michelle
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Post by michelle on Dec 6, 2006 5:47:19 GMT 4
Ten Fallacies about the Violence in IraqBy John Tirman AlterNet November 28, 2006 The distortions about the violence in Iraq persist even as the mayhem increases. Here are ten of the worst myths being spread in the media. The escalating violence in Iraq's civil war is now earning considerable attention as we pass yet another milestone -- U.S. occupation there, in two weeks, will exceed the length of the Second World War for America. While the news media have finally started to grapple with the colossal amount of killing, a number of misunderstandings persist. Some are willful deceptions. Let's look at a few of them: 1. The U.S. is a buffer against more violence. This is perhaps the most resilient conjecture that has no basis in fact. Iraqis themselves do not believe it. In a State Department poll published in September, huge majorities say the U.S. is directly responsible for the violence. The upsurge of bloodshed in Baghdad seems to confirm the Iraqis' view, at least by inference. The much-publicized U.S. effort to bring troops to Baghdad to quell sectarian killing has accompanied a period of increased mortality in the city. 2. The killers do it to influence U.S. politics. This was the mantra of right-wing bloggers and cable blowhards like Bill O'Reilly, who asserted time and again before November 7 that the violence was a "Tet offensive" designed to tarnish Bush and convince Americans to vote for Democrats. This is American solipsism, at which the right wing excels. If anything, the violence has grown since November 7. English-language sources have more than 1,000 dead since the Bush rejection at the polls. Bill, are the Iraqi fighters now aiming at the Iowa caucuses in '08? 3. The "Lancet" numbers are bogus. Since the only scientific survey of deaths in Iraq was published in The Lancet in early October, the discourse on Iraqi casualties has changed. But many in media and policy circles are still in denial about the scale of mayhem. Anthony Cordesman, Fred Kaplan, and Michael O'Hanlon, among many others, fail to understand the method of the survey -- widely used and praised by leading epidemiologists -- which concluded that between 400,000 and 700,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict. One knowledegable commentator describes the Lancet survey as "flypaper for innumerates," and the deniers indeed look foolishly innumerate when they state that there was "no way" there could be more than 65,000 or 100,000 deaths. As soon as that bit of ignorance rolled off their lips, the Iraq Health Ministry admitted to 150,000 civilians killed by Sunni insurgents alone, which would be in the Lancet ballpark. Much other evidence suggests the Lancet numbers are about right. (See "The Human cost of the War in Iraq" [http://web.mit.edu/cis/human-cost-war-101106.pdf]; fyi, I commissioned the study. More on this another time.) 4. Syria and Iran are behind the violence. There is no compelling reason why the two neighbors would foment large-scale violence that could spill over to threaten their regimes. Iran is in the driver's seat -- as everyone not blinded by neo-con fantasies knew in advance -- with its Shia cousins in power; Syria has its own regime stability problems and does not need the large influx of refugees or potential jihadis. That both are happy to make life hard for the U.S. is not a secret (call it their Monroe Doctrine). But are they organizing the extreme and destabilizing violence we've seen this year? Doubtful. And, there's very little evidence to support this piece of blame-someone-else. 5. The "Go Big" strategy of the Pentagon could work. The Pentagon apparently is about to forward three options to Bush for a retreat: "Go Big," meaning more troops for a short time, "Go Long," a gradual withdrawal while training Iraqis, and "Go Home," acknowledging defeat and getting out. Go Big is what McCain and Zinni and others are proposing, as if adding 20,000 or 30,000 troops will do the trick. The argument about more troops, which speaks also to the "incompetence dodge" (i.e., that the war wasn't wrong, just badly managed), has one problem: no one can convincing prove that modest increments in troop strength will change the security situation in Iraq (see #1 above). One would need 300,000 or more troops to have a chance of pacifying Iraq, and that is neither politically feasible or logistically possible, and is therefore a nonstarter. So is "Go Big." 6. Foreign fighters, especially jihadis, are fueling the violence. This was largely discredited but is making a comeback as Washington's search for scapegoats intensifies. By most estimates, including the Pentagon's, foreign fighters make up a small fraction of violent actors in Iraq -- perhaps 10 percent overall. (This is based on identifying people arrested as fighters.) Some of the more spectacular attacks have been carried out by al Qaeda or its imitators, but overall the violence is due to three forces: U.S. military, Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgents, and Shia militia, with minor parts played by Kurdish peshmerga in Kirkuk and the foreign bad boys. 7. If we do not defeat the violent actors there, they will follow us here. This is now the sole remaining justification for U.S. involvement in the war. If the numbers about foreign fighters are correct, then it is plainly wrong. The main anatgonists are Iraqis, and they will remain there to fight it out for many years. That does not mean we have not created many "terrorists" who would do us harm, as U.S. intelligence agencies assert, but killing them in Iraq is not a plausible option. It's too difficult; aggressive counterinsurgency creates more fighters the longer we stay and harder we try; and they might not be there. 8. The violence is about Sunni-Shia mutual loathing; a pox on both their houses. This is the emerging "moral clarity" of the right wing, that we gave it our best, we handed the tools of freedom to Iraqis, and they'd rather kill each other. That there was longstanding antagonism, stemming from decades of Sunni Arab domination and repression, is well known. But the truly horrifying scale of violence we see now took many months to brew, and is built on the violence begun by the U.S. military and the lack of economic stability, political participation, etc., that the occupation wrought. Equally as important, sectarian killing found its political justification in the constitution fashioned by U.S. advisers that essentially split the country into three factions, giving them a very solid set of incentives to go to war with each other. 9. The war is an Iraqi affair, and the best we can do now is train them to enforce security. This is the more upbeat version of #8, the "Go Long" strategy that sees training as a panacea. Despite three years of serious attempts, the U.S. training programs are bogged down by the sectarian violence itself, or by incompetence all round. No one who has looked at this carefully believes that training Iraqis is a near-term solution. It's a useful ruse as an exit strategy, blaming the victims for violence and failure. 10. Trust the same people who caused or endorsed the war to tell us what to do next. We know who they are: Bush, Cheney, McCain, and other cronies; the neo-cons now increasingly on the periphery of power but still bleating (Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Adelman, Lieberman), the liberal hawks, and the right-wing media (Krauthamer, Fox News, Glenn Beck, phalangist bloggers, et al). They say, "just finish the job." Just finish the job... at a human cost of how many more dead? How many lives ruined? How much more damage to U.S.-Arab relations? How much anti-Muslim racism fomented to justify the killing? The distortions about the violence in Iraq persist even as the mayhem increases. Yesterday there was a report about 100 widows a day being created in Iraq. A Times of London report from last summer notes that gravediggers in one Baghdad cemetery are handling 200 bodies daily, compared with 60 before the war. The situation of the displaced is becoming a humanitarian crisis that will soon rival the worst African cases; the middle and upper classes have fled, leaving the poor to cope. So the poor from the U.S. go to beat up the poor in Iraq, or stand by helplessly as the Iraqi poor ravage each other. That is the harsh reality of violence in Iraq. A half million dead. More than two million displaced. No end in sight. Beware the delusions.Source: www.alternet.org/waroniraq/44771/
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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 Jan 7, 2007 19:52:26 GMT 4
The Low Profile: CNN and the New York Times Execute a Denial of History In the rush to celebrate the death of the "butcher of Baghdad," we are up to our necks in denial.John Collins, Electronic Iraq, 31 December 2006 An existential question: If journalism is the first draft of history, then what is journalism that denies history? Is it still journalism? The question came to mind Friday night as CNN's Anderson Cooper led Americans through the initial moments following the execution of Saddam Hussein. Conveniently carried out just five minutes past the hour when "Anderson Cooper 360" goes on the air, the execution provided an opportunity for viewers to think about the long story of the Iraqi leader's brutal reign. Yet when it came to informing the audience about one key aspect of that history - the role of the United States in helping to create and maintain the "butcher of Baghdad" - CNN offered only amnesia. Throughout the CNN broadcast, as news gradually trickled in concerning the details of the execution, viewers were treated to a highly selective loop of stock images of the condemned: Saddam brandishing a tribal sword offered as a gift by one of his fawning subjects, Saddam firing a gun, Saddam laughing his cartoonish dictator laugh, Saddam defiantly reading a statement at the start of the U.S. invasion in 2003, Saddam smoking a cigar, Saddam being checked for lice by U.S. military doctors, Saddam wildly gesturing during his recent trial. And the photo of Saddam shaking hands with U.S. envoy Donald Rumsfeld back in December 1983? Absent. With the inevitable headline ("Death of a Dictator") already in place, the storyline was set. This was to be about Saddam facing "justice" for crimes that he alone committed. The U.S. presence in the story was to be, at most, a ghostly one limited to providing legal and moral guidance from behind the scenes. As if to confirm this paternalistic and self-serving fiction, CNN's Elaine Quijano dutifully reported from Waco that President Bush, not wanting to appear that he was "gloating" over the final humiliation of the Iraqi leader, was keeping a low profile. Viewers who were dissatisfied with "Anderson Cooper 360" might have found themselves turning to the New York Times for a better sense of perspective. Yet while yesterday's obituary in the Times was impressive for its length (over 5000 words), it provided little more in terms of historical context. Rather than offering readers a responsible assessment of their own government's role in the life and crimes of the Iraqi leader, author Neil MacFarquhar elected to repeat the kind of sensational details Americans have come to expect when the country's designated enemies are profiled: Saddam as megalomaniac (he believed "he was destined by God to rule Iraq forever" and possessed "boundless egotism and self-delusion"), Saddam as Mafioso (the "Corleone-like feuds" of his family "became the stuff of gory public soap operas"), Saddam as traumatized child ("persistent stories suggest that Mr. Hussein's stepfather delighted in humiliating the boy and forced him to tend sheep"), Saddam as sadistic murderer (while reading the names of Baath party officials allegedly involved in a supposed coup plot, "Mr. Hussein paused from reading occasionally to light his cigar, while the room erupted in almost hysterical chanting demanding death to traitors"), Saddam as narcissist ("He dyed his hair black and refused to wear his reading glasses in public, according to interviews with exiles"), Saddam as paranoid ("Delicacies like imported lobster were first dispatched to nuclear scientists to be tested for radiation and poison"), and on and on. And the inconvenient history of U.S. support for the man now being mentioned in the same breath as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot? Aside from a single reference to the U.S. decision to back Iraq in its war with Iran, the obituary is silent. All other references to the U.S. cover events from 1990 onwards. The choice of verbs tells it all: Saddam, his regime, and his country are variously described as being "toppled," "routed," "penetrated," and "expelled" by U.S. military might. One has to look to the bloggers, muckrakers and scholars to find the verbs that tell the rest of the story: "installed," "provided," "enabled," "encouraged," and "sold." Reading and watching the kind of mainstream coverage provided by CNN and the New York Times during the last 48 hours, one could be forgiven for believing that the relationship between Saddam and the U.S. had always been one of enmity and violence. Yet as Juan Cole and others have tirelessly pointed out, the U.S. government began "enabling" Saddam as early as 1959 when the CIA enlisted his help in undermining the government of Abdul Karim Qasim. The cozy relationship, which it now appears included U.S. support for the coup that put Saddam in power in 1968, continued into the 1980s. The infamous Rumsfeld visit symbolized the U.S. policy of providing military and diplomatic assistance to the Iraqi regime in its catastrophic war with Iran. Cole points out that Secretary of State George Shultz even went so far as to shield Saddam from a possible UN condemnation for Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran. At a time when the airwaves are filled with pious reminders of the need to "remember the victims" of Saddam's brutality, how are we to read the systematic absence of references to the U.S. role in helping to produce these and other victims? It seems that while President Bush was keeping a "low profile" in Waco, the corporate media were safely ensconced in a bunker of amnesia. Indeed, "low profile" is an apt description for the way that the corporate media continue to treat the scandalous history of U.S. support for repressive regimes across the globe. In his enormously useful book States of Denial (Polity Press, 2001), Stanley Cohen argues that most denial can be divided into three categories: literal denial ("it did not happen"), interpretive denial ("it happened, but it's not what it looks like"), and implicatory denial ("it happened, and it is what it looks like, but there's nothing wrong with it"). In other words, we tend to deny either the facts, the interpretation of the facts, and/or the moral implications of the facts. In the rush to celebrate the death of the "butcher of Baghdad," we are up to our necks in all three types of denial. The failure to provide a full account of this horrifying chapter of Iraqi and American history is, to be sure, an act of literal denial. If two leaders shake hands, but the photo is not shown on CNN, did they really shake hands? One is reminded of the oft-quoted statement by an anonymous New York Times staff member: "If the Times wasn't there, it didn't happen." Of course, the facts about the U.S. role in Saddam's brutality are not always literally denied, and this is where the second and third types of denial come into play. No doubt in the coming days we will hear numerous commentators attempt to "spin" the facts, as has often happened in discussions of U.S. ambassador April Glaspie's famous "green light" to Saddam just before Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It wasn't really a green light, we'll be told. Yes, it was a handshake, but that doesn't mean it was an endorsement of Saddam's policies. The boldest (and, one must add, the most honest) defenders of U.S. policy will employ the language of implicatory denial, insisting, when pressed, that U.S. support for Saddam was justified under the circumstances. We'll be told that the realities of the Cold War, or the struggle against the threat posted by the Iranian revolution, or the need for maintaining U.S. access to cheap fossil fuels, created a context in which the U.S. had no choice but to get its hands dirty. In this light, it seems that the initial coverage of Saddam's execution has served as a collective ritual hand-washing designed to reassure Americans that they really are the blameless leaders of a cosmic struggle against "evil." And so the answer to the existential question comes into view. Today's mainstream journalism, even "live" TV, is a far cry from the first draft of history. Instead, it functions largely as a transmission of selective history that has been drafted--and airbrushed, and sanitized, and rearranged, and distorted--long before it ever reaches our eyes and ears. John Collins is Associate Professor of Global Studies at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. He is the author of Occupied by Memory: The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency (NYU Press, 2004) and the co-editor of Collateral Language: A User's Guide to America's New War (NYU Press, 2002).Source: electroniciraq.net/news/2779.shtml
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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!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jan 21, 2007 19:10:24 GMT 4
"60-Minutes" Taped Soldier Making Appeal for Redress, Now Refuses to Air the Story [/color] "60 Minutes" interviewed Ronn Cantu and other active-duty soldiers challenging this war with an appeal for redress. Please call CBS and ask them to air the 60 Minutes Appeal for Redress segment. They have it ready to go but it's been pushed back twice now. Call 202-457-4321 opt. 3 opt. 4 opt. 1 or 2 or 3 (there are three different producers and you can leave a message for each of them). The main number for CBS News in New York is 212-975-4321. You can Email 60 Minutes here: www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.shtml
