth celebrating. It is not yet happily ever after. But it's what there is, for now, three years on. If the current course is wrong, what's the alternative? The answer: There is no alternative. US troops must stay in Iraq until that country can defend itself from those who would turn it into a jihadi haven."
By contrast, many of the editorials in the Middle East press tied the Iraq anniversary to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Typical was the Saudi English-language daily Arab News, which wrote that the world has not become safer since 9/11 because, "There is now no international unity in the face of terrorism - shattered as it was by Washington's attempted hijacking of it to fight the wholly unconnected war in Iraq, by the desire of other governments to use the situation for their own political purposes, and by the cowardice of some when themselves directly targeted by terrorists."
For US print media, it was as if there never were any proposals beyond "Stay the Course" and "Support Our Troops."
Where were the editorial writers' opinions on whether it was all worth it? On whether the US could continue to finance the Bush adventure? On whether America ought to be involved in nation-building? On the variety of proposals made for new diplomatic initiatives? On the many plans that have been put forward for withdrawal?
Absent. AWOL. Silent.
And the reason, it seems to me, is not fear of being called "unpatriotic." The reason is that most editorial writers don't have a clue about how to go forward.
In which case, probably to their shock and awe, they have a lot in common with our president.
But not with their readers.
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for The Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 26, 2006 19:49:02 GMT 4
Statement from Media Matters for America President and CEO David Brock on New White House Press Secretary Tony Snow4/26/2006 10:00:00 AM Contact: Daniela Colaiacovo of Media Matters for America, 202-756-4124 or dcolaiacovo@mediamatters.org WASHINGTON, April 26 /U.S. Newswire/ -- David Brock, president and CEO of Media Matters for America, released the following statement in response to the formal announcement that outgoing White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan will be replaced by syndicated columnist and Fox News host Tony Snow: "Tony Snow and the Bush White House seem like a match made in heaven: Snow and his colleagues at Fox News have been among the most effective spokespeople for the Bush administration. But given Snow's long history of making false and misleading claims, his hiring will do little to change the perception that the White House is more interested in stonewalling and deception than in getting the facts out."As we continue to witness the same pattern of misinformation and lack of transparency by the Bush administration, we urge the White House press corps to demand real answers from the new press secretary. The media have already given President Bush a free pass on too much." Complete Media Matters coverage of Tony Snow's falsehoods is available at: mediamatters.org/issues_topics/people/tonysnow. --- Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Media Matters for America is the first organization to systematically monitor the media for conservative misinformation every day, in real time. For more information, visit www.mediamatters.org.
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michelle
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Post by michelle on May 5, 2006 9:21:44 GMT 4
John Pilger detects the Salvador Option Columnists John Pilger Monday 8th May 2006 The American public is being prepared. If the attack on Iran does come, there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no truth, writes John Pilger The lifts in the New York Hilton played CNN on a small screen you could not avoid watching. Iraq was top of the news; pronouncements about a "civil war" and "sectarian violence" were repeated incessantly. It was as if the US invasion had never happened and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians by the Americans was a surreal fiction. The Iraqis were mindless Arabs, haunted by religion, ethnic strife and the need to blow themselves up. Unctuous puppet politicians were paraded with no hint that their exercise yard was inside an American fortress. And when you left the lift, this followed you to your room, to the hotel gym, the airport, the next airport and the next country. Such is the power of America's corporate propaganda, which, as Edward Said pointed out in Culture and Imperialism, "penetrates electronically" with its equivalent of a party line. The party line changed the other day. For almost three years it was that al-Qaeda was the driving force behind the "insurgency", led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a bloodthirsty Jordanian who was clearly being groomed for the kind of infamy Saddam Hussein enjoys. It mattered not that al-Zarqawi had never been seen alive and that only a fraction of the "insurgents" followed al-Qaeda. For the Americans, Zarqawi's role was to distract attention from the thing that almost all Iraqis oppose: the brutal Anglo-American occupation of their country. Now that al-Zarqawi has been replaced by "sectarian violence" and "civil war", the big news is the attacks by Sunnis on Shia mosques and bazaars. The real news, which is not reported in the CNN "mainstream", is that the Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by death squads armed and trained by the US, which attack Sunnis and Shias alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration. The ministry of the interior in Baghdad, which is run by the CIA, directs the principal death squads. Their members are not exclusively Shia, as the myth goes. The most brutal are the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, headed by former senior officers in Saddam's Ba'ath Party. This unit was formed and trained by CIA "counter-insurgency" experts, including veterans of the CIA's terror operations in central America in the 1980s, notably El Salvador. In his new book, Empire's Workshop (Metropolitan Books), the American historian Greg Grandin describes the Salvador Option thus: "Once in office, [President] Reagan came down hard on central America, in effect letting his administration's most committed militarists set and execute policy. In El Salvador, they provided more than a million dollars a day to fund a lethal counter-insurgency campaign . . . All told, US allies in central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands and drove millions into exile." Although the Reagan administration spawned the current Bushites, or "neo-cons", the pattern was set earlier. In Vietnam, death squads trained, armed and directed by the CIA murdered up to 50,000 people in Operation Phoenix. In the mid-1960s in Indonesia CIA officers compiled "death lists" for General Suharto's killing spree during his seizure of power. After the 2003 invasion, it was only a matter of time before this venerable "policy" was applied in Iraq. According to the investigative writer Max Fuller (National Review Online), the key CIA manager of the interior ministry death squads "cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador". Professor Grandin names another central America veteran whose job now is to "train a ruthless counter-insurgent force made up of ex-Ba'athist thugs". Another, says Fuller, is well-known for his "production of death lists". A secret militia run by the Americans is the Facilities Protection Service, which has been responsible for bombings. "The British and US Special Forces," concludes Fuller, "in conjunction with the [US-created] intelligence services at the Iraqi defence ministry, are fabricating insurgent bombings of Shias." On 16 March, Reuters reported the arrest of an American "security contractor" who was found with weapons and explosives in his car. Last year, two Britons disguised as Arabs were caught with a car full of weapons and explosives; British forces bulldozed the Basra prison to rescue them. The Boston Globe recently reported: "The FBI's counter-terrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering that some of the vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior government officials." As I say, all this has been tried before - just as the preparation of the American public for an atrocious attack on Iran is similar to the WMD fabrications in Iraq. If that attack comes, there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no truth. Imprisoned in the Hilton lift, staring at CNN, my fellow passengers could be excused for not making sense of the Middle East, or Latin America, or anywhere. They are isolated. Nothing is explained. Congress is silent. The Democrats are moribund. And the freest media on earth insult the public every day. As Voltaire put it: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Source: www.newstatesman.com/200605080016A FREE AND INDEPENDENT PRESS IN THE UNITED STATES?One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying: "There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. "The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)
