Media: Fake News

Weapons of Mass Disinformation

The media is not in cahoots with big business - the media IS big business
Big Brother is You, Watching

"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing."
-- Malcolm X

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."
-- Mark Twain

The mainstream media restrict free speech but at least they make an effort to check facts (which is a cover for their form of propaganda). On-line blogs can allow any form of speech, but few of them document any efforts to check their facts, which makes most of them unreliable (for a different reason why the mainstream media is unreliable).

fake newsThe biggest stories that are not in the US media:

-- the military industrial complex removed President Kennedy from office for trying to end the Cold War and nuclear arms race

-- the social impacts of Peak Oil and how the consequences could be mitigated

-- election rigging via "faith based" voting machines

-- the Bush Cheney administration let 9/11 happen in order to trigger invasions of the Middle East and the Homeland Security surveillance society

 

"Peak Oil" got more media coverage since the Iraq invasion, although the "alternative" media has not been very interested. (An early exception was Earth Island Journal, which excerpted Richard Heinberg's book "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the fate of Industrial Societies.") It is curious that the BBC and even CNN have given more coverage to this than the Sierra Club, Mother Jones, The Nation, The Progressive, etc. Perhaps understanding Peak Oil doesn't fit into neat ideological paradigms, and therefore these publications are unable to comprehend it. Unfortunately, most of the mainstream coverage of Peak Oil ignores grassroots efforts that hold the most promise for mitigating the crisis, and even less of the coverage examines the various policies of the Bush regime as part of a covert agenda to manipulate the outcome of Peak Oil and other resource conflicts.

The 9/11 scandal received a small amount of traction in the corporate press, although the media do not dare stray beyond the official "surprise attack" and "incompetence" paradigms. The "gatekeepers" on the left have gone out of their way to muzzle the story, attacking reporters who have dared to piece together evidence that the official story is as much of a lie (if not more so) than the "Iraqi WMD" scam. A good collection of this evidence is provided by the Center for Cooperative Research, whose "timeline" of 9/11 is entirely sourced from the corporate media (see www.cooperativeresearch.org). The "liberal alternative" publication such as In These Times, Mother Jones, The Progressive, etc. ignored their quality work, even as some of them privately acknowledge it is excellent.

It is not a coincidence that the media -- from Democracy Now! to the New York Times -- is united in considering 9/11 "truth" as dependent on the demolition theories and the hoax(es) that the plane crashes were supposedly faked. No media, whether mainstream or alternative, dares to connect the dots to show that numerous warnings were deliberately ignored.

As with Peak Oil, the 9/11 issue gets much more coverage in Europe than the US.

 

From 2003 through 2005, this website was a participant in the Deception Dollar project, which has more than six million "Deception Dollars" in circulation to promote internet media efforts that expose the 9/11 scandal, bypassing the censorship in the corporate mainstream media and the foundation funded "alternative" media. To date, the national "alternative" media have refused to even mention the Deception Dollar campaign, which has been extremely visible at many "progressive" events and was prominent at the massive peace rallies just before the invasion of Iraq. (Unfortunately, the Deception Dollar project did not appreciate public statements that some of the claims for 9/11 complicity are not true, and this website, among others, was removed from the September 2006 edition.)

It is ironic that the internet, set up by the same Pentagon agency that created the "Total Information Awareness" office to spy on the citizens, allows people to bypass media control and censorship.

More than twenty years ago, Washington Post reporter Ben Bagdikian published a book called "The Media Monopoly," which showed how there were only 50 media companies that controlled most of the information flow in the United States. Today, if we had 50 corporations dominating the media this would be considered a great improvement on the status quo, since we now have about six conglomerates that run the show. Merely undoing the changes imposed during the Second Bush Regime will not be enough - we also need repeal of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and reinstatement of the "Fairness Doctrine," among many other reforms. Ultimately, those television and radio stations that license the public airwaves to broadcast their programs must be required to provide airtime to all candidates who qualify to be on electoral ballots, since that would provide better opportunities for civic debate and reduce the obscene requirements for candidates to raise boatloads of money to win elections.

Perhaps a slogan for media activists could be "One Person, One Station."