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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!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Aug 22, 2007 15:00:47 GMT 4
Suicide Bombings - A Favourite US Counter-Insurgency Tactic By Aeneas 20 Aug 2007 Since 9-11 reports of "suicide bombings" have increased exponentially in the news. We are led to believe by the experts that it is one of the favorite weapons of the insurgency against the occupation forces, since it is a cheap and simple way to create chaos. Hardly a day goes by without at least one bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan being immediately seized upon by the media as the work of Iraqi insurgents. It is one thing for an insurgency to commit suicide bombings against the occupation forces, it is another thing entirely to use them to target and kill civilians. We have been brainwashed into believing that the insurgents in Iraq are such brutal, uncivilized, fanatical crazy extremists that they will anything to fight 'freedom' - even kill their own people. This picture presented to us by the US government and mainstream media is so insane that Joe Quinn, in response to the massive 'suicide' bombings in Mosul that killed 350+ people last week, felt confident to say: "The person who can present a convincing argument (i.e. logical and backed up with reliable data) that explains why any anti-American Arab or Islamic group, "terrorist" or otherwise, would kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as a response to the US occupation of Iraq, will receive a prize of 1 million USD." Looking at this from a historical perspective, precedence for the type of bombings in Iraq that are attributed to the insurgency or "al-Qaeda" is virtually non existent. During world war II, a number of countries were occupied by the Nazis. Countries such as France, Denmark, Norway and many others all had resistance movements who used various tactics to hamper the Nazi take over. Yet, there are no records whatsoever that the resistance fighters resorted to the mass murder of their fellow country men in an effort to evict the Nazis. Sure there was factional infighting, but nothing on the massive scale that we are seeing in Iraq. And of course, how could there be? It defies all logic. Fast forward to the Vietnam war and here too we find no evidence that the Vietcong waged a campaign to kill their own fellow citizens as part if the fight against American forces. Of course, there are those who would suggest that Muslims are a different breed, that they, like so many other ungrateful peoples who attempted to throw-off the chains of empire, are little more than uncivilised savages and we cannot therefore hope to understand their mentality or actions. Such an ill-informed attitude however is in no way backed up by any evidence and must therefore be dismissed for the obvious racism that it is. When the Iraqis first fought the British Empire in the 1920's, there was no "suicide bombings" by insurgents against Iraqis. On the contrary and according to good strategy, they united despite minor cultural and religious differences to confront the common British enemy. Likewise in Afghanistan during the 10 year war with the Soviet union there were no instances of suicide bombings targeting Afghan civilians. Here too, the Afghan tribes united despite previous disagreements against the common aggressor. Does no one find all of this even mildly odd? After 9-11, suddenly this bizarre phenomenon of an insurgency using suicide bombings against their own people rather than the invaders appears, as if to provide supporting evidence for the reality of the crazed "suicide bombing" hijackers that attacked America - or so the official story goes. Could the answer be as simple as that what is being touted as suicide bombings are in fact the work of US/British/Israeli counterinsurgency teams? In Iraq, are we in fact dealing with the what are better know as "false flag operations"? This certainly would explain a lot of the confusion over why Iraqi groups would kill their own people in response to a US invasion of their country. After all, the people who are dying by the hundreds every day in Iraq are the people who support the insurgency, and the US, British and Israeli forces in Iraq are fighting that insurgency, so who benefits from the daily mass murder of the supporters of the insurgency? Past counterinsurgency tactics involved such things as ethnic cleansing ("draining the dam" as this tactic was known) and/or the destruction of crops like with agent orange in the case of Vietnam. But these methods had little success. In recent years it seems that devious and deviant minds in the employ of the military industrial complex came up with much more insidious modern tactics. Roger Trinquier, an immensely influential French counter-insurgency expert, suggested in his book Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961) (Available online here) three simple principles of Counter Insurgency: 1. separate the guerrilla from the population that supports him; 2. occupy the zones that the guerrillas previously operated from, making them dangerous for him and turning the people against the guerrilla movement; 3. coordinate actions over a wide area and for a long enough time that the guerrilla is denied access to the population centres that could support him. Remote controlled bombings masquerading as "suicide bombings" that are carried out by the US, British and Israeli occupation forces fit these principles very neatly. By detonating bombs on a daily basis across Iraq and Afghanistan and via the propaganda organs touting them as being the work of Iraqi/Afghani "suicide bombers" belonging to the insurgency, the occupying military hopes to achieve several goals: cut off the widespread support base that the insurgency have amongst the Iraqis create tensions between religious lines, especially by ascribing the faked "suicide attacks" to either Shias or Sunnis. In other words divide and conquer. The sheer carnage shown on TV back in the West only supports the idea that the Iraqis/Afghans can't take care of their own country without help from the occupation forces or that they are uncivilised savages. This propaganda reinforces the US government's persistent claim that it would be dangerous to pull US troops out of Iraq and for the American military grunts on the streets of Iraq it helps them to rationalise their continued presence. Either they are trying to show a lesser class of human how to become civilised, or they are doing god's work in wiping them out. There is ample evidence for the inquiring reader to discover that so-called suicide bombings against civilians are not the product of the insurgency. Some will say that it is the product of "al-Qaeda", which is true if you first clarify that "al-Qaeda" is simply a tool of the very same counterinsurgency, namely CIA/MI6/Mossad. Always ask yourself, "who benefits?", and in this case it is pretty obvious who doesn't benefit. For years Israel has very effectively used 'suicide' bombings as a tool in the perpetration of its slow genocide of the Palestinian people, with the effect that, today, the world's sympathy lies with the perpetrator (Israel). As a result, all peace initiatives have been stalled and the world has provided tacit if not outright approval of Israel's covert genocidal policies. The knowledge gained by the Israelis has certainly been passed on to the their counterparts in MI6 and the CIA as this SOTT editorial from September 2005 illustrates: "Today in Basra, Southern Iraq, two members of the British SAS (Special Ops) were caught, 'in flagrante' as it were, dressed in full "Arab garb", driving a car full of explosives and shooting and killing two official Iraqi policemen. This fact, finally reported by the mainstream press, goes to the very heart and proves accurate much of what we have been saying on the Signs of the Times page for several years. The following are facts, indisputable by all but the most self-deluded: Number 1: The US and British invasion of Iraq was NOT for the purpose of bringing "freedom and democracy" to the Iraqi people, but rather for the purpose of securing Iraq's oil resources for the US and British governments and expanding their control over the greater Middle East. Number 2: Both the Bush and Blair governments deliberately fabricated evidence (lied) about the threat the Saddam posed to the west and his links to the mythical 'al-Qaeda' in order to justify their invasion. Number 3: Dressed as Arabs, British (and CIA and Israeli) 'special forces' have been carrying out fake "insurgent" attacks, including 'car suicide bombings' against Iraqi policemen and Iraqi civilians (both Sunni and Shia) for the past two years. Evidence would suggest that these tactics are designed to provide continued justification for a US and British military presence in Iraq and to ultimately embroil the country in a civil war that will lead to the breakup of Iraq into more manageable statelets, much to the joy of the Israeli right and their long-held desire for the establishment of biblical 'greater Israel' Coming not long after the botched London bombings carried out by British MI5 where an eyewitness reported that the floor of one of the trains had been blown inwards (how can a bomb in a backpack or on a "suicide bomber" INSIDE the train ever produce such an effect), more than anything else today's event in Basra highlights the desperation that is driving the policy-makers in the British government. British intelligence would do well to think twice about carrying out any more 'false flag' operations until they can achieve the 'professionalism' of the Israeli Mossad - they always make it look convincing and rarely suffer the ignominy of being caught in the act and having the faces of their erstwhile "terrorists" plastered across the pages of the mainstream media. " As in Israel, 'suicide' bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan often occur at a time that most benefits the occupiers. A recent 'suicide' bombing in Afghanistan illustrates this aspect well: Seventeen civilians, a dozen of them schoolboys, were killed and 30 others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday. The timing just couldn't have been better. NATO had been under a lot of international pressure due to their random use of Aerial bombings with very large numbers of civilian casualties. This incident (as in most cases) harmed no troops, most victims were children. The desired effect of the bombing was described in the article: The UN representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, was shocked. "I am especially concerned by the reports I am seeing of a large number of children being among the dead from todays bomb," he said in a statement." Such utter disregard for innocent lives is staggering and those behind this must be held responsible." You see? The enemy is uncivilised, crazy, half human in contrast to the civilised benevolent white crusaders who sacrifice so much in the fight against evil. The article concludes: "There have been more than 70 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, as compared with about 140 in all of 2006. Most are aimed at the security forces but civilians are usually the primary victims." It should be pointed out that these so-called suicide bombings seem to be a speciality of Western intelligence agencies and their client regimes. In recent months we have also heard a lot about suspicious suicide bombings targeting civilians in Pakistan, whose intelligence agency, ISI, has close ties to the CIA. In Chechnya there have been 28 acts of suicide bombings from June 2000 until 2006. The difference is that these attacks were against Russian civilians and not their own people. Perhaps the defining point is that Western (US/British/Israeli) counterinsurgency teams are not involved in these attacks because they do not wish to hand the Russians a victory. Certainly suicide bombings would demonise the Chechnyan rebels and provide propaganda value to the Russians. This is not to say that Russia does not engage in its own counter-insurgency, it is just that faked suicide bombings do not appear to form a core part of their strategy. As mentioned before, during the 10 years of Russian occupation of Afghanistan, no suicide attacks were carried out by the insurgency against the Afghan population. Why? It certainly didn't benefit the Americans to kill Afghans who were engaged in killing Russians, the key enemy of the Americans at the time. The Americans were heavily involved in recruiting and supplying the insurgency with all kinds of military hardware. Now however, the situation is different. In Afghanistan it serves the American agenda to murder as many Afghani civilians as possible under the cloak of Taliban "suicide bombings" because it provides the justification for the troops to stay there to fight this manufactured "evil". In Iraq, the goal is the same, with the added element of the Neocons' desire to destroy the real Iraqi resistance by dividing and alienating them from the ordinary people that support their fight against a brutal occupier. It seems that the American, Israel and British tactic in Iraq is that if the ordinary Iraqi people will not be intimidated into accepting occupation and rejecting the real insurgency, then they will be murdered. Plain and simple. Despite Joe Quinn's offer of 1 million dollars then, he can rest assured that it is unlikely that he will have to go and talk to the bank anytime soon. Source:www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/138504-Suicide+Bombings+-+A+Favourite+US+Counter-Insurgency+Tactic
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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!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Aug 23, 2007 16:06:41 GMT 4
FOX ATTACKS IRANrobertgreenwald Added 1 day ago · Also on:YouTube (100,143 views)QuicktimeMP3 Embed code for blog/MySpace: Sources in the video · Facts on Iran · Transcript [see Source below] I remember very clearly the daily fearmongering led by FOX as they cheered for war with Iraq. The 24/7 images, sound effects, yelling and threatening were an ever-present drumbeat for war. We had to invade, and we had to invade now.. anyone who didn't see that was a traitor. They viciously attacked those of us who worked to get out the truth. You'd think that with the complete failure in Iraq, those days would be behind us. Sadly, you'd be wrong. FOX wants war with Iran. It's almost too ridiculous to believe, but it's shockingly real. We've already compiled over 4 hours of FOX footage... the same images, sound effects, yelling and threatening that led the U.S. to invade Iraq is happening right now to sell a war with Iran. They are saying the exact same things!! Here is the video evidence, side-by-side with what they said about Iraq. This time is different though. We're prepared, and we have the means to alert people to what FOX is doing. Everyone has seen the terrible tragedy and the awful price paid by so many Iraqis and Americans. We know this is coming, and we can stop it. It was about this time in the lead-up to the Iraq war when the other TV networks started following FOX's lead. As CNN's Christiane Amanpour says in the video, they were intimidated by FOX into cheerleading for the Iraq war. WE CANNOT LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN. This is a critical moment, and we must send a message to the major television networks urging them to ask tough questions, be skeptical, and tell us what is really happening. They must not follow FOX down the road to another war. We've put together an open letter to the networks. Will you sign it? Please pssst the video and forward it to everyone you know. We must raise our voices now. This is so important, we cannot let history repeat itself. P.S. Here are some recent articles on the Iran issue: "Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran" (Guardian) "Prelude to an attack on Iran" (Bob Baer, Time) Bush admin labels Iran's 125k Revolutionary Guard troops "terrorists" (New York Times) Related videos FOX on Iran: "diplomacy won't work" Posted 1 day ago by DJK Fox says Iran helps the Shia, Sunni, Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc Posted 1 day ago by DJK FOX says Iran is an imminent threat Posted 1 day ago by DJK Former UN Ambassador "absolutely" wants U.S. to attack Iran Posted about 14 hours ago by jgilliam FOX says Iran is crazy Posted 1 day ago by DJK FOX on Iran's nuclear program and Middle East destabilization Posted 1 day ago by DJK Sign the Open Letter Tell the networks not to follow FOX down the road to war 26,029 signers Dear ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN,"My station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at FOX News." That is CNN's Christiane Amanpour explaining why the major television networks failed to accurately inform the public in the lead-up to the Iraq war, choosing instead to follow FOX's lead. Now, FOX is beating the drums for war with Iran. Robert Greenwald's short film, "FOX Attacks: Iran", outlines the evidence from the station's own broadcasts, comparing their reporting before the Iraq war with what they are saying now about Iran. You have a sacred responsibility to the American people to provide accurate and reliable information so we can best make the decisions which affect our lives. We urge you to accurately and thoroughly report all sides of this important story. Please do not blindly follow FOX down the road to another war. Sincerely, YOUR NAMEGo to this Source, to view film, sign Open Letter, and read other links:foxattacks.com/iran
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Aug 29, 2007 14:48:20 GMT 4
Did You Sign the Open Letter?: Tell the networks not to follow FOX down the road to war
How about it, folks, did you voice your opinion, have your say, use this vehicle to exercise your power? Do you use ANY of the links posted at the FH Forum to have your say, 'cause if not, don't whine about the state of our world. And for you who do take advantage of the information posted here, THANK YOU! I'd appreciate it if you would also throw us a bone and direct your friends to our forum.