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michelle
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Post by michelle on May 8, 2006 15:01:42 GMT 4
ZNet | Activism Reporters Without Britches Reporters Without Borders Caught with Their Pants Down by Carolina Cositore; February 12, 2006 What’s in a name?The assumption of the cachet Reporters Without Borders twenty years ago, in conscious parody of the then above reproach international humanitarian Doctors Without Borders, certainly lent Robert Menard’s group more than a touch of automatic respectability from the get-go. The appellation gave the group acceptance as an unbiased investigative human rights organization defending journalists all over the world. When honest reporting can bring threats, attacks, prison terms, and even death, such an organization is badly needed. Sadly, the true nature of Reporters sans frontières (RSF=French acronym) is far otherwise. Unbiased? Non-politically affiliated?RSF does report on some discrimination against journalists, but in a very selective way, that is, targeting nations on the US State Department "hit list": Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc., while ignoring any and all anti-journalist activities in areas allied with the US, and of course, never in the US itself. For three examples of many to give the idea: RSF does not defend reporters in the Phillippines, which is the second deadliest nation for journalists after Iraq but is a strong ally of the US military. RSF completely ignores Mumia abu Jamal, a US reporter on death row and the object of support from "other" human rights organizations all over the globe. And in a recent interview, despite his very close ties with the Cuban-American community in Miami, RSF director Robert Menard claimed to be completely "unfamiliar" with the case of the Cuban Five. The Five, one of whom is a Cuban journalist, are serving life sentences in US prisons for infiltrating these Miami groups to prevent terrorist attacks on their homeland.1 This denial ties into the major activity (time, money and propaganda campaigns) of RSF, which is defaming the Cuban Revolution, trying to prevent European tourists from visiting the Island, and serving as a news agency and defender for "dissident reporters". The latter, according to Nestor Baguer -founder of the Independent Cuban Journalist Association, their reporter of longest duration, and the main Cuban representative of RSF, who later revealed himself as a Cuban security agent- were "neither journalists nor dissidents"2, but mercenaries paid to write as dictated by the RSF, the US Interest Section in Havana, and Florida-based hate groups. RSF, in Menard’s own words in an interview in 2000, has always considered Cuba the priority in Latin America, even giving the country a lower ranking on its press freedom index than countries where journalists routinely have been killed, such as Colombia, Peru and Mexico.3 Although incurious about the fate of journalists in Venezuela before President Hugo Chavez, RSF was very quick to support the coup d’etat against him, of course it had to be as the coup was very brief. Menard’s group has since been outspoken against what it alleges to be anti-freedom of the press legislation in Venezuela, without evidently having read said legislation, and while incidently having a close relationship with Venezuelan multi-millionaire media giant Gustavo Cisneros. Haiti is another example of the bias of this theoretically unbiased group. Menard denounced supposed "acts of repression" against local independent media under Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, while completely failing to notice aggressions by anti-government groups against journalists of Radio Solidarité and Radio Ginen. Even in Iraq, where RSF does report deaths and kidnaping of journalists by insurgents, its "investigation" and subsequent whitewashing of the culpability of the US military in the death of the Spanish reporter-cameraman in the infamous Palestine Hotel attack outraged his family. The US tank operator admitted firing under orders from superiors, but RSF, whose interviewer was a personal friend of the officer giving the order, found the shots were fired by "persons unknown". The journalist’s family asked RSF to withdraw from the case; a request it ignored. Follow the moneyWhile Robert Menard may be personally obsessed with Cuba and other countries that the US frowns upon, he is certainly paid well for this obsession. As Jean-Guy Allard has admirably researched in detail, RSF receives the preponderance of its funding from organizations corresponding with the CIA, filtered directly or indirectly, such as USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, the US Interest Section in Havana, and Cuban-American anti-Cuba groups in Miami.4 Menard has also finally admitted his bond with Nancy Pérez Crespo, operator of the rabid anti-Cuba Radio Mambí in Miami, who receives funds from said US establishments. World journalists are in dire need of a true unbiased human rights organization that will protect them no matter where they are attacked or by whom, unfortunately Reporters Without Borders is not that organization. Footnotes:1 Excellent source of information on Cuban Five at www.freethefive.org 2 Elizalde, Rosa Miriam and Baez, Luis, Los Disidentes,Editora Politica, La Habana, 2003. 3 Barahona, Diana, "Cuba’s Economy, Reporters Without Borders Unmasked", Counterpunch,www.counterpunch.org, 2005 4 Allard, Jean-Guy, Por Qu é Reporteros sin Fronteras se ensaña con Cuba El dossier Robert Ménard, Lanctot, Quebec, 2005. Source: tinyurl.com/hq5yp
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michelle
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Post by michelle on May 11, 2006 16:29:02 GMT 4
Rupert Murdoch backs Hillary Clinton: by their friends you shall know themBy Bill Van Auken, Socialist Equality Party candidate for US Senate from New York 10 May 2006 The billionaire media magnate Rupert Murdoch changed his nationality from Australian to American some two decades ago in order to further his aim of gobbling up US media for his global empire. In both countries, he projected an image of a super-patriot and nationalist.When it comes to politics, Murdoch, known in media circles as the “dirty digger,” is equally adaptable in pursuing his personal gain. The most loyal right-wing Tory and friend of Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s, as he built up his media holdings in Britain, he switched his loyalties to “New Labour” when he saw that Tony Blair could provide a fresh face for even more reactionary politics and was more than willing to further Murdoch’s interests in return for editorial backing. He made similar swings in his native Australia between the Labor and Liberal parties to further his efforts at monopolizing the print and broadcast media. So, it should really come as no surprise that Murdoch is now emerging as a prominent backer of the Democratic US Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. The Financial Times of London reported Tuesday that Murdoch will personally host a July fundraiser for Mrs. Clinton on behalf of his News Corp. CBS News reported on the upcoming fundraiser with the provocative headline “Rupert Murdoch Loves Hillary Clinton.” It stated, “The mating ritual of the unlikely allies has been under way for months.” When she first ran for Senate from New York, Murdoch’s New York Post sought to demonize her as an arch-liberal and was notorious for publishing the most unflattering photographs of the former First Lady. “To vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton is to affirm double-dealing and deception,” one Post editorial warned New Yorkers. A leading columnist referred to her as a “duplicitous sow.” How times have changed. This will be by no means the first such friendly encounter between the Democratic senator—and frontrunner for the party’s 2008 presidential nomination—and the right-wing media baron. Last month, it was reported that Mrs. Clinton was in attendance at the 10th anniversary party for Murdoch’s Fox News in Washington. As the Washington Post reported: “Clinton spent an hour at Cafe Milano schmoozing with News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch (very chummy since last year’s truce), Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, and most of the Bush administration, including Karl Rove, Josh Bolten, Karen Hughes, Dan Bartlett and former Fox host Tony Snow, just hours after he was named the new Bush spokesman.” For the last five years, Murdoch’s Fox News has served as the closest thing to a state propaganda network that America has ever seen, unswervingly defending the Bush administration while vilifying its critics. Tony Snow’s transformation from