While we wait, and wait, and wait, and agitate, for government to remember that there are anti-trust laws supposedly to prevent monopolies, we the people should not give our money to media conglomerates that lie to us. This also includes internet companies such as America On Line and MSN, Microsoft, most newspapers, magazines, and even many of the so-called liberal alternative press which publishes accurate information on many social ills but refuses to address the modus operandi of the empire (9/11). Instead, please support fearless media entities that ignore censorship, political correctness and pack journalism. Learn to create your own media. Community Cable Television. Call up talk radio shows to voice deeper issues and solutions. Publish websites and web logs (blogs). Investigate micro-power radio broadcasting. Write letters to the editor and opinion pieces for mainstream papers (some of them are easy to get published in if you write concisely). Think of your own approaches and follow a path that is right for you.


One unanswered question for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which licenses television and radio stations:

On September 11, the "Emergency Broadcast System" was not activated in New York or Washington, even after the military and Federal Aviation Administration knew that out of control planes were headed for destruction. In New York, a warning over the airwaves could have saved many lives, since no one would have gone back upstairs in the South Tower (the second one to be hit) after the North Tower had been struck if they had known a second plane was headed their way. Hundreds of lives would probably have been saved. A genuine investigation of 9/11 would inquire why the Emergency Broadcast System was not used to warn New Yorkers that another plane was headed tier way and to seek shelter away from the towers.

Is is a coincidence that the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 targeted the media as well as the Democratic party leadership? or that journalists in Iraq have been targeted by the US military?

 

Media watchdogs

www.fair.org - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting - a good organization, sadly marred by their vehement hostility toward 9/11 complicity and their allergy to explaining why the Peak Oil wars are happening

Project Censored

Democracy Now!

mediachannel.org

www.prwatch.org - Center for Media & Democracy, PR Watch, Madison, Wisconsin

'Die-ins' Target War and News Media by Richard Cowen
www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0328-10.htm

There is only one antidote against propaganda, and that is a relevant sense of history and a strong collective memory. When we remember the lessons from the past, and when we remember what happened even a few days ago, then the job of the propagandists and their warmongering bosses, becomes much more difficult. It is ultimately when their message is challenged that war can be stopped; bloated armament budgets can be pared; international law can be upheld; and shallow mean-spirited politicians with blood soaked hands can be put on trial in an international war crimes tribunal.
Arrogant Propaganda
US Propaganda During the First 10 Days of the Iraq War
By PAUL de ROOIJ www.counterpunch.org/rooij04012003.html

When the Pike Committee, the House Select committee established to investigate the CIA's domestic abuses, they ultimately came to the conclusion that the CIA was able to get away with so much because they controlled the press.
-- Lisa Pease, The Dangers of Wikipedia, Tuesday, February 20, 2007
http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2007/02/dangers-of-wikipedia.html


"Without the complicity of the mainstream media, the 9/11 cover-up could not exist. Those who control the mainstream media control the brainstem of our collective consciousness. When those charged with being the skeptical inquirers are neither skeptical nor do they inquire, the only phrase for it is deep complicity. When investigative journalists fail to investigate the obvious, it is deep complicity. When investigative journalists only investigate that which distracts the public from the obvious, it is even deeper complicity."
-- Barrie Zwicker, author, The Great Deception, The Great Conspiracy and Towers of Deception


“The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press.” . . . . “If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” "
Malcolm X, at the Audubon, December 13, 1964." In Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman, 96-114. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964, 101


 

"I view the output of established media as a slurry of manure and toxic waste; a propaganda product that requires heavy analysis and context fitting in order to recover the 5%-10% of useful information contained within an obfuscated mess."
-- www.cryptogon.com/?page_id=2

"If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves."
-- Howard Zinn

"I just worry that we have lost our balls for reporting. We constantly underestimate the intelligence and interest in the audience. The U.S. press took such a pass on the Bush administration that they are as responsible for us marching into Iraq as the administration."
-- George Clooney, The Last Word: George Clooney, The frustrated American, Newsweek International, Feb. 12, 2007 www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16959624/site/newsweek

 


Dirty Laundry, by Don Henley

I make my living off the evening news
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry

Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don’t have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry

Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em when they’re down
Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em when they’re down
Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em when they’re down
Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em all around

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
It’s interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
Running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry

You don’t really need to find out what’s going on
You don’t really want to know just how far it’s gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry

Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em when they’re down
Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em when they’re down
Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em when they’re down
Kick ’em when they’re stiff
Kick ’em all around

Dirty little secrets
Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybody’s pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry
We can do the innuendo
We can dance and sing
When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!

Television: a Weapon of Mass Distraction!