Below is one person's voice; it was so good, I thought I'd share it with you. Thanks again.....MichelleFox News is nothing but state-run media, owned by the Bush/Cheney administration. It mimics the so-called "news" stations of dictatorships. In a dictatorship, however, citizens know not ever to believe state-run media and they know how to read between the lines of the drivel that state-run media pumps over the airwaves and ironically, those citizens are better informed than the American people. I don't believe ANYTHING any major news outlet says with regard to foreign or domestic policy. I hold the media responsible for the lies this administration perpetrated and disseminated. But I hold my fellow citizens responsible, as well, for believing the twaddle that Fox news and the rest of mainstream media peddles in a feeble attempt to justify unconscionable actions and encourage further outrageous assaults in the name of the American people. This is the most disgraceful era of media coverage in modern American history and for the first time, it is no better than some third-rate eastern European state-run BS emanating from a strong-man dictator. I never thought I'd see this day in this great nation. Disgusting. So show some spine and stop kowtowing to the pandering sycophants at Fox. The Emperor has no clothes. So freakin' show it already."
— By an anonymous signatory of the Open Letter to Tell the networks not to follow FOX down the road to war - Taken from FOX ATTACKS IRAN at: foxattacks.com/iran?utm_source=dems
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Sept 19, 2007 13:43:01 GMT 4
Bush’s Fake Sheik Whacked: The Surge and the Al Qaeda BunnyPublished September 17th, 2007 A special investigative report from inside Iraq by Greg Palast Monday, September 17, 2007- Did you see George all choked up? In his surreal TV talk on Thursday, he got all emotional over the killing by Al Qaeda of Sheik Abu Risha, the leader of the new Sunni alliance with the US against the insurgents in Anbar Province, Iraq. Bush shook Abu Risha’s hand two weeks ago for the cameras. Bush can shake his hand again, but not the rest of him: Abu Risha was blown away just hours before Bush was to go on the air to praise his new friend. Here’s what you need to know that NPR won’t tell you.
1. Sheik Abu Risha wasn’t a sheik. 2. He wasn’t killed by Al Qaeda. 3. The new alliance with former insurgents in Anbar is as fake as the sheik - and a murderous deceit.How do I know this? You can see the film - of “Sheik” Abu Risha, of the guys who likely whacked him and of their other victims. Just in case you think I’ve lost my mind and put my butt in insane danger to get this footage, don’t worry. I was safe and dry in Budapest. It was my brilliant new cameraman, Rick Rowley, who went to Iraq to get the story on his own. Rick’s “the future of TV news,” says BBC. He’s also completely out of control. Despite our pleas, Rick and his partner Dave Enders went to Anbar and filmed where no cameraman had dared tread. Why was “sheik” Abu Risha so important? As the New York Times put it this morning, “Abu Risha had become a charismatic symbol of the security gains in Sunni areas that have become a cornerstone of American plans to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq though much of next year.” In other words, Abu Risha was the PR hook used to sell the “success” of the surge.The sheik wasn’t a sheik. He was a fake. While proclaiming to Rick that he was “the leader of all the Iraqi tribes,” Abu lead no one. But for a reported sum in the millions in cash for so-called, “reconstruction contracts,” Abu Risha was willing to say he was Napoleon and Julius Caesar and do the hand-shakie thing with Bush on camera.
Notably, Rowley and his camera caught up with Abu Risha on his way to a “business trip” to Dubai, money laundering capital of the Middle East.
There are some real sheiks in Anbar, like Ali Hathem of the dominant Dulaimi tribe, who told Rick Abu Risha was a con man. Where was his tribe, this tribal leader? “The Americans like to create characters like Disney cartoon heros.” Then Ali Hathem added, “Abu Risha is no longer welcome” in Anbar.
“Not welcome” from a sheik in Anbar is roughly the same as a kiss on both cheeks from the capo di capi. Within days, when Abu Risha returned from Dubai to Dulaimi turf in Ramadi, Bush’s hand-sheik was whacked.
On Thursday, Bush said Abu Risha was killed, “fighting Al Qaeda” - and the White House issued a statement that the sheik was “killed by al Qaeda.”
Bullshit.There ain’t no Easter Bunny and “Al Qaeda” ain’t in Iraq, Mr. Bush. It was very cute, on the week of the September 11 memorials, to tie the death of your Anbar toy-boy to bin Laden’s Saudi hijackers. But it’s a lie. Yes, there is a group of berserkers who call themselves “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.” But they have as much to do with the real Qaeda of bin Laden as a Rolling Stones “tribute” band has to do with Mick Jagger. Who got Abu Risha? Nothing - NOTHING - moves in Ramadi without the approval of the REAL tribal sheiks. They were none-too-happy, as Hathem, noted, about the millions the US handed to Risha. The sheiks either ordered the hit - or simply gave the bomber free passage to do the deed. So who are these guys, the sheiks who lead the Sunni tribes of Anbar - the potentates of the Tamimi, Fallaji, Obeidi, Zobal and Jumaili tribes? Think of them as the Sopranos of Arabia. They are also members of the so-called “Awakening Council” - getting their slice of the millions handed out - which they had no interest in sharing with Risha. But creepy and deadly or not, these capi of the desert were effective in eliminating “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.” Indeed, as US military so proudly pointed out to Rick, the moment the sheiks declared their opposition to Al Qaeda - i.e. got the payments from the US taxpayers - Al Qaeda instantly diappeared.This miraculous military change, where the enemy just evaporates, has one explanation: the sheiks ARE al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Just like the Sopranos extract “protection” payments from New Jersey businesses, the mobsters of Anbar joined our side when we laid down the loot. What’s wrong with that? After all, I’d rather send a check than send our kids from Columbus to fight them. But there’s something deeply, horribly wrong with dealing with these killers. They still kill. With new US protection, weapons and cash, they have turned on the Shia of Anbar. Fifteen thousand Shia families from a single district were forced at gunpoint to leave Anbar. Those moving too slowly were shot. Kids and moms too.
Do the Americans know about the ethnic cleansing of Anbar by our erstwhile “allies”? Rick’s film shows US commanders placing their headquarters in the homes abandoned by terrorized Shia.
Rick’s craziest move was to go and find these Shia refugees from Anbar. They were dumped, over a hundred thousand of them, in a cinder block slum with no running water in Baghdad. They are under the “protection” of the Mahdi Army, another group of cutthroats. But at least these are Shia cutthroats.
So the great “success” of the surge is our arming and providing cover for ethnic cleansing in Anbar. Nice, Mr. Bush. And with the US press “embedded,” we won’t get the real story. Even Democrats are buying into the Anbar “awakening” fairy tale.An Iraqi government official frets that giving guns and cover to the Anbar gang is like adopting a baby crocodile. “A crocodile is not a pet,” he told Rick. It will soon grow to devour you. But what could the puppet do but complain about his strings? This Iraqi got it right: the surge is a crock. Source:www.gregpalast.com/bushs-fake-sheik-whacked-the-surge-and-the-al-qaeda-bunny/Uncovering the Truth Behind the Anbar Success Story Get the Whole Story - Order Watch Video Clip Part 1 - Part 2 The US military's progress report on Iraq is in and it's mostly bad news. But there is one unexpected success story: in the heartland of the Sunni Insurgency, a group of tribes has joined with the Americans to fight Al Qaeda. The Americans report that attacks on US forces have dropped dramatically and claim that life is beginning to return to normal. The leader and symbol of this movement that the Americans claim is rapidly securing Anbar province is a sheik named Sattar Abu Risha.But is Abu Risha all he claims to be?Included in the DVD compilation 'Dispatches Vol. 2' This piece was produced by David Enders Rick Rowley and Hiba Dawood with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. GO TO and VIEW:www.bignoisefilms.org/PROGRAMMES PEOPLE AND POWER Anbar's Ghost UPDATED ON: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 08, 2007 10:02 MECCA TIME, 7:02 GMT The 'Ghost of Anbar' - also known as Abu Risha, the man behind the US success story in Iraq's Anbar province, was brutally murdered in a roadside bomb this week.As a result, People & Power revisit 'Anbar’s Ghost' which was shot just weeks before his death. The story behind Abu Risha’s so-called success fuels with controversy. US officials credit him with leading Sunni tribes who killed Americans in the past into a new alliance with them. Because of Abu Risha, American political and military leaders say, Sunni attacks on US forces have dropped dramatically and life is beginning to return to normal in Anbar, once the heartland of the Sunni Insurgency. But was Abu Risha everything he claimed to be? Filmmakers Rick Rowley and David Enders set off to find out - and to see who is paying the price. This episode of People & Power aired from Sunday 9th September 2007 at the following times: Sunday 9th September: 14:30GMT Monday 10 September: 01:30, 13:30GMT Tuesday11 September: 06:30, 20:30GMT Wednesday12th September: 03:00, 14:30 Thursday13 September: 01:30 and 13:30GMT Friday14 September: 06:30, 20:30GMT Sunday16 September: 14:30GMT Watch Part One here: Watch Part Two here: Source:english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C223AE63-CE85-4887-9275-D2278C2A844C.htm
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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 Sept 25, 2007 10:34:41 GMT 4
WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.Narrated by Sean Penn War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations. War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer. Norman Solomon’s work has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “brutally persuasive” and essential “for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee.” This film now offers a chance to see that context on the screen. Approx. 72 minutes English subtitles Color | Stereo | NTSC | All Region Encoded DVD Directed & Written by: Loretta Alper & Jeremy Earp Produced by: Loretta Alper Co-produced & Edited by: Andrew Killoy Executive Producers: Jeremy Earp & Sut Jhally Associate Producer: Jason Young Sound: Peter Acker, Armadillo Media Group Motion Graphics: Andrew Killoy & Sweet & Fizzy Additional Music: John Van Eps & Leigh Philips Narrated by: Sean Penn Based on the book by Norman Solomon See:www.warmadeeasythemovie.org/
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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 Jan 12, 2008 14:40:59 GMT 4
Oh, this is choice! Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity, what a great bunch of guys; such champions of truth for their viewers! Do me a favor, reader; send this article to anyone you know who watches FOX News: url for this post: tinyurl.com/39okfs
Guys, here's to another round of drinks, on me...MichelleRupert Murdoch Calls Fox News Viewers Morons And White Trash.Tue Jan 8, 2008 10:57 pm Experienced journalists fearlessly reporting the truth in pursuit of the real story. ;D New York, New York - In a conversation with Fox News celebrities, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, that was picked up by an open microphone, Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp., repeatedly referred to Fox News viewers as morons and white trash. The incident took place as the three men were sitting together at a benefit dinner for the Ann Coulter defense fund. Apparently, they had been drinking heavily which may account for their lack of restraint and obliviousness to the open microphone that was positioned directly in front of them. At one point, while addressing O'Reilly and Hannity, Murdoch said, "Can you believe the shit we get away with? Good thing our viewers are dumb as doorknobs or else we would be in trouble." To which, Hannity laughed and then replied, "Yeah, I heard that people who watch Fox News have to wear bibs to catch their drool so their sofas won't be stained by the tobacco juice, and that's just the women." O'Reilly, also laughing, then joined in by saying, "Hey, how many Fox viewers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they all refuse to change the bulb because they prefer living in the dark." However, the unkindest cut of all that is sure to enrage Fox viewers came at the end of the conversation when Murdoch raised his glass in a toast and said, "God bless trailer park trash and idiots everywhere. Without them Fox News would be nothing and I would not be a billionaire." After news of the recorded conversation became public, Fox News released the following brief statement, "We encourage our viewers to reject anything they hear or see that does not come directly from Fox News. Fox News is the only source of information you need for Fair and Balanced™ coverage." Source: tinyurl.com/2lt6ho[glow=red,2,300]UPDATE:[/glow] OK, we've got the most hits here, so far, for today's posting....This is funny stuff...yes? Quit laughing! These people are so funny they're deadly....People need to take this kind of stuff for what it is....An attack on the intellectual well being of citizens, indoctrinating viewers to accept a police state, and blatant disregard for our Civil Rights...Which you will see Bill O'Reilly doing in one of the videos I've posted today at: Wake up and smell the fascism....Watch/read and pass it on....Michelle Go to:tinyurl.com/36hzl2
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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 Jan 22, 2008 14:28:42 GMT 4
Robert McChesney's "Communication Revolution" Part 1 of 3
We are at a critical juncture for our media system and communication in the United States. There is a rare window of opportunity for public activism to break the corporate stranglehold over our media system. It is the one fight you can't afford to sit out on. The most important battle lies ahead - preserving net neutrality and keeping the internet free, open and out of corporate hands. I encourage all to carefully read the following. It is an impressive and meaningful task we face as noted by author Robert McChesney: "No previous communication revolution (has had as much) promise (to let) us radically transcend the structural communication limitations for effective self-government and human happiness (in) human history." McChesney is a tireless champion for meaningful media policy in the public interest. The following review of his work and latest book, Communication Revolution - Critical Junctures and the Future of Media, shows how citizen actions have successfully challenged the system, and in the past three years have won important victories. McChesney directs his book to scholars, teachers, students and activists but also to concerned citizens because we're all part of the same struggle that affects everyone....Michelle
Monday, January 21, 2008 Robert McChesney's "Communication Revolution" - by Stephen Lendman
Robert McChesney is a leading media scholar, critic, activist, and the nation's most prominent researcher and writer on US media history, its policy and practice. He's also University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Research Professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. In addition, he co-founded (with Dan Schiller) the Illinois Initiative on Global Information and Communication Policy in 2002, hosts a popular weekly radio program called Media Matters on WILL-AM radio, and is the co-founder in 2002 and president of the growing Free Press media reform advocacy organization.