a right-wing Fox talk show host into the head of the White House press office is only the most blatant expression of this politically incestuous relationship. Murdoch, a reactionary warmonger, used Fox as well as other cable and satellite networks covering five continents and his worldwide chain of 175 newspapers to promote the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and to steadfastly defend both Bush and Blair for launching the war. While insisting that Bush was “acting very morally” in attacking a virtually defenseless country that had offered no provocation, Murdoch was not as reticent as most US politicians in identifying the economic aim of the war: “Once Iraq is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil.” Fox and other Murdoch news outlets led the media in trumpeting the Bush administration’s lies about “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorist threats, and continues to promote the White House claims—long since rejected by the American people—about “progress” in Iraq.In New York, Murdoch’s New York Post has given new meaning to the term “gutter press,” promoting the most backward, racist and anti-working class views. During the strike by New York City transit workers last December, the billionaire Murdoch used the paper to call the train and bus workers “greedy” and “rats.” Comparing these workers to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the Post demanded that they be arrested and fired en masse. Union busting is not just a platonic affair for Murdoch. In 1986, he used mass firings and police violence to crush the British print workers’ union in the Wapping strike. He used similar tactics against striking members of the Newspaper Guild at the New York Post in 1993, firing nearly 300 of them. Now, Hillary Clinton, whose $20 million campaign fund includes large sums from the unions, including Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, will be getting even more money from Murdoch, a veteran union-buster and one of the most prominent advocates of the TWU’s destruction. Murdoch is if nothing else a good judge of character. He can sniff out a politician who lacks any principles, whose views and votes are for sale. Support from such elements—in Australia, Britain the US and elsewhere—has played a decisive role in his amassing a multibillion-dollar fortune. Having watched Hillary Clinton vote for and support the Iraq war and curry favor with the Republican right (as she and husband Bill accumulated their own multimillion-dollar fortune), he likes what he sees. Moreover, the Australian-born press baron can read opinion polls as well as anyone else. With Bush’s approval rating falling below the one-third mark, there is ample reason for him to start hedging his political bets. In the midst of the Republican impeachment drive over the Monica Lewinsky affair, Hillary Clinton accurately described the forces mobilized to oust her husband from the White House as a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Fox News, and many of those whom Murdoch has assembled to craft its ideological line as well as that of his other media outlets—the New York Post and the Weekly Standard, for example—played a prominent role in this conspiracy. Mrs. Clinton has long since distanced herself from the bluntly accurate description of these forces that she offered eight years ago. The fact is that those who hatched the conspiracy now have a grip on all the essential levers of power in Washington, and Hillary Clinton is collaborating closely with them. The budding alliance between Rupert Murdoch and Hillary Clinton provides the most graphic proof that the Democrats offer no means whatsoever to oppose the ultra-right policies of the Republican administration in Washington. Democratic politicians like Clinton are willing accomplices of the Bush White House, supporting both militarism abroad and the attacks on basic democratic rights and social conditions at home.Whatever their tactical political differences, both parties are committed to defending the interests of the US corporate and financial ruling elite. That is why Rupert Murdoch is confident that he can achieve his ends by backing Hillary Clinton just as well as he did through his fulsome support for George W. Bush. Source: www.wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/murd-m10.shtml
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DT1
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You know, it's not like I wanted to be right about all of this...
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Post by DT1 on Jun 10, 2006 10:05:01 GMT 4
Please post here any examples where the media outright lies, omits the truth, or skews information. Welll...Here goes. I have often said that if they nail Osama, check for freezer burns. I supose the same can be said for Abu Zarwhatshisface... It doesn't add up by my math. Our military has produced some of the most devastating weapons ever devised by the mind of man. An example of this is the"Daisy-Cutter". In effect,it is one notch below a nuclear bomb. It seems two of them were used. The footage of the blast-site was depicting flattened buildings,twisted trucks-almost absolute devastation. Yet we have pictures of Public Enemy Number Two,nearly intact. Was he in a bunker?I have found nothing to indicate this. If it went down as we have been told,there would have been,to put it delicately,Habeus Corpus... (Hamburger Helper). Just wondering...
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jun 12, 2006 15:38:05 GMT 4
Hey DT1. I'm glad you voiced your suspicion about the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There is something inherently perverse in the media splashing his corpse across TV screens. Reminds me of St. John the Baptist's head being presented on a plate to King Herod. The article below says it all.....MichelleOn the official US response to the killing of ZarqawiBy Kate Randall and Barry Grey 10 June 2006 There is something not only politically odious, but psychologically perverse in the lurid and manic response of the US government and media to the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The exultation in the Islamist terrorist’s demise, replete with gruesome photos of the corpse plastered across newspapers and displayed on TV screens, takes on an almost ritualistic character. The killing of Saddam Hussein’s sons and the capture of the former Iraqi president evoked similar official responses.President Bush was reportedly “thrilled” when he got the news Wednesday night of the successful hit, although he was evidently coached to contain his euphoria when he went before the cameras Thursday morning to announce the “good news.” Much of the media, however, evinced no such restraint. “Gotcha!” was the front-page headline on Friday’s New York Post tabloid, atop a full-page photo of the dead man’s scarred face lying in a pool a blood. The newspaper’s inside headline read: “Evil Zarqawi Blown to Hell.” The New York Daily News front page exclaimed “PICTURE PERFECT! Al Qaeda Terror Boss Blown Right to Hell.” Below was US soldier holding a large framed copy of the same photo. The “respectable” New York Times ran a banner headline of the size normally reserved for presidential elections or natural catastrophes, with the same grisly photograph taking up about a fourth of the front page. This spectacle bespeaks both the mindset of the American ruling elite, and what it seeks to inculcate among the public at large. Terms that come to mind in regard to the outlook of the ruling establishment are “primitive,” “backward” and “self-delusionary.” It retains an almost childish belief that it can somehow extricate itself from the disaster it has created for itself in Iraq if only it can kill another 5,000, 10,000 or 100,000 people. At the same time, it is driven by a need to brutalize and degrade public consciousness. Almost nothing is out of bounds in the pursuit of this goal.The irony is that a state apparatus and media which believe themselves to be the world’s masters in the art of manipulating public opinion are far less effective than they think. The more obnoxious and heavy-handed their propaganda, the less real and lasting is its impact. Most Americans instinctively sense that there is something artificial and dishonest in the official hoopla over the killing of Zarqawi. They watch the reports on the television news, and move on, checking to see what else is on TV. They glance at the photos and banner headlines on the front page, and turn the page. Years of lies and the exposure of one atrocity after another, carried out in their name, have had an impact. For the most part, the official celebration of death and carnage passes over their heads. They do not really believe that Zarqawi was the towering figure described by the government and the media. And in this their instincts are correct. His exploits, in fact, both real and apocryphal, played a negligible role in the growth of Iraqi resistance to the American invasion and military occupation. Any impact he did have was destructive of the resistance, since his deeply reactionary aim was to incite sectarian warfare between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority. Zarqawi was far more significant for the function he served as the latest devil incarnate conjured up by the US government and media to somehow justify the war. Unable to provide a coherent rationale for the war, the political establishment, Democratic as well as Republican, is perpetually looking to find—or manufacture—a new symbol of evil they can use to frighten and disorient the public.Zarqawi had barely been dead a day when Bush administration and military officials began floating reports about his replacement. It appears at present that the new devil will be Abu al-Masri, reputed to be an Eqyptian-born associate of Zarqawi. The US Central Command already has a $50,000 bounty on al-Masri’s head. Source: www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jun2006/zarq-10j.shtml