 

EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, a group of disgruntled television viewers calling themselves "Meet The People" disowned their television sets in front of NBC studios to protest the pro-war media bias prevalent in Sunday morning talk shows. They then proceeded to smash the sets. Timed for the taping of NBC's Sunday morning talk show "Meet the Press," Meet the People barricaded the Nebraska Avenue entrance to the network's DC studios with a motley collection of former television sets. posted by the Progressive Review, 03/03/2003 www.prorev.com

 

SY HERSH: 'NEVER SEEN MY PEERS AS FRIGHTENED'

HARVARD CRIMSON - Journalist Seymour Hersh denounced the Bush administration's approach to Iraq last night after accepting the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism at the Kennedy School of Government's ARCO Forum. . . Hersh began his acceptance speech by portraying the difficulties that today's reporters face, especially in Washington. "I have never seen my peers as frightened as they are now," Hersh said. . . Hersh then turned his attention to the impending war with Iraq. Hersh said skepticism about a potential war is shared by many Washington insiders. "I have never seen such dissent even with three and four star generals. The war is particularly not popular with the marines," Hersh said. . . . "Congress has gotten so much dumber it's embarrassing," he said. "There has been a collapse of Congress. It's an incredible failure. A staggering failure."

 

 

 

www.peakmoment.tv - Peak Moment television: Community Responses for a Changing Energy Future

A television series on positive responses to energy decline and climate change through local community action.

Weekly half-hour conversations about

How can we thrive, build more self-reliant communities, and help one another in this time of transition?

A newspaper is not just for reporting news, it's to get people mad enough to do something about it.
-- Mark Twain

"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."
-- Joseph Goebbels

William Baker, CIA spokesman, to the press
"In a general way, we try to anticipate some of your questions so that I can respond 'no comment' with some degree of knowledge."

The US military has invaded the US media. I would like tonight to call for an immediate removal of all US troops from CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, CNN, all of them. US troops come home!
from Michael Moore's intended Oscar speech - delivered at the Riverside Church, March 27, 2003. www.counterpunch.org/rooij04012003.html

www.davidcogswell.com

The news (not the corporate TV news of course, but the real news that surfaces selectively in newspapers and online publications) is getting better. The Bush administration had to inflict nearly cataclysmic damage before enough Americans began to wake up and take action to create meaningful resistance to the insane policies of these madmen who have designated themselves our leaders. But it appears to be happening. Some momentum seems to be developing. The Bush administration has now clearly exposed its vulnerabilities. Its inability to cope with the disasters it has created is becoming clearer every day. The Bushistas are beginning to reap the fruits of policies that are driven by the requirements of an ongoing PR campaign which is mounted for the purpose of covering the deals they make with the cronies they reward so well at our expense. With policies made strictly for an ongoing political campaign, there is no capacity to follow through. Its lies are catching up to it.
The Bush machine, with all its demonstrably massive power, is looking more and more out of control. The political machine that so deftly exercised what appeared to be nearly perfect autocratic power, is coming apart at the seams.
The appearance of significant resistance to the Death Party is little more than a trace of hope at the moment, but the possibilities are glorious. Do I dare hope for great moments? Yes! We are already in a cataclysmic moment in history. That is established and undeniable. Is it out of the question that it could become one of those times that occur periodically in history when democratic power asserts itself once again and a corrupt regime is toppled? No. It is not out of the question.
The weaknesses of this corporate regime have now been revealed, awesome as its exercise of power has been since 2000. The regime I refer to includes not just the Bush mob, but Fox, Lockheed, most of congress, etc., etc., etc. But there is a power that is much greater in magnitude than this corporate elite, and when that human force is aroused it is volcanic. There is some very powerful energy developing in the US right now. There are chains of events in process which no one on earth can turn back, not even the apparently all-powerful Bush regime. And changes brought about by those events are going to force attention onto some of these areas of corruption that are at the heart of the Bush operation. It's going to be a demanding job of putting out one fire after another for the Bushes. It's hard to imagine how they can put it all in place. The very question is frightening because the thought of the Bush administration feeling forced to engage in desperate acts is too much to contemplate.