Free Press recognizes that the "current media system is the result of explicit government policies" that special interests representing private investors secretly drafted for themselves. It wants change to democratize the media and increase public participation in it. Toward that end, it seeks to be a "proactive force to advance meaningful media policy in the public interest" and is doing it through a range of vital initiatives. They include challenging media concentration, protecting net neutrality, and since 2003 hosting an annual national conference for media reform that brings together scholars, journalists, activists, policymakers and concerned citizens to discuss and highlight media reform issues and action strategies.
McChesney's work "concentrates on the history and political economy of communication (by) emphasizing the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies" where the primary goal is profits, not the public interest. He's also a frequent speaker, contributor to many publications, and the author or editor of 16 books, including Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy, the award-winning Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy, and the one he says had the "greatest impact of anything I have written," Rich Media, Poor Democracy.
His newest book and subject of this review is titled Communication Revolution - Critical Junctures and the Future of Media. He believes it may be his best one, and Annenberg School of Communication Dean, Machael Delli Carpini, says it is "part media critique, part intellectual history, part personal memoir, and part manifesto."
McChesney's premise is we have "an unprecendented (rare window of opportunity in the next decade or two) to create a communication system that will be a powerful impetus (for) a more egalitarian, humane, sustainable, and creative (self-governing) society." He calls it a "critical juncture" that won't remain open for long. It offers a "historic moment" in a "fight we cannot afford to lose." The stakes for a free society are that high, and stacked against the public interest are powerful forces determined to prevail with friends in high places supporting them.
Nonetheless, McChesney believes "the corporate stranglehold over our media system is very much in jeopardy," citizen actions have successfully challenged them, and in the past three years have won important victories on ownership rules, protecting public broadcasting and standing up to "government and corporate propaganda masquerading as (real) news" and information. However, the most important battle lies ahead - preserving net neutrality and keeping the internet free, open and out of corporate hands.
McChesney notes that the media reform movement has entered a new phase that can democratize the system if citizen actions prevail. It offers the potential for:
-- uncensored wired and wireless "super-fast ubiquitous broadband;"
-- competitive commercial media markets through new ownership policies;
-- a government-supported viable noncommercial and non-profit media;
-- media that informs citizens about candidates in place of corporate-paid advertising that slants information about them for private interests; and
-- limiting commercialism in media content and ending its influence on children through advertising.
This and more is possible at this "critical juncture" where an "ancien regime" is passing, and it's up to public activism to decide what replaces it - if we recognize the opportunity and seize it. To understand the communication revolution, McChesney believes "the field of communication (must) fundamentally rethink its past, present and future." He directs his book to scholars, teachers, students and activists but also to concerned citizens because we're all part of the same struggle that affects everyone.
Who better to lead it than the nation's foremost media scholar and teacher who's spent 25 years in the communications field and is helping to remake it. He reflected on what role he should play and decided his own research is "central to (his) argument," and more importantly, his long "association with media policy activism." He further believes if the communication field doesn't take advantage of this "critical juncture," he "fear(s) not only for the future of the field," but also for the republic now on life support at best.
Crisis in Communication, Crisis for Society
McChesney stresses we're now "in the midst of a communication and information revolution" that will either turn out glorious, a rare window of opportunity lost, or something in between. Crucial policy decisions taken over the next one or two decades will decide how things turn out with the public very much a player in the process. In the past decade, there's been "an unprecedented increase in popular concern about media policies" that are now "everybody's business."
Communication is "central to democratic theory and practice" with new technologies becoming society's "central nervous system" in ways previously unimaginable. McChesney states the opportunity powerfully: "No previous communication revolution (has had as much) promise (to let) us radically transcend the structural communication limitations for effective self-government and human happiness (in) human history." But only if organized people take on organized money to make it happen, and their challenge is daunting considering the opposition.
Scholars are needed as well, but since the mid-1980s communication has settled for a "second-tier role in US academic life." It's been undistinguished by too little research even though there are scores of dedicated people in the field. McChesney believes there's a "gaping chasm between the role of the media and communication in our society," and it's reached a crisis stage. His solution: engaged scholarship on the issues because what happens in academia affects everyone.
A digital revolution is unfolding that will touch all aspects of our lives - economics, politics, culture, organizations, and interpersonal relationships. Whatever system emerges will shape the future for better or worse. At stake is the prospect of a more democratic communications system and society or whether a huge opportunity will be lost.
Communication scholars and everyone must be engaged. They must recognize that we're at a "critical juncture" that's rare and won't last long. Old institutions and practices are ending, what will replace them is still undetermined, and once something new is established it will be hard to change for decades or generations.
McChesney's research shows that media and communication critical junctures are only possible when at least two of the following three conditions exist:
-- a revolutionary new communication technology that's changing the current system; today it's the digital revolution;
-- media content, especially journalism, discredited as corrupted or illegitimate; that's more true now in the US than ever; and
-- a major political crisis creating social disequilibrium when the existing order no longer works and social reform movements arise to change it; the condition engulfs us, no tangible relief is in prospect, and it remains to be seen if growing public angst will translate into outrage and action.
Critical juncture examples in the last century were the Progressive era and the golden age of muckraking with it, The Great Depression when radio broadcasting emerged, and the popular social movements of the 1960s. Each time, radical media critiques accompanied social and political change. Today, we're in another "profound critical juncture for communication" with two of the above three conditions in place and the third on the horizon.
The digital revolution is transforming communication and media practices, journalism is "at its lowest ebb since the Progressive era," and there's hope the third condition will emerge. Our political economy is "awash in institutionalized corruption, growing inequality," a shaky economy, and a militarized state smashing anything in its way. Our changing communications and media system will have a lot to say about how things play out and the societal changes from it. There's hope for the best because "an extraordinary media reform movement" emerged in recent years that's energized "perhaps millions of Americans....engaged with media policy issues" in ways previously unimaginable.
McChesney challenges communications scholars to seize this opportunity - to "broaden their horizons and engage with the crucial political and social issues of the moment." It's the only way forward, he believes, and must be done in an interdisciplinary way, ideally in a communications department, where scholars use different methodologies and research traditions to interact with each other. The field must be emboldened enough to tackle crucial core issues of our times so it can "arrest and roll back the increasing corporate-commercial penetration of higher education" that's inimical to scholarship and the public welfare.
Up to now, communication has been a backwater on university campuses, but McChesney believes "methodological diversity and interdisciplinary approaches (can be) great strength" enough for study in the field to make this discipline "the most desirable place for an intellectual to be on a college campus." It now lacks prestige and is seen as a "hepped-up form of vocational education" compared to traditional social sciences "sit(ting) atop Mount Olympus pondering the fate of the world."
Most striking for the author is how historically the study of communication developed in response to the last century's critical junctures. It came out of the Progressive Era (the Golden Age of media criticism), was crystallized late in The Great Depression and was rejuvenated during the popular struggles of the 1960s. They included movements for civil, women and consumer rights, environmental justice and ending the Vietnam war. Journalism at the time was also attacked as inadequate, and it spawned a proliferation of "underground" newspapers and journalism reviews. Public broadcasting as well came out of this era (and public radio followed) as an alternative to commercial television, but they both failed to live up to their initial promise and are now co-opted and corrupted by corporate money and influence.
McChesney also cites the importance of Justice Byron White's majority 1969 opinion in Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. FCC with implications from it for greater First Amendment freedom expressed through the media. He wrote that "people....retain their interest in free speech by radio and their collective right to have the medium function consistently with the ends and purposes of the First Amendment (which is) to preserve an uninhibited market-place of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail....That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC."
Had politics turned left instead of right in the 1970s (a real possibility at the time), that promise might have been fulfilled. The digital revolution created another opportunity, and it's up to the public to seize it.
The Rise and Fall of the Political Economy of Communication
This is McChesney's personal memoir and his coming-of-age. It began as a graduate student at the University of Washington in 1983 when Ronald Reagan was President and the nation veered sharply right. It was a depressing time for those on the left, and as a result, communication research became uncritical, neutral and stuck to the notion that markets should be "free" and the corporate media system was just, fair, and the only alternative. Conflicting notions were unthinkable as neoliberalism took hold and hardened in the 1990s.
McChesney had other views and believed sticking to "uncritical assumptions was a thoroughgoing abrogation of intellectual responsibility." It wasn't the best of times to say that and doing it meant very shaky prospects for a successful academic career in communications or in any academic capacity. Even distinguished scholars like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman were dismissed out of hand in even harsher terms.
At the time of the Cold War, "you were either with us or against us," and the options were a free market commercial media or a government run one. McChesney called it "maddening." He and others like him "wanted a new course, independent of corporate or state control," but it was tough selling that position when dominant thinking went the other way.
McChesney then gives considerable space to reviewing scholars who influenced him most. This review can only touch on them. He notes how Marx had "singular importance" for communications scholars and young radical social scientists back in those days. And by it, he means two Karl Marxes and not the one unfairly demonized in public propaganda. One was the socialist activist and enlightened optimist as Edward Herman described him. The other was an "exceptionally intelligent and learned observer of capitalism" and one of the world's greatest ever thinkers and political philosophers.
McChesney believes his influence on critical communication research "remains considerable." He stressed that capitalism was based on the pursuit of profit, or what's called the capital accumulation process. That distinguishes it from feudalism, and accumulation means finding it everywhere possible. Marx also wrote about it as a practicing journalist, and McChesney calls him one of "the greatest journalists of the nineteenth century."
Consider the commercial media then. Much of its history has been the "colonization of....noncommercial cultural practices," using capital to create new ones, and "turning culture into a commodity." Put another way - in commercial spaces, it's anything for a buck and any way to pay labor the least amount to maximize them. Hence, an inevitable class struggle and having to adapt to the market or be crushed by it. McChesney calls this the "indispensable starting point for cultural analysis." We're blasted with this thinking because we're "awash in commercialism" with all its Marxian "commodity fetishism" - branding, advertising and endless promotion to convince us interchangeable products are different when, in fact, they're pretty much the same except in our minds and how ad wizards influence them.
McChesney then reviews the many scholars who influenced his development beginning with Nicolas Garnham, James Curran, Peter Golding and Graham Murdock in the UK. He also learned about George Gerbner's work as editor of the Journal of Communication. Most important was the work of Dallas Smythe and Herbert Schiller. They were dominant senior figures associated with the North American communication political economy. Smythe was decades ahead of his time in "recognizing the need to fuse telecommunications with media in communications research."
Schiller became Smythe's colleague at the University of Illinois before moving to the University of California at San Diego in 1970. He also studied communication as an important component of corporate power and wrote how culture and communication were indispensable parts of the US global economic, political and military agenda. In addition, he argued that commercializing culture had anti-democratic implications, and he and Smythe both were instrumental in developing a new generation of communication scholars.