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jun 22, 2006 9:29:25 GMT 4
Wash Post Smears War Critics, AgainBy Robert Parry June 21, 2006 One might think that a newspaper which helped fan a war frenzy that got more than 2,500 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed might show some remorse or at least some circumspection before attacking critics of that misadventure. But that is not the way of the Washington Post. Read it all: www.consortiumnews.com/2006/062006.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jul 27, 2006 15:05:05 GMT 4
Western media fail to tell the real story in Lebanon Marc J. Sirois , Daily Star - Saturday, 22 July 2006, 03:43 The fury of Israel's offensive in Lebanon has more than a few observers shaking their heads. The vast majority of Western media reports do not accurately portray the fact that the vast majority of the dead are civilians, most of them women and children. A Reuters dispatch this week described Israel's choice of targets as "puzzling," but for the most part Western television viewers, newspaper readers, and Web surfers are reading highly sanitized versions of the news, spun in such a way as to dilute the brutality of the Israeli onslaught and especially to ensure that blame is placed squarely on Lebanon in general and Hizbullah in particular. Of course there are brave and honorable Western journalists working here, and many of them are determined to tell the truth about what is happening. One has to assume, therefore, that what the decent ones report is being heavily edited somewhere along the line before it gets to the consumer. This is presumably intended as a prophylactic against the inevitable charges of "anti-Semitism" and resultant drops in advertising revenues that will follow unvarnished coverage of Israeli brutality. The product of this regime of fear has been a generation of biased reporting that portrays the Jewish state as weak when it is very strong, moderate when it is frequently extremist, democratic when it is often theocratic, liberal when it is commonly draconian - in short, "Western" when it is anything but.Coverage of the current conflict is a case in point. The two most commonly watched English-language news channels available in Lebanon are CNN and the BBC. With few exceptions, their reports are filed by reporters standing in the relatively safe and comfortable confines of Downtown Beirut, the picturesque showcase of Lebanon's now-aborted recovery from its 1975-90 Civil War. There has been no damage in this part of the city thus far (although there are concerns that that step in the escalation process is rapidly approaching), so the very background is highly misleading about what is happening. Just a few kilometers away in Beirut's Dahiyeh Junubiyyeh (southern suburbs), Israeli air strikes and naval gunfire have reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. No one knows how many people are buried in these piles of shattered concrete and twisted steel, only that local residents would have had far less warning than Hizbullah members did about the beginning of so many ends - and that most of their escape routes were cut off by the destruction of roads and overpasses before the Dahiyeh itself became a target. A similar situation exists in the southern third of the country, usually a half-hour bus ride from Beirut. Now it can take hours in either direction because vehicles cannot get through. Instead, people are shuttled from one giant crater to the next, where they walk across debris-strewn holes in the ground or wade through rivers once spanned by wrecked bridges to reach another taxi or mini-bus that will take them to the next impasse. Throughout the journey, their vehicles are subject to Israeli attacks, so many people stay home and try to "ride it out." But a considerable number are subsequently convinced to run the gauntlet when the Israeli military warns them that they have "two or three hours" to leave their villages. On numerous occasions, such warnings have been followed less than an hour later by air or artillery strikes on civilian vehicles leaving the village. They keep leaving, though, because those who stay in their homes have frequently found out that the Israelis mean it when they say an area is about to become "unsafe" for civilians: Dozens of civilians have been killed in their own homes - with and without warnings beforehand. The message for these unfortunate people is that "nowhere is safe." In fact, that is precisely what an Israeli general said in the opening stages of the offensive. Why has the Israeli military singled out these two areas for punishment? Because they are populated primarily by the impoverished and largely disenfranchised Shiites who make up Hizbullah's constituency. Multiple ironies are at work here. For one thing, the Dahiyeh's 500,000-strong population consists largely of Shiites from the South Lebanon who have fled successive waves of Israeli "retribution" (i.e. collective punishment). When Palestinian militias attacked northern Israel from South Lebanon in the 1970s, one of Israel's answers was indiscriminate bombardment. This drove tens of thousands of local villagers to Beirut, where they established the Dahiyeh. For another, when Israel first invaded Lebanon in 1978 (not 1982, as typically reported in the Western media), many Shiites greeted them with rose petals. Life under the de facto rule of unruly Palestinian militias had not been easy, so despite the damage and casualties inflicted by Israeli ripostes, it was commonly believed that Israeli occupation might not be so bad. Then came 1982, when the Israelis rolled all the way to Beirut after promising Washington that they meant only to establish a 25-kilometer "buffer zone." The carnage in the South was horrific, and the ensuing occupation included measures like the dismissal of local village elders in favor of appointed stooges and provocations timed to coincide with sensitive religious dates. The Shiites revolted, and Hizbullah was born.Subsequent spasm of violence (the worst in 1985 and 1996), usually caused by tit-for-tat exchanges between Hizbullah and the Israeli military that spun out of control, displaced more and more Shiites, filling the Dahiyeh with an understandably resentful generation of young men determined to run no more. All of this goes unmentioned on CNN. Its idea of "balance" is to make sure that each report about a new massacre of innocents in Lebanon is aired alongside one about civilian injuries or deaths from Hizbullah rocket strikes, even if the incident is 36 hours old. Only rarely do the reports in question mention that while the Dahiyeh is for all intents and purposes a giant refugee camp, northern Israel and the nearby settlements in occupied Palestine are prosperous areas with a substantial contingent of immigrants from places like the United States and Canada, many of whom voluntarily live illegally on occupied Palestinian land.Hizbullah's decision to snatch two Israeli soldiers evinced poor judgment and even worse timing, but the Israeli response has been out of all proportion to the original incident. The numbers speak for themselves. As of Wednesday evening, Israeli attacks had killed at least 292 civilians in Lebanon, while Hizbullah rockets had killed 13 noncombatants in the Jewish state. Lebanon has approximately 3.5 million people. On a per-capita basis, that means that as of Wednesday, the rough equivalent of 9/11 has happened every day here for eight days. SOURCE: www.imemc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20232&Itemid=1
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Aug 12, 2006 18:19:15 GMT 4