What Americans see, or more likely, don't see, is turning into the media story of the war so far.
Why the self-censorship? Is it a matter of taste? Of not offending American sensibilities?
Then why is it that the media corporations, including those that own most of the networks and news channels, make millions of millions churning out "entertainment'' that blows people up real good?
U.S. eyes wide shut to real-life gore and guts
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS, Toronto Star
www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
pagename=thestar%2FLayout%2FArticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035780072949&
call_page=TS_Columnists&call_pageid=970599109774&call_pagepath=Columnists


The press in this country is now and always has been so thoroughly dominated by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the great masses of the people that correct information concerning political, economical and social subjects which it is necessary that the mass of people shall have in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect themselves from the brutal force and chicanery of the ruling and employing class.
- E.W. Scripps (newspaper publisher ca 1900 in memorandum sent to his editorial executives)

The mass media become the authority at any given moment for what is true and what is false, what is reality and what is fantasy, what is important and what is trivial. There is no greater force in shaping the public mind; even brute force triumphs only by creating an accepting attitude toward the brutes.
-- Ben Bagdikian (The Media Monopoly)

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.
-- Joseph Pulitzer

In an authoritarian society there is a ministry, or a commissar, or a directorate that controls what everybody will see and hear. We call that a dictatorship. Here we have a handful of very powerful corporations led by a handful of very powerful men and women who control everything we see and hear beyond the natural environment and our own families. That's something which surrounds us every day and night. If it were one person we'd call that a dictatorship, a ministry of information.
-- Ben Bagdikan

"Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the country....It remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons....It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world....As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented."
-- Edward Bernays in his book "Propaganda" (1928). Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew and chief advisor to William Paley, who started CBS in 1928

 

"There is no such thing at this date of the world's history in America as an independent press. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinion, and if you did, you know beforehand it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things. and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allow my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before 24 hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it, and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks. They pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
- John Swinden, head of the New York Times, when asked to toast an independent press in a gathering at the National Press Club

 

http://jsons.collegepublisher.com/news/313047.html
Reporters Without Borders ranks U.S. 17th in world press freedom survey
By Kelly-Cullivan Smith 11/2/2002
The United States is far behind other Western countries, such as, Canada, Norway, Iceland, and France when it comes to press freedom, according to a study published last week by Reporters Without Borders, an organization that defends the interests of journalists around the world.
The report lists a worldwide index of countries according to their respect for press freedom. It includes 139 countries, and places the United States 17th.

 

 

From the Josef Goebbels School of Public Relations:
Microsoft and General Electric present "MSNBC"

Which "truth" is true?
Information Access
The New York Twin Tower attack and the Internet as alternative information source
www.masternewmedia.org/2001/10/31/which_truth_is_true.htm


March 9, 2003
Look Out Bush & Co., Here Come the Quakers
Resistance to the war machine is building to awesome proportions
www.davidcogswell.com