McChesney cites Chomsky and Herman as well for having played "every bit as large a role for (him) and for many others" in their development in communication and political economy studies. Especially important was the "propaganda model" they developed in their seminal 1988 work, Manufacturing Consent. It consisted of five filters - media ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak and anticommunist ideology - to "filter out the news to print, marginalize dissent (and assure) government and dominant private interests" control the message the public gets. The "filters" remove what's to be censored and leaves in "only the cleansed (acceptable) residue fit to print" or broadcast. McChesney calls the "propaganda model" one of the "signal contributions of the political economy of communication" and goes on to review other notable figures in his development as a scholar/activist in the field.
Among them were C. Wright Mills and his classic book, The Power Elite. Also Jurgen Habermas in directing media studies away from the notion that there are only two ways to organize media - private or state-controlled. He then mentions Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Alexander Meiklejohn and others and the important contributions each of them made.
Finally, there's the Monthly Review political economy of Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff that highlighted the "nature and importance of monopoly and corporations in modern capitalism." Monthly Review's tradition doesn't assume the market is neutral or benevolent or that class inequality is natural. It also rejects the notion that markets work best. On the contrary, Baran and Sweezy argued the dominant system "tends toward crisis and depression," and history proves it.
They also explained the role of advertising that's simply marketplace manipulation to make interchangeable products look different (or sows ears look like silk purses) and uses spurious claims to do it. Sweezy and Magdoff further analyzed how global capitalism was shifting to a "financialization" system under which financial speculation and debt accumulation were growing at exponential rates. The result is extraordinary instability that may in the end usher in another Great Depression like in the 1930s with some economists and social observers believing it could be the worst one ever and longest lasting. Predictions are never easy, "especially about the future" as film mogul Louis B. Mayer once told an interviewer who asked how well his newest movie would do at the box office.
McChesney says that scholars (aside from Mr. Mayer) produced his foundational knowledge base on which he built his own research and writings. They're considerable and continue to expand with new books, scores of articles and the most important media reform activism anywhere by the man most qualified to lead it in spirit, scholarship and by example.
He begins by defining the political economy of communication subfield and its two components:
First, it must address "in a critical manner" how the media system interacts with and affects the disposition of power in society. What side is it on - the progressive one for reform or that of the ruling elite. "In a critical manner" is the "nub of the matter" for him. The measure he uses relates to the information necessary (from journalism through the media) for self-government and effective freedom. The media has to be a watchdog to keep a check on those in power or want it. It has to separate truth from lies, provide a wide range of information and opinion on vital issues, and get it to the majority of people to be a truly democratic force in a free society.
Second, is an evaluation of elements that shape the media, journalism, "occupational sociology," news and entertainment content - market structures, advertising, labor relations, profit issues, technologies and government policies.
Together, these two components give the field its "distinction and dynamism." That was missing during the 1960s and 1970s critical juncture period. It made its position precarious in the 1980s when leftist voices lost out and official culture "dynamism" veered right. Progressive social change prospects couldn't be bleaker at the time, and neoliberal change made things worse from then to the new millennium. Margaret Thatcher's dictum applied and still does - "There is no alternative (TINA)" with bureaucratic governments the enemies of progress. It was "the end of history" the way those on the right called it and wrote about in bestselling books.
McChesney notes that people on the left and right agreed that "the media system was inexorably attached to corporate capitalism (and that) leftward change (was) unthinkable" for the great majority who went along to get along. Earlier political economy dynamism "lost its mojo", and university administrators disparaged it. It went against the dominant grain and threatened to undermine funding ties to industry. The result was a weak curriculum, fewer jobs, and a poor career choice option in the academy for ambitious young graduate students. By the 1990s, "the political economy of communication was a nonstarter in American communications departments." McChesney called this a "grand irony - in the Information Age" at a time communication as a discipline needed the emergence of political economy as a cornerstone of the field.
Nonetheless, with precious little support and a hostile political environment, a surprising amount of top research was produced from scholars like Smythe, Schiller, Chomsky, Herman and others. They believed it was vital to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. Particularly striking was the critique of journalism at the time as a key to understanding the relationship between the media and politics. Two landmark books stood out - Ben Bagdikian's Media Monopoly in 1983 and Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent in 1988 (already mentioned). Their importance was that both "fundamentally changed the way the news media were regarded" among activists and the greater public. Bagdikian quantified the extent of media concentration but also foretold how journalism would be downsized and fundamentally corrupted.
Manufacturing Consent showed how elite interests control content and use it as a propaganda and anti-democratic tool. It demolished the notion that journalism is neutral and highlighted how controlled it is. The result today is stunning. Journalism has been co-opted, corrupted, and gutted; investigative reporting is practically extinct; political and international reporting has deteriorated; and localism has collapsed. Seventeen years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer had 46 city reporters. Today it has 24. The Washington Post wrote how state of international coverage keeps being cut back - fewer foreign bureaus and correspondents. In an atmosphere of despair, however, political economic criticism is attracting a resurgence of dynamism in what McChesney calls "media policy studies" at a time of an emerging new critical juncture.
Continued....
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jan 22, 2008 14:29:35 GMT 4
....continued from previous post: Robert McChesney's "Communication Revolution" Part 2 of 3
The Historical Turn, Critical Junctures, and "Five Truths"
McChesney chose historical research as his entry to the political economy of communication field. It gave him a chance to be "less abstract and more concrete." It was also a better way to be taken seriously because sound evidence supported him, but when he began his doctoral studies, he wasn't sure how to proceed. He then read Bagdikian's book cited above. It was his "epiphany" as it showed how the "system is responsible, so (it) has to be changed." But that kind of thinking was radically against the grain that believes press freedom means the right to "make as much money as possible in the media business" and the public interest be damned.
Bagdikian showed how corrupted this kind of journalism is to a free and open society. He also made the case that the media system isn't natural or based on a "free market" model. It's only "free" for owners, as journalist AJ Liebling once observed, and politicians corrupt it for their big media allies.
McChesney was struck (maybe horrified) that other nations debated who should control their media, but none of this went on here. So he searched for a historical record and found it "throughout US history." In every case, media issues went unexamined, underexamined or studied with little sense of purpose.
In commercial radio broadcasting (emergent in the 1920s and 1930s), he found loads of evidence of organized opposition to commercial broadcasting at a time many believed this new medium should be public, open and commercial-free. Sharing that view were educators, labor, religious groups, farmers, civil libertarians and journalists. McChesney called it "scintillating" as he build a "mountain(ous)" historical record on what no one had ever written. He said he "found (his) dissertation" topic and "intellectual calling."
In the early 1930s, there was serious (unreported) debate about whether a commercial broadcasting system should be adopted because few people at the time (the onset of The Great Depression) thought a corporate-owned, advertising-supported one was natural and best for the country. Republicans and Democrats were among them, and compelling arguments at the time were that this type system was inimical to democracy that should be uncorrupted by commercial interests. That view lost out because of "the corruption of the process (dominated by big money), not because the American people opted for commercial broadcasting." They never had a say.
The struggle over radio broadcasting was "the last great battle over media in the" country up to the present. Thereafter, until now, it was assumed all of it was fair game for commercialism and profits. The public interest wasn't even a consideration except for a brief period in the 1960s. But McChesney was awakened at the time to the notion of "critical junctures" because he had "stumbled across the one important (one) in American communication history." He wondered if there were others and "began to see everything in a new light."
It directed his attention to earlier periods and battles on structuring the telephone system that ended as an AT&T regulated monopoly. He mentioned the Jacksonian era that produced some of the greatest journalism in our history. He cited Richard DuBoff's work on the telegraph industry's emergence in the 19th century and Richard Kielbowicz's research on the post office and the role it played early on to establish our press system through public subsidies. Later came the struggle for controlling and structuring satellite communication and cable TV from the 1950s to the 1970s. This drew him to the current era, he was encouraged to address it, and he discovered he liked the challenge.
It got him to co-author a book on the global media with Edward Herman and continue writing powerfully important books in the field because media after the mid-1990s was a hot political topic, especially on the left. These type ideas were being popularly received, and new organizations sprung up to address them like the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) in print and on weekly radio. McChesney put it this way: "Something was happening here." There was newfound interest, but at first only on the fringes. When the 1996 Telecommunications (giveaway) Act passed, there was no public participation and never any coverage in the media so most people hardly knew what was at stake.
Something had to change, and it had to come from the grassroots to put heat on Congress and the FCC. The need was for "aggressive outreach" to organized groups - "labor, civil rights, feminist, environmental, educators, peace activists, health care" - all of which "were getting screwed over by the media" but had no idea media was the problem. McChesney believed that a "radical change in strategy and tactics, and a drastic increase in resources (to do it) were necessary" to whip up public concern for the cutting edge issue of our times.
Then in the 1990s, another world transforming major development occurred - the emergence of the Internet that reflects the "entirety of the digital communication revolution." These were unchartered waters in the first critical media juncture since the 1960s. The Internet "open(s) up space for discussions about fundamental questions of media institutional structures, about technology, about the relationship of media to politics, and about communication history" in ways unseen for decades.
With this development came a new wave of research that revealed five closely related and vitally important truths about communication in the new century:
First, media systems aren't natural. They're created by government policies and subsidies that are strongly influenced by the nation's political economy. Even in capitalist economies there's space for a vibrant a non-profit media, and a "core principle of professional journalism is to provide a safe house for public service in the swamp of commercialism."
Second, the First Amendment doesn't authorize or advocate a corporate-controlled, profit-driven media. It's not an open sesame for limitless gain or government-sanctioned right to ignore the public interest. McChesney cites the "trailblazing research" of C. Edwin Baker on press and speech freedoms. He concluded that court constitutional interpretations see the press as necessary and distinct from people exercising free speech rights as well as from other commercial enterprises. He also sees government playing an active role in creating and structuring the media.
The Constitution doesn't authorize commercial broadcasting, prevent government from making it non-profit, and the High Court's 1969 Red Lion decision gave every American First Amendment rights. A key question now is how the Supreme Court will interpret press and speech freedoms in the digital age when all the rules are changing. McChesney believes sound research and citizen activism are crucial to influencing the judicial outcome.
Third, the American profit-driven media system is not a "free market" one. Media giants today get enormous subsidies in many forms that are "as great or greater than (for) any other industry." Count them:
-- monopoly licenses for radio, TV, satellite TV spectrum, cable TV and telephone worth hundreds of billions of dollars gaining in value annually;
-- free industrial spectrum TV, cable and telephone that companies use internally and are worth billions more;
-- postal subsidies worth still more billions with giant publishers now getting a better deal than small ones;
-- federal, state and local subsidies for film and TV production;
-- all levels of government advertising worth billions annually;
-- allowing advertising expenditures to be a deductible expense;
-- electoral political advertising amounting to 10% of TV ad revenue;
-- and the largest subsidy of all - copyrights that are a government-created and enforced monopoly power to crush competition; plus one other -
-- government lobbying efforts for media giants overseas for deregulated markets and to divert subsidies to benefit US companies.
Fourth, the policymaking process that's key to understanding how our system is structured and subsidized for private interests that don't represent the public. Subsidies, per se, aren't bad. The issue is what they're for, who gets them, who's left out, and what values are promoted.
Fifth, giant corporations control government policymaking, the public is ignored, and media reform can't happen unless the system changes. Today, the FCC, like other government agencies, serves dominant private, not public, interests, and it shows in its rulings. The major media won't report them, of course, and McChesney says "99% of the public has no idea what is going on (and instead) are fed a plateful of free market hokum" about giving people what they want. He further says "the entire rationale for our media system rests upon a fairy tale about free markets....that (in fact are structured) to protect the corporate media system from the public review it deserves" and desperately needs.
Consider "deregulation" as an example that's used along with "free market" mumbo jumbo propaganda. It implies a competitive marketplace when, in fact, it reduces competition by increasing monopoly control in telephony, broadcasting, cable and satellite communication. McChesney cites the key anti-competitive 1996 Telecommunications Act as Exhibit A. Supporters claimed it would increase competition, lower prices, improve service, and Vice-President Al Gore called it an "early Christmas present for the consumer." Hooey.
This was a major piece of anti-consumer legislation. It raised limits on TV station ownership so broadcast giants could own twice as many local stations as before. It was even sweeter for radio with all national limits on station ownership removed, and on the local level one company could now own up to eight stations in a major market. In smaller ones, two companies could own them all. The bill also consigned new digital television broadcast spectrum space to current TV station owners only and let cable companies increase their local monopoly positions. The clear winners were the media and telecom giants. As always, consumers lost out without ever knowing what went on behind their backs.
In the new millennium, however, a historic opportunity for change emerged in the form of another critical juncture spawned this time by the digital revolution. "The Internet, cell phones, and digital technology (are) revolutionizing all forms of communication" that are already threatening some long-established media industries with extinction or requiring they reinvent themselves to survive - all print publications, for example. This is unfolding in 2007, but the future remains uncertain and has yet to be written. It can go either way or maybe both.
One of the great unanswered questions of our times is: does the Internet "qualify as the fourth great communication 'transformation' in human history." Consider McChesney's first three:
-- the emergence of speech and language 50,000 to 60,000 years ago;
-- writing around 5000 years ago that came many thousands of years after agriculture; writing made scientific, philosophical and artistic achievements possible;
-- the printing press that radically reconstructed all major institutions and made possible scientific advances, political democracy, an industrial economy and religion.