The Great Deception The Propaganda That We Pay For by Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar August 7, 2006 This is an exceptionally good article. Dr. Bakhtiar is very through in his analysis of how we are manipulated into seeing the world the way controlling interests want us to. In the US only 6 conglomerates control the media market: Time Warner, General Electric [how many defense contracts do they have?], Walt Disney [got the children's minds sewn-up here], Bertelsmann AG, Viacom, and News Corporation. He particularly centers on Rupert Murdoch: "For example, every year Mr. Murdoch (the greatest friend of Israel) the owner of the News Corporation is described as television’s “most powerful man in the world with the capacity to reach more than 110 million viewers across four continents.” Murdoch’s network owns more than 175 newspapers, journals and magazines on three continents, publishes 40 million papers a week and dominates the newspaper markets in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. [3] Every year he holds a company meeting in a place of his choosing. This year it was in Pebble Beach, California." As stated in the article, Mr. Murdoch owns many International Book Publishing Houses. If you look through the list, you will see that he owns Zondervan Publishing House the world's largest commercial Bible publisher. I will add to the author's commentary by stating that the Bible is CONSTANTLY revised. An example of the tweaking of scriptures can be found in the 10 Commandments, the religious laws which give Christians a moral compass to live by. The Commandment, "Thou Shall Not KILL," has been changed to: Thou Shall Not MURDER. Now "Thou Shall Not KILL" means only one thing, never take the life of another human being whereas Thou Shall Not MURDER sets up all kinds of loopholes, doesn't it? So in essence this allows brainwashed Christians to completely go against their doctrines and support the unmitigated slaughter of thousands of innocent peoples. Well done, Mr. Murdock. I have read some posts where people believe that our government is really not so bright and they cannot think that the Neo-cons are that well orchestrated to put complicated plots into place and carry them out. HA! They have been grooming the population's minds for many years. This grooming of minds is also well presented in Dr. Bakhtiar's article. There is one other thing in the article that I would like to draw your attention to: "In 1996, the newly elected prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu commissioned a study group called “Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000" to formulate a strategy for Israel in the coming decades. The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, which included Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser, created the Israel’s strategy paper titled: “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The paper contains six pages of recommendations for Benjamin Netanyahu and some of the more relevant suggestions are presented in the article. One of them is: "An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."Now, since the all out war broke out between Israel and Lebanon, under the leadership of the Hezbollah Party, we of the left, the people who strive the hardest to see and speak the truth, have been led, yes LEAD to support Hezbollah's brave stance against Israel. When in truth this type of response was orchestrated and banked on by the dark ones back in 1996. I too nearly fell into this mind trap, this game they play with us. But I kept thinking about: How did the common man in Lebanon react to his country being destroyed? Are they happy that so many citizens have been killed and displaced? Are they pleased with the fact that their coastal ecological system has been destroyed? This environment provides a living for many in Lebanon. For that matter is the common Israeli pleased with fact that 16,500 acres of forests and grazing fields, and countless numbers of wildlife have been destroyed? SEE: www.truthout.org/issues_06/080706EA.shtml AND www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080806R.shtmlWe of the left get much of our news from the alternative media. Now let me ask you this, if the mainstream media is controlled and sanitized against the truth, what makes you so sure that some information in the alternative outlets isn't planted there for a contrived reaction? We are bombarded with new stories daily. In past generations news wasn't created so quickly; people had TIME to think things out. Now we are LEAD from one story to another, in fact we are hit with an overwhelming amount of information on a daily basis, too much for us to absorb, think about and dissect. So we REACT to stories designed to pull up emotion in us. Some of these emotions are of the highest order like our concern for humanity. Even if you operate from a high level of concern, you can still be manipulated. We are still being divided, in our mind into the righteous and the unrighteous. In one of Anwaar's articles: The Neocons’ Greatest Sin [ malakandsky.blogspot.com/2006/08/neocons-greatest-sin.html ],I had attempted to show people how world events are designed well in advance and where they are being manipulated into a response of separatism. I asked that we change the world from hatred and war to peace and love by being peaceful and loving and ceasing to cooperate with the forces of hatred and war. I was publicly accused of pontification and privately of thinking I am superior. How sad this made me; how quickly we turn on those who support and work with our causes. All I am asking people to do is to look, really LOOK AND SEE, how thoroughly the dark players in our world control us. They are not incompetent; they are brilliant in their complete ability to weasel into and control our thinking, motivations, and reactions. Yes, the line has been drawn, but it is not between the peoples of our Earth. The line is: will you become spiritually awake [yes, spiritually; the Creator wants this for us] to see the truth or not? And I am in concurrence with Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar when he ends his article with the following: "We know a lot, but we don’t have the voice to say: enough is enough. The people like Murdoch have stolen our voice. We can only shout in the streets, for newspapers and TVs are closed to us. But, we can still reach others through places like this internet site and say: WE have had enough of your propaganda and lies. WE do not want war of civilizations. We do not want a war of religions. WE do not want destroyed houses and bridges. WE do not want dead children and refugees. WE WANT TO LIVE IN PEACE."Please give his article a read and thank you for your time.......Michelle The Great Deception The Propaganda That We Pay For by Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar www.dissidentvoice.orgAugust 7, 2006 www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Bakhtiar07.htm ************************************************* FYI. From The International Solidarity Movement :Palestinians Open Checkpoint by Laying down on Settler Roadby Ali Omar and Raad (ISM network) Today, July 26th, at 5pm, the IOF closed Yesthar checkpoint (west of Nablus) in all directions for all Palestinian and settlers passing on the road. They re-opened it at 7pm for just the settlers, while there were dozens of Palestinians waiting to go back to their homes. Previously the road was only for settler use, but was opened for Palestinians in 2004 after it was closed since the beginning of the Intifada. Opening the checkpoint just for the settlers made the Palestinians very angry and they responded by having a completely non-violent direct action by lying down on the road and closing it with their bodies. The army responded with excessive violence by beating the people and throwing sound grenades at the crowd. This violence wasn't helpful to evacuate the crowd who continued chanting songs of the Intifada and refusing to move. After the failure of the IOF troops to open the way for the settlers who were stuck waiting, the settlers began threatening the Palestinians with their machine guns, waving them at their faces. The soldiers did nothing to stop the settler's threats. The army failed to evacuate the Palestinians who occupied the checkpoint from 7pm until 9pm and so the army was forced to open the checkpoint for all.
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DT1
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You know, it's not like I wanted to be right about all of this...
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Post by DT1 on Oct 1, 2006 13:37:38 GMT 4
Americans deserve media that won't bow to Bush by Amy Goodman and David Goodman The Baltimore Sun, April 7, 2005
RECENT REVELATIONS that the Bush administration has been fabricating news stories, secretly hiring journalists to write puff pieces and credentialing fake reporters at White House news conferences has infuriated the news media.
Editorials profess to being shocked - shocked! - by the government's covert propaganda campaign in which, as The New York Times revealed March 13, at least 20 federal agencies have spent $250 million creating and sending fake news segments to local TV stations.