As a survey in Editor & Publisher, recently showed, even establishment newspapers have been swayed by the fierce popular resistance to the war machine's latest plans, and papers like the Washington Post are reporting a movement their owners kept out of their pages until recently.
Yesterday's article in the Washington Post said, "Once spearheaded largely by leftist students, hippies and draft-card burners, the peace movement is now taking on more support from the mainstream: labor unions, war veterans, middle-aged professionals, and teenagers born years after the last draft. Almost 100,000 backers have donated to Peace Action, one of the biggest anti-war groups, over the past six months, coordinators say."
Some of our elder, more experienced voices have come right out and said what the establishment media has run scared of for years. The venerable reporter Helen Thomas recently said in plain terms that Bush was the worst president in history. The efforts of the Bush administration and the Republican National Committee to isolate her and target her for destruction are just further embarrassment and will fail pathetically.
Gore Vidal said some time back that Bush will leave office the most unpopular president in history. He's just caused too much damage, Vidal said. When you realize that it's coming true, it almost makes you feel sorry for the fool.
But not quite, not yet. Meanwhile some are saying, "'60s redux?" It reminds me of a saying I've heard: "This is going to make the '60s look like the '50s."
What we witnessed on February 15 was the appearance of a worldwide, self-conscious movement for democracy and justice, a phenomenon of awesome power. History happens in spite of the efforts of rulers to contain it and maintain their power and control. Looking back at history we see the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and within the last few years, the fall of the massive totalitarian Soviet empire. Each of these was a massive natural phenomenon. Efforts to stop such movements are doomed to failure.
The Soviet empire could not withstand the information explosion. Information and culture coming from outside showed its subjects another world was possible. The same thing could happen here as more Americans realize their major media are a fraud. There is evidence that this is happening. Americans are increasingly going abroad via the Internet to seek their news (see journalism.co.uk). Once the lid is off and Americans begin to discover the world outside their controlled media system, things could change drastically, and very quickly.
We get used to thinking of things in certain ways, but this regime is not inherently permanent. Its support system is based on a very deep structure of lies, which is why it is acting so quickly to hide as much information as possible from public view. It knows it's in a race against time. But don't think for a minute that it can't come crashing down. We saw the Berlin wall come down; we saw the Soviet Empire crumble. Very few people predicted that to happen even very shortly before it happened. It was practically unthinkable. Empires like that didn't just fall down of their own weight. But it happened. And it can happen again.
Someone said, "In the '80s capitalism defeated communism; in the '90s it defeated democracy." And that is true, as far as it goes. As far as we are now. But history is not over. The New World Order may be overthrown just as the Thousand Year Reich was, just as the Soviet Empire was. And I'm betting that it will be. After February 15 we have seen a glimpse of the power that will overthrow it.
The corporate state, with the ascension of George W. Bush and subsequent events, is making an all-out play for power. The goal is to come into the open with its dictatorial character and no longer have to maintain the pretense of democratic government. By making the power play, the corporate barons are forcing the confrontation which will, I am betting, bring them down. They are coming into the open with their tyranny, and it is arousing the awareness of a population that has long remained politically dormant, believing that it is part of a democratic system.
Globalization began with the transnational corporations, who were best positioned to take advantage of the Global Village that was made possible by global electronic communications. But that was only the vanguard of globalization. Trailing behind is a global people's movement. It's going to dwarf the globalization of corporations in its scope and power.
We will see what happened in the '60s peace movement played out on a global scale. We will see the New Deal, which regulated and humanized capitalism and in fact gave it a new lease on life, playing out on a global scale. We will see the American Revolution, which dethroned kings and established democratic republics, take place on a global scale.
It was the international corporate pirates who initiated globalization who are now in fact responsible for setting off the global people's movement. The excessiveness of their tyranny is sparking a reaction of outrage that is burning itself around the world at electronic velocity. Mussolini himself defined fascism as corporatism, the marriage of corporate and state power. The colonial pirates of the European empires, from Columbus on through Cortez, Coronado, Da Gama and on and on, are the precursors of the corporate plunderers who are behind the New World Order. What we are witnessing is the approaching confrontation on a world scale of the old forces of aristocratic tyranny with the forces of democracy.
History is on the side of democracy. The people have always had to seize power from autocrats, but they have done it before against more daunting powers than these. De Tocqueville said, "Can it be believed that the democracy which has overthown the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesman and capitalists?"

 

www.counterpunch.org/potter02242003.html
War and the Press
Watchdogs, Lapdogs and Sleeping Dogs

03/29/2003 Entry: "CNN/CIA - THE ENEMY WITHIN - by voxfux"
www.voxfux.com/archives/00000082.htm

Media Misquote and Excise Bush Comment About "Scripted" Press Conference
www.thememoryhole.org/media/scripted-scrub.htm

 

War coverage could alter U.S. media policy
Reporting may influence debate about ownership; More consolidation coming?; FCC to decide soon on any rules changes By Andrew Ratner
Sun Staff Originally published March 30, 2003
www.sunspot.net/entertainment/tv/bal-bz.media30mar30,0,297961.story?coll=bal-artslife-tv
"What's so interesting is the stark comparison of coverage from elsewhere and the U.S. TV networks, especially since the networks have their hand out right now for the Bush administration to grant them this change," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a public interest group in Washington.
"Just because the Internet exists does not mean we should have to go outside our borders to get serious in-depth news coverage," Chester said. "We only have a half-dozen broadcast companies left standing and that's why we're getting cookie-cutter coverage - all former generals all the time. We need a new policy with many voices and channels while we're moving in the other direction."
Critics point to radio-giant Clear Channel Communications Inc. as a cautionary example of media might in wartime.
The San Antonio, Texas, company, owned by a former business associate of President Bush, has sponsored several rallies in support of American troops, while a single correspondent "embedded" with the Marines provides news from Iraq for the company's 1,250 stations. (Clear Channel also owns 37 television stations and more than 775,000 billboards and is the largest producer of concerts in the world.)
A New York Times columnist conjectured that a corporate radio conglomerate would be unlikely to "rock the boat" by airing the kind of anti-war music that emboldened opposition to the Vietnam War.