It hardly needs saying these changes were enormous in human development, and for McChesney to believe the Internet may one day rank among them (even if not their equal) is mind-boggling to imagine. He makes his case more compelling by broadening the digital revolution to include biotechnology and related scientific developments because their advances depend on information technology.
When someone of McChesney's stature posits these views, we need take note and consider a future not long ago unimaginable, but what will emerge can't be known until it begins unfolding over time. Of equal importance is whether change of this magnitude will be democratic, and that possibility is "very much in our control," McChesney believes. That's because the legitimacy of major journalism is being questioned, and growing millions around the country are doing it. Today, there's more media criticism and activism here than anywhere in the world - an astonishing condition given how absent it was a bare decade ago.
"No one expected (its) first stirrings (would) come over the unlikely issue of low-power FM broadcasting (LPFM)." It spawned hundreds of unlicensed "pirate" operators in the 1990s. The FCC tried to shut them down but couldn't even though pressured by commercial interests. The result was the legalization of 1000 new LPFM non-profit stations in 2000. Commercial broadcasters declared war to stop them and got the House to reduce the allowable number to a fraction of what FCC authorized.
Something then remarkable happened when scores of outraged people demanded Congress allow this vital initiative in citizen broadcasting. They foiled the National Association of Broadcasting (NAB), but only briefly. In the end, NAB won by getting an anti-LPFM provision added to a budget bill in the dead of night before Christmas - much the way other anti-consumer legislation gets passed by hiding it in other bills passed in off-hours and unreported in the mainstream.
Despite defeats and powerful opposition, however, there was "growing popular momentum (on) media issues" in 2002 in spite of a "real disconnect with these developments among communication scholars." That would soon change, but there was no way to know it then. At the time, McChesney knew his efforts were best directed off-campus because that's "where the action was." He had no way to know "all hell was about to break loose," and the possibilities from it are exhilarating.
Continued....
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jan 22, 2008 14:30:27 GMT 4
....continued from previous post:Robert McChesney's "Communication Revolution" Part 3 of 3Moment of TruthMcChesney relates how he, Josh Silver and John Nichols co-founded Free Press in 2002 with a vision he called simple but a bold plan to achieve it. They wanted to reach other organized groups with a stake in reforming the media - labor, feminists, civil rights groups, environmentalists, educators, journalists, artists and private citizens who feel the same as they do but need direction and leadership. Communication scholars weren't at first included, but that would change later on. The three co-founders thought it would take years to gain momentum and begin having an effect, but they caught a break when the FCC announced it would review media ownership rules in the fall of 2002. Free Press felt certain they'd be relaxed, but "then something wonderful and magical happened." A massive grassroots action arose with three million people energized in opposition. They flooded Congress with letters, e-mails, phone calls and petitions protesting what FCC proposed. Free Press got involved and so did other consumer activist organizations like Consumers Union, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Media Action Project (MAP) and the Consumer Federation of America. Other groups outside Washington joined as well, including the Prometheus Radio Project. Along with MAP, it won a Third Circuit Court June, 2004 decision in the Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC case that ruled for diversity and democracy over greater media consolidation and ordered the FCC to reconsider its ill-advised ownership rules. They included the kinds of policy changes now resurrected by the current FCC under a new chairman, so the struggle goes on and continued vigilance is needed to prevail. The 2003 media ownership encounter accomplished a lot for Free Press. It got its members "battle-tested and seasoned" fast and taught them at least six crucial lessons:-- the public cares enough about media issues to organize around them and become energized and active; many issues motivate them that include a lack of localism in media, "unimaginative musical fare" on radio, poor media coverage on many issues like the Iraq war, few quality programs, inadequate representation of women and people of color as owners and in the media, vulgarity and excess commercialism, and more; one or more of these issues galvanize millions of Americans to react and growing numbers do; -- people have considerable ability and insight about media issues; they know the media should do more than "amuse, entertain, or hawk products;" -- media reform can be a "gateway" for public activism; it ignites people to get involved in political activity; it won the last media ownership fight, stopped the Bush administration from paying journalists like Armstrong Williams to corrupt themselves for profit, and it protected Net Neutrality so far by keeping the nation's telecommunication laws from being overhauled by Congress and a real chance for consumer-friendly ones ahead; -- Internet and digital technologies dramatically change the way political organizing is done that would have been impossible earlier; they greatly lower the cost and make it much easier to be effective with fewer resources; -- the media reform movement is nonpartisan by being neutral and aims to expand the range and quality of viewpoints; it's also a "bedrock progressive issue" that advocates "establishing the institutional basis for effective and accountable self-government;" and -- conservatism is unable to address media reform concerns or provide a coherent government philosophy; there's dissension in their ranks that contributed to the Republican 2006 collapse; the movement abandoned its principles for honest and small government, balanced budgets, respecting individual privacy, the rule of law and competitive markets; instead it shows one-sided support for corporate interests, entrenched wealth and corrupted itself by its actions. McChesney discussed his National Conference for Media Reform initiative and what he learned from the first one held in 2003. First, it's crucial to have credible research be part media reform so first-rate communication scholars must be involved to produce it. Second is the importance of linking scholars to the actual "sausage-making" process on Capitol Hill so the right kinds of legislation get introduced and become law. In 2004, an important effort toward this got started called COMPASS - the Consortium on Media Policy Studies formed by heads of several key university communication programs. It supports a broad range of media studies by "creat(ing) a critical mass of (doctoral) students working in policy research (and making this effort) a cornerstone of the field (by producing) journals, conferences, and academic lines." In other words, making COMPASS communication research "relevant outside the discipline and the academy." But it's not enough as the struggle for "communication to embrace the critical juncture (goes) beyond researchers at Ph.D. programs; it has to be all-encompassing." Free Press knew it had to get scholars involved in the second media reform conference in 2005 and did it on short notice with a "solid" 150 of them attending. Key for reform is credible research to take on the "vending-machine" kind by corporations and the FCC. It's contaminated with lies and distortion and must be countered with hard, well-documented facts - the real stuff that can stand up.Media reform took shape between 2003 and 2007 and exposed the Bush administration's efforts to undermine freedom with a host of illegal and unethical acts:-- fake news the major media airs promoting administration policies; -- paying off "professional" journalists to promote these policies in their reporting; -- having a "ringer" in the White House press corps to ask planted pro-Bush questions; -- appointing a corrupted crony to head Public Broadcasting and a former head of all US overseas propaganda to run National Public Radio; -- attempting to cut Public Broadcasting funding; -- being the most secretive administration in US history by issuing presidential Executive Order 13233 on November 1, 2001; this order violated the 1978 Presidential Records Act and the 1974 Freedom of Information Act. It also violated the Supreme Court's 1977 decision in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services on "executive privilege" eroding over time (12 years set as a limit) and James Madison's 1822 warning that "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both;" and -- establishing an obscene level of friendly ties to the corporate media to be sure never (or hardly ever) is heard a discouraging word from them on administration policies no matter how outrageous or illegal they are. These and other acts corrupt a free press, millions know it, and they want change. Central to it is an emerging "classic struggle" very much in play but with no certain outcome over the most important issue of all - the future of the Internet and battle for Net Neutrality. That fight must be won, doing it is daunting, and the opposition is powerful media and other monied interests with friends in high places matched against others supporting the public. McChesney calls Net Neutrality "a defining issue for this critical juncture (and) the First Amendment for the Internet."Media reform activists have drawn a line in the sand. This corporate-free and open space must be defended at all costs. The stakes are that high.Here's where things now stand. In the late 1990s, cable companies weren't able to get the Clinton FCC to exempt their Internet access from the principles of neutrality. They also lost in court in 2000, but things changed after George Bush took office and appointed Michael Powell FCC head. His Republican commission brazenly redefined cable modem service by calling it an "information service." As a result, they simply exempted cable broadband from the provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Consumers and competitors then sued, three years of litigation followed, and in summer 2005 the Supreme Court decided for FCC and the cable giants in National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, so it's now for Congress to address. After FCC's ruling in 2005, cable modem and telephone DSL broadband service became exempted from net neutrality provisions of the 1996 Act. Only Congress can reverse this, and that's where things now stand. This issue is "the great rallying cry for the media reform movement in 2006 and 2007." Free Press took the lead and formed the SavetheInternet.com coalition that now includes over 800 organizations across the political spectrum united in a common aim. It's an unprecedented effort in the crucial battle ahead, and it's getting results. In 2006, it derailed telecom legislation the industry tried to ramrod through Congress. It got the democratic FCC members to insist Net Neutrality be a condition of any telecom company merger. They, in turn, got AT&T to agree to these terms when it bought Bell South for $67 billion at end of 2006. Explicit in the deal was Net Neutrality protection for two years. The battle is back in Congress for a binding solution, not just a staying action to buy time. Senators Byron Dorgan (Democrat) and Olympia Snowe (Republican) reintroduced their bipartisan legislation to make Net Neutrality the law of the land in 2007. House Democrat, Ed Markey, is on-board as well as head of the key subcommittee on telecom legislation. These are positive developments, but the battle remains unresolved so far, and McChesney says we're "entering unchartered waters." In addition, the Republican FCC continues to carry water for the telecom giants and ruled in late December to approve greater media consolidation despite overwhelming public opposition supported by key members of Congress. Media reform is bipartisan, progressive and goes hand-in-hand with "reform work on campaign finance, voting rights, and electoral systems reform" as part of an all-embracing "democracy movement." The effort itself has "four distinct segments (with) common (uniting) interests" that have made the US the global media reform leader:-- media policy activism from groups like Free Press (with its growing 400,000 membership) and others that focus on core issues; -- a growing independent and alternative media revolutionary digital technologies make possible; -- a growing amount of media criticism from groups like FAIR and others; and -- trade union and association organizing by independent media owners, creative and communication workers, and journalists to protect their jobs. Nonetheless, the most formidable barrier to media reform is its opposition - primarily corporate wealth, influence and determination to stop it, and the public be damned. This affects the academy that's so dependent on corporate funding for communication programs that only want industry-friendly research. McChesney cites the need for credible basic, applied and all other kinds, but so far results have been disappointing. That has to change in at least eight areas he lists that include:-- the policymaking process, -- a market and media critique to counter dismissive championing of "free market" majesty, -- a study and critique of advertising and its corrosive effects on society, -- the political economy of the Internet and the kind of digital world we want and deserve, -- the study of global communication to close the circle by internationalizing research - and more. These and other areas (in all realms of teaching such as cultural studies) are vitally needed but must be thorough, ongoing and credible to be effective. Yet it's only a beginning to make communication a prominent academic field and for its research to be vital ammunition in the media reform struggles ahead. But it's only one part of them. The outcome of this critical juncture is very much in play, and success depends on "the quality and quantity of public participation in core communication policy issues." If corporate interests control the debate, the digital communication future "will be a shadow of what it might be otherwise....It will be their system, not ours." A viable, independent, free and open media is "indispensable to a true participatory democracy "generating social justice" like the one developing under Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. This requires an active, "informed popular participation in media policymaking." Failure will be catastrophic and a huge opportunity lost at a crucially important time not to fail. McChesney ends by paraphrasing a hopeful address by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu before he died: "what we need today is to rekindle reasoned utopianism - the notion (that people have the right) to use their imaginations to construct the media (as a necessary starting point), the economy, and the world to suit their democratically determined needs." Why not, and we have "more control over our destiny than we usually do" at critical juncture moments like now. We can't afford to blow it at a time we need a "real communication revolution" and have a great chance to get one.Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also, visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.Source: sjlendman.blogspot.com/
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 25, 2008 14:37:50 GMT 4