But the media have only themselves to blame for most people - including TV news managers - not being able to distinguish journalism from propaganda. The line between news and propaganda was trampled not only by the public relations agencies hired by the government but also by reporters in the deserts of Iraq.
The Pentagon deployed a weapon more powerful than any bomb: the U.S. media. Embedded journalists were transformed into efficient conduits of Pentagon spin. Before and during the invasion of Iraq, the networks conveniently provided the flag-draped backdrop for fawning reports from the field.
As if literally adopting the Pentagon's propagandistic slogan - "Operation Iraqi Freedom" - for their coverage weren't enough, the networks bombarded viewers with an unending parade of generals and colonels paid to offer on-air analysis. It gave new meaning to the term "general news."
If we had state-run media in the United States, how would it be any different?
The media have a responsibility to show the true face of war. But many corporate journalists, so accustomed by now to trading truth for access (the "access of evil"), can no longer grasp what's missing from their coverage. As CBS' Jim Axelrod, who was embedded with - we would say in bed with - the 3rd Infantry Division, gushed: "This will sound like I've drunk the Kool-Aid, but I found embedding to be an extremely positive experience. ... We got great stories and they got very positive coverage."
It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration, having found the media so helpful and compliant with their coverage of the Iraq war, would seek to orchestrate similarly uncritical coverage of other issues that they hold dear.
TV viewers nationwide have watched and heard about how the "top-notch work force" of the often-criticized Transportation Security Administration has led "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history," how President Bush's controversial Medicare plan will offer "new benefits, more choices, more opportunities," how the United States is "putting needy women back in business" in Afghanistan, and how Army prison guards, accused of torturing and murdering inmates in Iraq and Afghanistan, "treat prisoners strictly, but fairly."
Such crude government-supplied propaganda would be laughable were it not being passed off as news on America's TV stations. Even sadder, nothing about the sycophantic reports seems out of the ordinary.
The first casualty of this taxpayer-financed misinformation campaign is the truth.
Mr. Bush must have been delighted to learn from a March 16 Washington Post-ABC News poll that 56 percent of Americans still thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believed Iraq provided direct support to al-Qaida.
Americans believe these lies not because they are stupid but because they are good media consumers. The explosive effect of this propaganda is amplified as a few pro-war, pro-government media moguls consolidate their grip over the majority of news outlets. Media monopoly and militarism go hand in hand.
It's time for the American media to un-embed themselves from the U.S. government. We need media that are fiercely independent, that ask the hard questions and hold those in power accountable. Only then will government propaganda be seen for what it is and citizens be able to make choices informed by reality, not self-serving misinformation. Anything less is a disservice to the servicemen and women of this country and a disservice to a democratic society.
Amy Goodman, host of the radio and TV news show Democracy Now!, and David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother Jones, are authors of The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them, just published in paperback by Hyperion.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Nov 3, 2006 7:59:01 GMT 4
The Dixie Chicks Ad NBC Doesn’t Want You To SeeNBC is refusing to air an ad for the new Dixie Chicks documentary, “Shut Up & Sing.” Variety reports, “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it ‘cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.’” Harvey Weinstein, who is distributing the movie, issued the following statement: It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America. The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American. ThinkProgress has obtained the ad NBC doesn’t want you to see. Watch it at: thinkprogress.org/2006/10/27/dixie-chicks-advertisement-nbc/ More on Shut Up and Sing, including when it comes to your city, at: www.myspace.com/shutupandsing ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Big Media Interlocks with Corporate AmericaBy Peter Phillips Mainstream media is the term often used to describe the collective group of big TV, radio and newspapers in the United States. Mainstream implies that the news being produced is for the benefit and enlightenment of the mainstream population—the majority of people living in the US. Mainstream media include a number of communication mediums that carry almost all the news and information on world affairs that most Americans receive. The word media is plural, implying a diversity of news sources. However, mainstream media no longer produce news for the mainstream population—nor should we consider the media as plural. Instead it is more accurate to speak of big media in the US today as the corporate media and to use the term in the singular tense—as it refers to the singular monolithic top-down power structure of self-interested news giants. A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate size university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In fact, eight out of ten big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other. NBC and the Washington Post both have board members who sit on Coca Cola and J. P. Morgan, while the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family of interlocks and shared interests. The following are but a few of the corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US: New York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark, Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette, G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody's Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM, Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble, Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette, Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo, Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target, Pepsi, AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton Can we trust the news editors at the Washington Post to be fair and objective regarding news stories about Lockheed-Martin defense contract over-runs? Or can we assuredly believe that ABC will conduct critical investigative reporting on Halliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq? If we believe the corporate media give us the full un-censored truth about key issues inside the special interests of American capitalism, then we might feel that they are meeting the democratic needs of mainstream America. However if we believe — as increasingly more Americans do— that corporate media serves its own self-interests instead of those of the people, than we can no longer call it mainstream or refer to it as plural. Instead we need to say that corporate media is corporate America, and that we the mainstream people need to be looking at alternative independent sources for our news and information. Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. For a listing of current censored news stories see www.projectcensored.org/ Sonoma State University students Bridget Thornton and Brit Walters conducted the research on the media interlocks. Source: www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/big_media_interlocks.html
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Post by lacunon on Nov 11, 2006 19:25:21 GMT 4
Hello All, Some very asute replies and commentary posted here. However... One of the most significant problems facing this small and precious planet, is that the human species has forgotten how to ritually remain silent- say a prayer in favor of the spiritual powers that we have abandoned. Perhaps quietly influence some unfolding of events, in those places of time that our collective brain-niose and egos have impaired and displaced. Many people pray daily, but most prayers go into the world of the spirits, and implore favor for individual "needs," or "wants." I call this form of prayer 'psychic suction,' as it assumes we are totally inept in terms of our ability to influence the events of our thought processes, and gain individual control of our collective Self. Fear produces brain noise. Hunger produces brain noise. "Productivity" and desire, produce brain noise. Whilst the above mentioned themes work well for those who wish to control you, it certianly isn't effective in terms of how you wish to guide your own personal future. Nor does it positivly influence the future of the planet we are currently in the process of destroying... If no one went to the polls to empower the thugs we employ with our fear, would not the thugs be dis-empowered?
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Nov 20, 2006 19:16:41 GMT 4
The Decline of Journalism By Thomas D. Williams t r u t h o u t | Report Monday 20 November 2006 If some doomsday industry analysts are to be believed, newspapers are laid out and stacked neatly inside their own future death warehouses, not only in the United States, but worldwide. "October was a pretty depressing month for national newspapers. While circulations slide, the industry news has been dominated by job cuts and staff unrest, particularly among journalists," England's Guardian Unlimited reported in November. A month earlier, Der Spiegel, the intellectual German news magazine, disclosed that more and more, German journalists are leaving the print media to get safer and more lucrative jobs with corporate public relations agencies. But some concerned and dedicated journalistic observers both inside and outside the US news business believe the demise or baggage-seat status of newspapers is a farfetched theory. It is promoted, say news insiders, by corporate executives operating large newspaper chains. They are engrossed in making news collection as cheap as possible, while forcing a larger advertising layout in newspapers at the expense of the formerly generous pages of a variety of local, national and international news. And as they do, publishers and editors claim to be inventing a new, easy-to-read, streamlined form of tabloid attractive to all ages, particularly the younger set. Threat of Extinction Published explanations of fiscal threats to newspapers from so-called industry communications experts and corporate news executives sound so logical. Their mantra is: the news business is under constant threat of extinction from fierce Internet advertising competition, extraordinary increases in newsprint costs and declining newspaper profit margins. It is hard to question news executives' assertions that the Internet is a modern information superhighway, easier to access, keenly popular with a younger generation of site-Googling activists. As a result, experts say, newspapers are losing much of their classified and display advertising to a host of flashy, photogenic and even audio-video-oriented Internet sites. Only older adults, used to washing ink off their hands, would read a newspaper, those same experts say. Newspapers have fought back, creating their own Internet sites with free news and paid advertising. In spite of the Internet's allure, and a variety of news sites like Salon and Slate, many competing newspapers are still making 20 percent profits. That is five percent more than used to be acceptable in the decades when publishers understood the costly but essential responsibility of being part of the Fourth Estate, while scrutinizing and reporting on government and corporate corruption. Profitable and Resilient In its 2005 state of the news media, Rick Edmunds of the Poynter Institute says, "As businesses, newspapers are strong, highly profitable and resilient. In good times and mediocre, the industry now boasts operating margins in the low to middle 20-percent range, a bit less than Microsoft and Dell, but higher even than pharmaceuticals." Hosts of editors, reporters and readers are angry just listening to and repeatedly reading what they consider "excuses" to increase profits while eroding probing enterprise journalism. Those committed to public service news and investigative reporting believe grave industry profits to be manipulative, shallow or misleading. In fact, the very rationale for saving newspapers - cost cutting, layoffs and buyouts - is thought to have created circulation and profit drop-offs, and to foster the very predictions of a dark, deadly fiscal whirlpool. The bigger the staff and cost cuts, the more advertisers and readers are scared away, indeed creating loss of disgusted readers and lesser profits. As newspaper size shrinks, experienced reporters and editors are replaced by relative greenhorns. Then, the comparative evidence in daily published reporting shows a wide variety of in-depth stories and features morphing into larger sensational headlines, bigger photos, news graphics and repetitious bad news dominated by politics, crime and war. Lock on Talent Paul Marks, 53, spent 30 years of his life as a reporter in more than one newspaper before he became discouraged by the lock on his development and talent, and left the ever-declining staff of the Hartford Courant this year. He said he once again feels professionally energetic and less creatively constrained as an aerospace and speechwriter for the president of Pratt & Whitney, a manufacturer of aircraft engines, gas turbines and space propulsion systems. As an eventual result of declining staff, Marks said, Courant editors cut back on reporter training, workshops, fellowships and conferences. Reporters were sometimes trapped collecting and writing a workaday 10-inch story instead of attending a rare all-day, local seminar on an assigned specialty - in his case the energy industry. When he and other reporters wanted to be reassigned to expand their careers, Marks said, they frequently were blocked because cutbacks made it difficult for editors to transfer them to better assignments with so few replacements. And, as time and cuts wore on, said Marks, reporters had difficulty suggesting time-consuming, in-depth stories because they were needed instead for day-to-day routine coverage. "The people who had good local or deep sources and thorough understanding of the political landscape the Courant lost to attrition," said Marks. "As a result, the Hartford Courant just became another parachute in news organization, like TV stations or the Associated Press." "Every time a newspaper loses staff, it forces those remaining to take on more duties in the effort to continue the paper's core mission ... to create a strong local report," Les Gura, metro editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, told the Poynter Online journalism site. "The problem?" he asked. "If you reduce staff, you are going to have to either cut local coverage, or add duties to those remaining to maintain local coverage." Readers Rebelled As reporters were being pulled out of some towns that supplied prime circulation, said Marks, local readers were pelting the paper with e-mails, phone calls and letters complaining about the loss of published news in their towns. Still other readers are being fed a steady diet of news features, initiated from such superficial inspirations as eunuchs collecting taxes in India. Such oddities can be easily collected by a reporter from the Internet and rewritten, a task that saves the reporter the time it takes to explore on the street for a more fascinating, readable local feature, said Marks. However, the Courant's newly appointed top editor, Cliff Teusch, has said the cuts are merely a challenge for editors and reporters to reinvent ways to cover news for a "thriving" newspaper. "We all know very well the grander reinvention agenda that faces us today," Teutsch told the staff recently. "We need to make the smartest, boldest moves we can as we confront challenges in circulation and advertising and changes in how people get their news and information. As a staff, you have shown great enthusiasm for this in the numerous innovative ideas you have submitted in recent days." Bob Greene was a longtime investigative reporter and editor for Newsday and the founder of the journalism program at Hofstra University. He is perhaps one of the foremost experts in the country on investigative journalism. Greene suggests the innovation Teutsch mentioned has disappeared. "Reduced news staffs lead to gradual abdication of responsibility for comprehensive and insightful news coverage," he said. "The quarterly report drives public corporations, including those holding and publishing newspapers," says Greene. "When many of our great newspapers were owned by individual persons or families, they were willing to reduce their profit margins in any given quarter or year if it came to maintaining reporting staff or devoting much time and money to investigative and other forms of public service reporting. This was in tacit acknowledgment that their businesses also had a unique Constitutional responsibility to fully inform. Profits Are the Goal "In this respect, I can think of publishers like the Taylor family and the Boston Globe, Alicia Patterson and Newsday, the Bingham family with the Louisville Courier Journal, the Chandler family and the Los Angeles Times, the Pulliam family in both Indianapolis and Phoenix and many others, big and small. These newspapers and others of their kin are now owned by public corporations, where constantly increasing profits are the paramount goal," says Greene. Pat Feeley, a former Connecticut resident now living in Colorado, is a veteran newspaper reader who buys hard copies of the Coloradoan, and regularly reads the New York Times online, as well as sometimes the online Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, "and even the [Hartford] Courant." She thinks news executives, editors, reporters and readers, too, have allowed their public service values and native intelligence to erode. Instead, she says, they have become mesmerized by starlit gossip and scandals, money-making, power politics, Internet blogs, television and conformity. "Newspapers and journalists themselves are slipping," says Feeley, "and most have adapted ineptly to the succession of electronic media. The