Embedding Military Propagandists into the News Media By John Stauber Created 04/22/2008 - 15:47 David Barstow of the New York Times has written the first installment [1] in what is already a stunning exposé of the Bush Administration [2]'s most powerful propaganda [3] weapon used to sell and manage the war on Iraq: the embedding of military propagandists directly into the TV networks [4] as on-air commentators. We and others have long criticized the widespread TV network practice of hiring former military officials to serve as analysts, but even in our most cynical moments we did not anticipate how bad it was. Barstow has painstakingly documented how these analysts, most of them military industry consultants and lobbyists, were directly chosen, managed, coordinated and given their talking points by the Pentagon's ministers of propaganda. Thanks to the two-year investigation by the New York Times, we today know that Victoria Clarke [5], then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, launched the Pentagon military analyst program [6] in early 2002. These supposedly independent military analysts were in fact a coordinated team of pro-war propagandists, personally recruited by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld [7], and acting under Clarke's tutelage and development. One former participant, NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard [8], has called the effort "psyops [9] on steroids." As Barstow reports, "Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as 'message force multipliers' or 'surrogates [10]' who could be counted on to deliver administration 'themes and messages' to millions of Americans 'in the form of their own opinions.' ... Don Meyer [11], an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war." Clarke and her senior aide, Brent T. Krueger [12], eventually signed up more than 75 retired military officers who penned newspaper op/ed columns and appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the military analysts, which continued as of April 20, 2008, when the New York Times ran Barstow's story. The program proved so successful that it was expanded to issues besides the Iraq War. "Other branches of the administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales [13], then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus [14] was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts." Barstow spent two years digging, using the Freedom of Information Act [15] and attorneys to force the Bush Administration to release some 8,000 pages of documents now under lock and key at the New York Times. This treasure trove should result in additional stories, giving them a sort of "Pentagon Papers [16]" of Iraq war propaganda. In 1971, when the Times printed excerpts of the Pentagon Papers on its front page, it precipitated a constitutional showdown with the Nixon Administration over the deception and lies that sold the war in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers issue dominated the news media back then. Today, however, Barstow's stunning report is being ignored by the most important news media in America -- TV news -- the source where most Americans, unfortunately, get most of their information. Joseph Goebbels [17], eat your heart out. Goebbels is history's most notorious war propagandist, but even he could not have invented a smoother PR vehicle for selling and maintaining media and public support for a war: embed trusted "independent" military experts into the TV newsroom. As with most propaganda, the key to the success of this effort was the element of concealment, as these analysts and the Bush administration hid the fact that their talking points and marching orders were coming directly from the Pentagon. The use of these analysts was a glaring violation of journalistic standards. As the code of ethics [18] of the Society of Professional Journalists explains, journalists are supposed toAvoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility. Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity. Disclose unavoidable conflicts. Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage. Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money. The networks using these analysts as journalists shamelessly failed to vet their experts and ignored the obvious conflicts of hiring a person with financial relationships to companies profiting from war to be an on-air analyst of war. They acted as if war was a football game and their military commentators were former coaches and players familiar with the rules and strategies. The TV networks even paid these "analysts" for their propaganda, enabling them to present themselves as "third party experts [19]" while parroting White House talking points to sell the war. Now that Barstow has blown their cover, the TV networks have generally refused to comment about this matter. Further compounding their violations of the public trust, they are blacking out coverage of the New York Times exposé, no doubt on advice of their own PR and crisis management [20] advisors.Since the 1920s there have been laws passed to stop the government from doing what Barstow has exposed. It is actually illegal in the United States for the government to propagandize its own citizens. As Barstow's report demonstrates, these laws have been repeatedly violated, are not enforced and are clearly inadequate. The U.S. Congress therefore needs to investigate this and the rest of the Bush propaganda campaign that sold the war in Iraq. The attack and occupation of Iraq continues, with no end in sight. Estimates of the number of Iraqi dead [21] range from the hundreds of thousands to more than a million. The cost to American taxpayers will eventually be in the trillions of dollars. More than 4,000 US soldiers have lost their lives, and this is just a part of the horrific toll of mental and physical disability that the war is taking on hundreds of thousands of troops and their families. This war would never have been possible had the mainstream news media done its job. Instead, it has repeated the Big Lies that sold the war. This war would never have been possible without the millions of dollars spent by the Bush Administration on sophisticated and deceptive public relations techniques such as the Pentagon military analyst program [22] that David Barstow has exposed. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Victoria Clarke, who designed and oversaw this Pentagon propaganda machine, now works as a commentator for TV network news. She may have changed jobs and employers since leaving the Pentagon, but her work remains the same. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This commentary is a joint statement by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. Stauber is the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, and Sheldon Rampton is its research director. They have co-authored two books about the war in Iraq: Weapons of Mass Deception [23] and The Best War Ever [24].-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source URL: www.prwatch.org/node/7241 Links:[1] www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html[2] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_W._Bush[3] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=propaganda[4] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=pentagon_military_analyst_program[5] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Victoria_Clarke[6] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pentagon_military_analyst_program[7] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Donald_Rumsfeld[8] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kenneth_Allard[9] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=psyops[10] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Third_party_technique[11] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Don_Meyer[12] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Brent_T._Krueger[13] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Alberto_R._Gonzales[14] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_H._Petraeus[15] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Freedom_of_Information_Act[16] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pentagon_Papers[17] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels[18] www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp[19] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=third_party_technique[20] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=crisis_management[21] www.prwatch.org/node/7034[22] www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pentagon_military_analyst_program[23] www.prwatch.org/books/wmd.html[24] www.prwatch.org/books/tbweSource: www.prwatch.org/node/7241
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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!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on May 16, 2008 10:57:19 GMT 4
Contractors Gone Wild Bruce Falconer is calling out the mainstream media for ignoring the disturbing testimony that dominated recent U.S. Senate hearings into corruption by private contractors in Iraq. The testimony came from whistleblowers Frank Cassaday, Linda Warren (both former employees of Kellogg Brown and Root) and Barry Halley (who worked in Iraq for Worldwide Network Services, the Sandi Group and CAPE Environmental Management.) They told stories of widespread theft of materials and supplies needed by soldiers, looting Iraqi treasures (in one case melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs), and a prostitution ring run by the manager of a "major defense contractor," which led to the death of a colleague whose armored car was diverted "to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad." Cassaday, Warren and Halley say they were punished and harassed when they tried to alert their companies to these abuses. Aside from Mother Jones, the only news outlet to file a report on their testimony was David Ivanovich of the Houston Chronicle, although a transcript of the hearings is available on the Senate's website: democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc-hearing.cfm?A=42Contractors Gone WildTheft, hookers, melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs—all in a day's work for private military contractors in Iraq? By Bruce Falconer May 2, 2008 Allegations of widespread mismanagement and corruption among private contractors in Iraq are nothing new; if anything, tales of cronyism, over-billing, and embezzlement have become so frequent that our national tolerance for them seems only to have increased as the Iraq War has drawn on. Even so, the testimony earlier this week of three whistleblowers before the Senate's Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) stands out for the sheer outrageousness of their accusations—namely that U.S. private contractors looted Iraqi palaces and ministries, stole military equipment, fenced supplies destined for U.S. troops, and even operated a prostitution ring that may have contributed to the death of fellow contractor. Yet despite its focus on such salacious matters as sex and corruption, the session earned little media attention.The first to testify was Frank Cassaday, a former KBR employee who worked as an ice plant operator in Fallujah in 2004 and 2005. "Ice was a very valuable commodity in Iraq that was regularly stolen and bartered for other goods," he told the committee. He recalled how a convoy of U.S. Marines, in preparation for an operation that would take them outside the wire for several days, requested 28 bags of ice to keep their food fresh in the desert heat. They received only three. "The ice foreman was cheating the troops out of ice at the same time that he was trading the ice for DVDs, CDs, food, and other items at the Iraqi shops across the street," Cassaday said. "This foreman would change the ice tally sheets at the distribution area I worked in to make it seem as though we had handed out more ice to the Marines than we actually did." Cassaday said he later observed his colleagues returning to KBR's camp with equipment they had stolen from the U.S. military, including refrigerators, artillery round detonators, two rocket launchers, and about 800 rounds of small arms ammunition. After he informed the KBR camp manager of the thefts, Marines searched the camp with dogs to recover the stolen property. For his trouble, Cassaday said, KBR security officers jailed him in his tent for two days. He then spent another four days in "protective custody" before being transferred, against his will, to work in a laundry. The practice of stealing equipment and supplies destined for the U.S. military was so pervasive that KBR employees invented a slang term to describe it: "drug deals." But thefts were not limited to military supplies, said Linda Warren, another former KBR employee who testified at the hearing. Upon her arrival in Baghdad in 2004, she was shocked by the number of contractors involved in criminal activity. "KBR employees who were contracted to perform construction duties inside palaces and municipal buildings were looting," she said. "Not only were they looting, but they had a system in place to get contraband out of the country so it could be sold on eBay. They stole artwork, rugs, crystal, and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots." Like Cassaday, when she complained to her superiors about the thefts, she was punished. She said her vehicle was taken away, her movements were closely monitored, and her access to phones and the Internet were cut off. Eventually, she was transferred out of Baghdad.Perhaps more shocking than any of this was the accusation from Barry Halley, a former project manager for Worldwide Network Services, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that was working on subcontract for DynCorp. According to Halley, his site manager in Iraq, who he said was employed by a "major defense contractor," moonlighted as the leader of a prostitution ring serving American contractors in Iraq that indirectly caused the death of a colleague. "A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was traveling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission," he told the committee. "I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by a manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad." The prostitution ring was shut down when the company's home office learned of it, but, Halley said, the manager who controlled it retained his job, moving on to work another contract in Haiti. A theme running through all three witnesses' testimony, aside from the pervasiveness of corruption among private contractors in Iraq, was that blowing the whistle on abuses rarely did any good. As is often the case with whistleblowers, speaking out was a shortcut to getting fired or demoted. "There's a no-talk, no-speak policy in effect in Iraq about what goes on," Halley said. According to Cassaday, although contractors for KBR are trained to report irregularities, the practice is generally frowned on by managers in the field. "In Houston at the training camp that I was at for two weeks before we went over to Iraq, they told us that, 'Our door is always open. If you have a problem, just come on in,'" he said. "But what they don't tell you is there's a back door to that office. If you come in and you complain about something, you're going to be going out that back door. You're going to either be transferred someplace you don't want to be, or you're going to be fired." Arriving nearly two weeks after the military awarded a 10-year logistical contract worth up to $150 billion to DynCorp, KBR, and a third firm, the DPC hearing was the thirteenth in a series designed to look into contractor fraud and abuse in the reconstruction of Iraq. Although, as a partisan committee, it has no powers to pass legislation, DPC members do refer allegations to the Department of Justice and the Pentagon's Inspector General for further investigation, says Barry Piatt, the DPC's communications director. Committee chairman Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has been advocating for the creation of a permanent, bipartisan Wartime Contracting Commission to look into the types of accusations raised this week, but so far, says Piatt, Senate Republicans have blocked the measure. Until he is able to obtain the necessary 60 votes, Dorgan will continue to negotiate with the opposition in hopes of peeling away enough support to establish the commission. In the meantime, "the hearings that need to be done will be done," says Piatt. "The Republicans won't able to block that, and by continuing to do them, [Senator Dorgan] is showing the work that a committee like that would do." Bruce Falconer is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington, D.C., bureau. Source:www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/05/contractor-fraud-and-theft-in-iraq.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 Jun 30, 2008 13:36:26 GMT 4
The Nuclear Expert Who Never WasFormer U.N. weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, has hurled major accusations against the legitimacy of David Albright calling himself a former U.N. weapons inspector, doctor, nuclear physicist, and nuclear expert and the mainstream media's acceptance of him as such. This is serious folks, considering that Albright has shaped public discourse and debate on nuclear capabilities of Iraq and Iran by propagating factually incorrect, illogical and misleading information....MichelleThe Nuclear Expert Who Never WasThursday 26 June 2008 by: Scott Ritter, Truthdig I am a former U.N. weapons inspector. I started my work with the United Nations in September 1991, and between that date and my resignation in August 1998, I participated in over 30 inspections, 14 as chief inspector. The United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, was the organization mandated by the Security Council with the implementation of its resolutions requiring Iraq to be disarmed of its weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities. While UNSCOM oversaw the areas of chemical and biological weapons, and ballistic missiles, it shared the nuclear file with the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. As such, UNSCOM, through a small cell of nuclear experts on loan from the various national weapons laboratories, would coordinate with the nuclear safeguards inspectors from the IAEA, organized into an "Action Team" dedicated to the Iraq nuclear disarmament problem. UNSCOM maintained political control of the process, insofar as its executive chairman was the only one authorized to approve a given inspection mission. At first, the IAEA and UNSCOM shared the technical oversight of the inspection process, but soon this was transferred completely to the IAEA's Action Team, and UNSCOM's nuclear staff assumed more of an advisory and liaison function. In August 1992 I began cooperating closely with IAEA's Action Team, traveling to Vienna, where the IAEA maintained its headquarters. The IAEA had in its possession a huge cache of documents seized from Iraq during a series of inspections in the summer of 1991 and, together with other U.N. inspectors, I was able to gain access to these documents for the purpose of extracting any information which might relate to UNSCOM's non-nuclear mission. These documents proved to be very valuable in that regard, and a strong working relationship was developed. Over the coming years I frequently traveled to Vienna, where I came to know the members of the IAEA Action Team as friends and dedicated professionals. Whether poring over documents, examining bits and pieces of equipment (the IAEA kept a sample of an Iraqi nuclear centrifuge in its office) or ruminating about the difficult political situation that was Iraq over wine and cheese on a Friday afternoon, I became familiar with the core team of experts who composed the IAEA Action Team. I bring up this history because during the entire time of my intense, somewhat intimate cooperation with the IAEA Action Team, one name that never entered into the mix was David Albright. Albright is the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS, an institute which he himself founded), and has for some time now dominated the news as the "go-to" guy for the U.S. mainstream media when they need "expert opinion" on news pertaining to nuclear issues. Most recently, Albright could be seen commenting on a report he authored, released by ISIS on June 16, in which he discusses the alleged existence of a computer owned by Swiss-based businessmen who were involved in the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market ring. According to Albright, this computer contained sensitive design drawings of a small, sophisticated nuclear warhead which, he speculates, could fit on a missile delivery system such as that possessed by Iran. I have no objection to an academically based think tank capable of producing