public companies have become hysterically responsive to the 'expectations' of Wall Street.... [News] is a mature industry, and a profitable one, and it isn't going to have growth like Microsoft or Crocs or Google before the bubble burst. I think it is managing for the short term, not the longer one. "Don't discount the decline of American education," she said, "and the rise of the consumerist imperatives as sources of trouble in the newspaper trade. We now think we should be entertained from infancy to senility, and aren't willing to work to understand difficult concepts, other cultures, other points of view, nor do many citizens have the skills to do any of that. This goes for journalists as well as readers," she explained. "We keep seeing what we want to see; we keep following the herd, as in the hero worship that kept Bush in office with scare tactics. [Some] journalists and publishers knew better, but were afraid to say anything for fear of being tabbed as 'disloyal' or 'un-American.'" Simplistic Thinking "This is the kind of simplistic thinking that says, 'You're for us or against us' was contagious," said Feeley. "Fear and greed too are powerful motivators. I think the scariest thing is how many people listen to and read only [information] that agrees with their point of view; the proliferation of purported news outlets permits one to do that. If you are narrow, you only get narrower that way, and the country gets more polarized." Although newspaper executives like Dennis FitzSimons, chairman, president and CEO of Tribune Company in Chicago, say the declining revenues of newspapers require responsible officials like himself to repeatedly cut expenses and reduce staffing, those closer to the printing presses believe these reductions are themselves the cause of lost revenues and quality newspapers. As a result of the pressures from stockholders and boards of directors, the Tribune is actively trying to extract itself from the fiscal-vs-journalistic- value controversy. Its officials are proposing to sell out as a corporate whole or by auctioning off its newspapers and television stations to individual buyers. The latter prospect has encouraged some dedicated journalists to hope that selected parts of the news business will flash back decades. That's when some newspapers were owned by rich individuals who allowed professional editors and reporters to pursue in-depth news. But a few of the potential buyers swooping in over the Tribune, it is believed, are thought to have ambitions to influence news content for more selfish schemes. But as newsroom cuts continue to threaten the product, the corporate goal of attracting new buyers willing to pay the highest of prime sales prices seems to become less realistic to some inside the news profession. And, even if that goal is reached, it is clear to many editors and reporters that new owners will have to improve staffing levels and encourage a wide variety of in-depth story collection. Tradition Destroyed "Reporters and editors once had a vocation and worked in a place that generated hope and the possibility of justice," says Andy Thibault, a former reporter and editor who now operates, investigates, reports and edits from his own Connecticut news blog. "The so-called news executives have sold out and destroyed a grand tradition." In her last column before she took a buyout in December 2005 as part of staff reductions at the Hartford Courant, 27-year news veteran Michele Jacklin was clearly fed up with constant erosion at the nation's oldest continuously published broadsheet. "In the 1980s, the Courant staffed its Capitol bureau [covering the state legislature] with five reporters. [Still] other reporters were assigned to cover the full panoply of state agencies, from the Department of Transportation to the Properties Review Board. Today, there are fewer reporters in the Capitol bureau and many of the state and regional beats have been dismantled," wrote Jacklin in "This Columnist's Last Stand." "Not long ago, a spokesman for a major agency confided that employees once lived in fear of opening the newspaper and reading about some bureaucratic misstep that was sure to land them in hot water. That anxiety has gradually dissipated," Jacklin wrote. Heft of Cotton Candy She continued: "Nowadays, the spokesman said, agency officials don't worry about embarrassing revelations. The news media don't dig as deeply as they once did, don't attend hearings as often as they used to, don't go to as many press conferences as in the days of old. Sad to say, Connecticut's Fourth Estate no longer believes that informing and educating voters about their political leaders and government is its chief responsibility. As a substitute for hard news and insightful analysis, readers are served up a steady diet of splashy graphics, celebrity gossip and stories with the heft of cotton candy." The Associated Press's recent headlines tell it all: Tribune Said to Be Mulling Sale of Company in Pieces Google Targets Newspaper Advertising LA Daily News Publisher Out, 21 Jobs Cut Akron, Ohio, Newspaper Cuts Top Newsroom Job San Diego Newspaper Offers Buyouts Surprisingly, despite today's predictions of the demise of newspapers as a result of declining advertising and readership in the Internet age's takeover of communications, part of this dragged-out story is decades old. The movie "Network," about the perils of network television news aiming daily sensationalistic programming at viewers and advertisers to make millions of dollars for corporations, was produced 30 years ago. "Deadline USA," another and even older 1950s film, starring the legendary Humphrey Bogart as the feisty city managing editor bettling to save his newspaper as it is readying to to be sold off for profit-taking, has, as well, a familiar story line in this 21st century. On one hot polar extremity is Bogart's character, editor Ed Hutchenson - and in "Network," actor Peter Finch's character, wild and crazy news anchor Howard Beale - while on the other frigid extremity are multiple imaginary, money-hungry corporate executives. The two courageous characters, editor Hutchenson and news anchor Beale, look to many harried modern-day newsmen like rare dinosaurs, but are they? "Not Going to Take This" As his world as a newsman morphs more into entertainment and his very professional existence is threatened, Beale screams at his TV viewers: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" And editor Hutchenson is outraged and unrelenting - fighting on all fronts for his news colleagues and for the perpetuation of his sacred journalism, says a New York Times movie review. Where are Beale and Hutchenson today? They are still around, but seldom seen in the columns of their own newspapers. One of them lost his battle with corporate executives recently. Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet was ousted November 7 for taking the "mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" attitude toward staff cuts at the paper. Eventually, after he continually refused to go along with the latest in a series of staff cuts ordered by Tribune Company executives controlling the Times, Baquet, to the dismay of reporters and editors, was forced out earlier this month. "Sometimes when I sit down with editors and managing editors, I find them all too willing to buy the argument for cuts," Baquet was quoted as saying. "We need to be a feistier bunch. It is the job of the editor of the paper to put up a little more of a fight than we've been willing to put up in the past, because a public service is at stake. We understand the business model is changing and we have to do some cutting," he said, "but don't understand it too much." But, of course, Baquet, instead of covering city hall as a newsman, was fighting it as the editor closest to corporate executives' reach. And, now he's gone from the Times after 19 years as a journalist there and elsewhere. Eight years earlier, as an investigative reporter for the same Tribune that pressured him out as editor, he won a Pulitzer Prize for leading a team of three in documenting corruption in the Chicago City Council. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas "Dennie" Williams is a former state and federal court reporter, specializing in investigations, for the Hartford Courant. Since the 1970s, he has written extensively about irregularities in the Connecticut Superior Court and Probate Court systems for disciplining both judges and lawyers for misconduct. His stories about the corrupt activities inside the Hartford Probate Court helped encourage a federal grand jury probe leading to the conviction of the court's investigator for corrupt activities, the first attempted impeachment of a judge or any official in the state's history, and a legislative probe that resulted in major changes of the court's disciplinary system for state lawyers. Another of his investigative inquiries in the 1980s led to the forced resignation of a Superior Court judge who was hiring and appointing friends and relatives for lucrative court duties. His most recent freelance stories exposed failings of the Connecticut Judicial Review Council, investigating misconduct by Superior Court judges and the regular one-and-a-half-year delays in deciding State Appellate Court cases. He has received numerous awards for his investigative and in-depth reporting.Source: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006Z.shtml
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