sound analysis about the myriad nuclear-based threats the world faces today. But David Albright has a track record of making half-baked analyses derived from questionable sources seem mainstream. He breathes false legitimacy into these factually challenged stories by cloaking himself in a résumé which is disingenuous in the extreme. Eventually, one must begin to question the motives of Albright and ISIS. No self-respecting think tank would allow itself to be used in such an egregious manner. The fact that ISIS is a creation of Albright himself, and as such operates as a mirror image of its founder and president, only underscores the concerns raised when an individual lacking in any demonstrable foundation of expertise has installed himself into the mainstream media in a manner that corrupts the public discourse and debate by propagating factually incorrect, illogical and misleading information. In his résumé Albright prominently advertises himself as a "former U.N. weapons inspector." Indeed, this is the first thing that is mentioned when he describes himself to the public. Witness an Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post which he jointly authored with Jacqueline Shire in January 2008, wherein he is described as such: "David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, is president of the Institute for Science and International Security." His erstwhile U.N. credentials appear before his actual job title. Now, this is not uncommon. I do the same thing when describing myself, noting that I was a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. I feel comfortable doing this, because it's true and because my résumé is relevant to my writing. In his official ISIS biography, Albright details his "U.N. inspector" experience as such: "Albright cooperated actively with the IAEA Action Team from 1992 until 1997, focusing on analyses of Iraqi documents and past procurement activities. In June 1996, he was the first non-governmental inspector of the Iraqi nuclear program. On this inspection mission, Albright questioned members of Iraq's former uranium enrichment programs about their statements in Iraq's draft Full, Final, and Complete Declaration." Now, as I have explained previously, I cooperated actively between 1992 and 1998 with the IAEA Action team, covering the same ground that David Albright claims to have. I do not doubt his assertion that he was in contact with the IAEA during the period claimed; I just doubt the use of the word actively to describe this cooperation. Maybe Albright was part of a top-secret "shadow" inspection activity that I was unaware of. I strongly doubt this. In 1992, when Albright states he began his "active cooperation" with the IAEA, he was serving as a "Senior Staff Scientist" with the Federation of American Scientists. That same year Albright, in collaboration with Frans Berkhout of Sussex University and William Walker of the University of St. Andrews, published "World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium," 1992 (SIPRI and Oxford University Press). From March 1991 until July 1992, Albright, together with Mark Hibbs, wrote a series of seven articles on the Iraqi nuclear weapons programs for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The final three articles of this series, entitled "Iraq's Bomb: Blueprints and Artifacts," "Iraq: It's all over at Al Atheer" and "Iraq's shop-till-you-drop nuclear program," were in part based upon information provided to Albright and Hibbs by the IAEA in response to questions posed by the two authors. So far as I can tell, this is the true nature of David Albright's "active cooperation." Far from being a subject-matter expert brought in by the IAEA to review Iraqi documents, Albright was simply an outsider with questions. In the November/December 1995 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Albright wrote an article, co-authored with Robert Kelley, titled "Has Iraq come clean at last?" I know Bob Kelley. In August 1992, it was Kelley, then deputy to Action Team leader Maurizio Zifferero, who helped me and other UNSCOM inspectors gain access to the Iraqi documents under IAEA control. Kelley was, and is, a great safeguards inspector, and among his many accomplishments is his leading role in directing the IAEA's investigation into South Africa's unilaterally dismantled nuclear weapons program in the mid-1990s. Bob Kelley had served as David Albright's "in" at the IAEA since 1992, when he started providing Albright with access to some of the IAEA's information on Iraq's nuclear program. The decision to jointly author an article on Iraq was a big step toward legitimizing what had been, up until that time, an informal relationship. The joint article with Kelley gave Albright a legitimacy within the IAEA, to the extent that there were no objections when Kelley recommended inviting Albright to participate in a surge of inspections. It was during the aftermath of the defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, in August 1995, and the subsequent turning over of a massive quantity of previously hidden documents, including those pertaining to nuclear issues. These activities served as the framework around which Albright and Kelley wrote their article. The June 1996 inspection Albright participated in was his one and only foray into Iraq as a weapons inspector. He was not a chief inspector, nor a deputy chief inspector, nor an operations officer. He was a minor member of the team, Bob Kelley's bag boy, who for the most part was there to observe. In a round-table discussion with Iraqi nuclear scientists, attended by all of the inspectors, Albright was able to ask a few questions, not from the standpoint of an IAEA expert, but more as an informed tourist. I was in Iraq at the time, spearheading the very controversial UNSCOM 150 inspection, which found our team barred from entering several sensitive sites in and around Baghdad. On the few occasions when I was able to spend some down time at the U.N. headquarters on Canal Street, I would catch up with the status of the other inspections taking place in Iraq at the same time, including the one Albright was attached to. From all accounts, his lone stint as an inspector was at best unremarkable. He was a dilettante in every sense of the word, a Walter Mitty-like character in a world of genuine U.N. inspectors. There was recognition among most involved that bringing an outsider such as David Albright into the inspection process was a mistake. Not only did he lack any experience in the nuclear weapons field (being an outsider with only secondhand insight into limited aspects of the Iraqi program), he had no credibility with the Iraqi nuclear scientists, and his questions, void of any connectivity with the considerable record of interaction between the IAEA and Iraq, were not taken seriously by either side. Albright left Iraq in June 1996, and was never again invited back. This is the reality of the relationship between Albright and the IAEA, and the singular event in his life which he uses as the justification for prominently promoting himself as a "former U.N. inspector." While not outright fraud, Albright's self-promoted relationship with the IAEA, and his status as a "former U.N. inspector," is at best disingenuous, all the more so since he exploits this misleading biographical data in his ongoing effort to insert himself into the public eye as a nuclear weapons expert, a title not supported by anything in his life experience. I can't say for certain when Albright became "Doctor" Albright. A self-described "physicist," he allows the term to linger, as he does the title "former U.N. inspector," in order to create the impression that he possesses a certain gravitas. David Albright holds a master of science degree in physics from Indiana University and a master of science in mathematics from Wright State University. I imagine that this résumé permits him to assign himself the title physicist, but not in the Robert Oppenheimer/Edward Teller sense of the word. Whatever physics work Albright may or may not have done in his life, one thing is certain: He has never worked as a nuclear physicist on any program dedicated to the design and/or manufacture of nuclear weapons. He has never designed nuclear weapons and never conducted mathematical calculations in support of testing nuclear weapons, nor has he ever worked in a facility or with an organization dedicated to either. At best, Albright is an observer of things nuclear. But to associate his sub-par physics pedigree with genuine nuclear weapons-related work is, like his self-promotion as a "former U.N. weapons inspector," disingenuous in the extreme. His lack of any advanced educational training as a nuclear physicist, combined with his dearth of practical experience with things nuclear, is further exacerbated by his astounding assumption of the title Doctor. In 2007 Albright received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Wright State University. This honorary award is a recognition that should never be belittled, but it in no way elevates Albright to the status of one who has undergone the formal educational training and has actually earned a doctorate, especially in the demanding field of nuclear physics. While I cannot find any evidence of Albright promoting his honorary title in a manner that indicates direct fraud on his part (i.e., falsely claiming to be a Ph.D. in physics), there are far too many instances where he is referred to by those who interview him as being both "Dr. Albright" and a "physicist" that the uninformed reader might be misled into believing that the two were somehow connected. Albright has spent the past decade building a solid reputation as an analyst of nuclear issues. One only need look at the impressive work he and ISIS have done on the issue of North Korea to understand the potential he brings to the table as an outside observer on nuclear matters. Informed interest, combined with sustained access to critical personalities on both sides of an issue, makes for insights and opinions that contribute in a positive manner to the overall public discourse. No one who is interested in facilitating informed debate, discussion and dialogue about issues such as those facing us in North Korea, Iran and elsewhere can deny the value Albright brings to the table. That his insight into these matters should be shared with members of the media is likewise something that should be encouraged. But an analyst must be viewed in the proper perspective, and this begins by correctly defining who and what one is. David Albright is not a former U.N. weapons inspector, but rather an accidental tourist. To call oneself a weapons inspector suggests that one participated in the totality of the inspection process, and as such can converse readily, based on firsthand experience, about the total spectrum of issues that entails. Albright, based on his flimsy résumé in this regard, is not capable of such, and therefore should stop referring to himself in this manner, and encourage the media to do the same. Likewise, all reference to Albright as "Dr. Albright" should be eliminated, as should any reference which places the words physicist and nuclear in proximity. Let his work be judged on its own merit, and not camouflaged behind misleading perceptions created through false advertising. In that he never has designed or worked in a nuclear reactor, never has designed or worked on nuclear weapons, in fact never has done anything of a practical, hands-on nature in the nuclear field, to call Albright an expert is a disservice to the term and, again, misleading in the extreme. It is not a sin to merely be informed, or to possess a specialty. But informed specialists are a dime a dozen. There is a reason mainstream media do not turn to bloggers when seeking out expert opinion. And yet, when they turn to "Dr. Albright, former U.N. weapons inspector," they are getting little more than a well-funded, well-connected blogger. If one takes a closer look at the ISIS Report published by Albright on June 16 and widely quoted in the press since then, one will realize that there simply isn't any substance to the allegations. Albright's sole source seems to be a single, unnamed IAEA official, bringing to mind Bob Kelley and his role in facilitating Albright's "access" to the IAEA in the 1990s. The remainder of the report comprises information already available to the general public, or sheer speculation. This is, of course, the problem when someone who is not an expert on a given subject attempts to portray himself as just that. Lacking in the foundation of knowledge and experience which generally is expected of a genuine expert, the false "expert" commits error after error, not only of the factual sort but also in judgment. Had Albright in fact been a true nuclear expert, especially one fortified with firsthand experience as a former U.N. weapons inspector, he would not have had any association with Khidir Hamza, the disgraced Iraqi defector who claimed to have firsthand knowledge of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. A true nuclear expert would have recognized the technical impossibilities and inconsistencies in Hamza's fabrications. And a genuine former U.N. weapons inspector would have known that Hamza had been fingered as a fraud by the IAEA and UNSCOM. David Albright instead employed Hamza as an analyst with ISIS from 1997 until 1999. Albright likewise facilitated the story of former Iraqi nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi being told to the world. As a "former U.N. weapons inspector," Albright had a passing knowledge of Obeidi; the Iraqi was among the scientists that the IAEA team Albright served on questioned in June 1996 (Albright himself claims to have personally questioned Obeidi). Albright helped sell Obeidi's story about buried uranium centrifuge parts to the media, even though a true nuclear expert would have known that what Obeidi claims to have hidden possessed absolutely no value in the field of nuclear enrichment, and any former U.N. weapons inspector worth his or her salt would have recognized the inconsistencies and improbabilities in the Obeidi story. David Albright has a history of being used by those who seek to gain media attention for their respective claims. In addition to the Hamza and Obeidi fiascos, Albright and his organization, ISIS, have served as the conduit for other agencies gaining publicity about the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program, the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor, and most recently the alleged Swiss computer containing sensitive nuclear design information. On each occasion, Albright is fed sensitive information from a third party, and then packages it in a manner that is consumable by the media. The media, engrossed with Albright's misleading résumé ("former U.N. weapons inspector," "Doctor," "physicist" and "nuclear expert"), give Albright a full hearing, during which time the particulars the third-party source wanted made public are broadcast or printed for all the world to see. More often than not, it turns out that the core of the story pushed by Albright is, in fact, wrong. While Iran did indeed possess uranium enrichment capability at Natanz and a heavy water plant (under construction) at Arak (as reported by Albright thanks to information provided by the Iranian opposition group MEK, most probably with the help of Israeli intelligence), Albright's wild speculation about weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium proved to be wrong. There was indeed a building in Syria that was bombed by Israel. But Albright's expert opinion, derived from his interpretation of photographs, consists of nothing more than simplistic observation ("The tall building in the image may house a reactor under construction and the pump station along the river may have been intended to supply cooling water to the reactor") combined with unfocused questions that assumed much, but were in fact based on little ("How far along was the reactor construction project when it was bombed? What was the extent of nuclear assistance from North Korea? Which reactor components did Syria obtain from North Korea or elsewhere, and where are they now?"). And, most recently, we have Albright commenting about the contents of a computer he hasn't even laid eyes on, though he feels confident enough to raise the specter of global nuclear catastrophe ("How will authorities learn if Iran, North Korea, or even terrorists bought these designs?" Albright asks when referring to the contents of the Swiss computer). Nowhere in his résumé does Albright cite any formal training as a photographic interpreter; in any case, one would have to have an intimate knowledge of nuclear facilities in order to know what one was looking at when examining an aerial image. A genuine nuclear weapons expert would have been able to discern the technical faults in the logic of the stories being peddled by Albright. And a genuine former U.N. weapons inspector, well versed in preparing airtight investigations based upon verified intelligence information, would have balked at the shabby nature of the evidence provided. Again, because Albright is neither, he and ISIS play the role of patsy, the middleman peddling misinformation to a media too lazy to conduct their own due diligence before running with a story. Albright, operating under the guise of his creation, ISIS, has a track record of inserting hype and speculation about matters of great sensitivity in a manner which skews the debate toward the worst-case scenario. Over time Albright often moderates his position, but the original sensationalism still remains, serving the purpose of imprinting a negative image in the psyche of public opinion. This must stop. It is high time the mainstream media began dealing with David Albright for what he is (a third-rate reporter and analyst), and what he isn't (a former U.N. weapons inspector, doctor, nuclear physicist or nuclear expert). It is time for David Albright, the accidental inspector, to exit stage right. Issues pertaining to nuclear weapons and their potential proliferation are simply too serious to be handled by amateurs and dilettantes. ---------- Scott Ritter was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.Source:www.truthout.org/article/the-nuclear-expert-who-never-was
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