 

MONDAY, MAR. 24, 2003
Written in a moment of anger
by Sanjay March 24, 2003
http://www.unknownnews.net/a0328.html
CNN has gone too far. I just saw a stupid blurb that says Iraq is in violation of the Geneva Convention because its media aired images of captured American soldiers and such.
I'm going to keep repeating this till someone gets it: Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo Bay.
CNN must be shut down if we hope to have any sanity in this world. You cannot even argue with its absurdity any more because that's just what it is — absurdity. Like the repeated showing of Baghdad being bombed in the "shock and motherfuckin awe" campaign, reminiscent of 9/11, no? Except here we're supposed to be happy. Except here we don't get to see the faces of those dead, or get to read about the stories of their lives, of their children. Except here those who are trying to save them are not "heroes", but some sort of villains. and the people who perpetrated these attacks are brave soldiers, not suicidal cowards.
I'm just going to go cry now.
Everything is twisted. Please, someone, do something about CNN...© 2003, by the author.
Comments? newsuneed @yahoo.com

 

 

 

INTERNET 10 - WARMONGERS 0
by William Thomas

EXCERPTS:
To everyone following this global cliffhanger, it looks like we're coming quickly down to a tripwire that could capsize the global applecart. Within weeks, a conscienceless Frankenstein armed with wicked weapons of mass destruction may be once again loose in our midst.
For the first time in known human history, power-crazed bureaucrats are finding it difficult to get away with almost anything. In this truth-telling time of personal camcorders and computers, exposure of official deceptions can be embarrassingly swift -- posted on the web for a whole wide wired world to see.
As Iran accelerates its nuclear weapons program to defend against an American attack they know is coming, and France moves this morning to block NATO from initiating plans to involve Turkey, mainstream media in Canada, Britain and across the USA continue to ignore revelations that shared U.S. and British "intelligence" on Iraq is years out of date. And cribbed from public sources. [Global TV Feb. 10]
Commenting on the media's self-censoring stories that trash all pretenses for war, Lifeboatnews editor Paul Grignon gripes, "It's as fixed as wrestling."
When critical mass is reached and the hundredth monkey logs on, it's all over for the Bush regime and their successors. Even now, with more than 620 million people logged on worldwide, incessant Internet revelations are illuminating a gang who... (continued)
NOTE: William Thomas served as a member of a three-man Gulf Environmental Emergency Response Team in Kuwait during and immediately after Desert Storm. Producer of the award-winning documentary, "Eco War", he is the author of Bringing The War Home, Chemtrails Confirmed, Alt. Health and All Fall Down: The Politics of Terror and Mass Persuasion. THIS ARTICLE IS EXCEPTIONAL. If only enough good people networked this as far and fast as they could, with fervent prayers for the binding of this plot out of hell, then by God's grace, the Bushwhackers would be stopped in their tracks with SOVEREIGNTY restored at home and abroad. All Ways Victory When We <http://www.heartcom.org/>LOVE Enough! -<http://www.heartcom.org/bio.htm>Christopher

----------------------- article follows:
Commentary Lifeboatnews.com
Feb. 10, 2003
I couldn't make this up. Five days ago, the man who covered up the MyLai massacre was on a roll. Addressing the UN Security Council and a worried wired world, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell repeatedly remonstrated, "Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
Hot stuff! The globally-televised 75 minute briefing put forward Washington's best case for massacring a defenseless population, still reeling from the last big American bombardment, and 11 years of strangulating sanctions that followed.
"Here is the evidence," ranted a righteous Powell at tight-lipped representatives from 15 nations, who may also have been listening to the ghostly chorus of 38 million Europeans killed during World War II.
"Ignore it and become irrelevant as a world body whose strongest resolutions have been consistently ignored by Israel throughout our ally's 35 year illegal occupation of the West Bank," Powell puffed. "Or join our unprovoked aggression against the people of Iraq and become irrelevant for violating international laws -- just like Americans do all the time in places like Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Colombia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Bosnia and Afghanistan."
I'm paraphrasing here...
Powell called Blair's intelligence scoop "a fine paper" of "exceptional quality" that detailed "Iraq's deceptions." The U.S. Secretary of State went on to praise a pompous Prime Minister for supplying what Blair boasted was an "up to the minute" assessment of Saddam's sadistic arsenal.
The latest information on Iraq's elusive weapons programs came from Britain's vaunted intelligence services, MI5 and MI6. Anyone on the Net could punch in Downing Street's official website and check out all 19 pages of intelligence available to London concerning "Iraq's Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation". [BBC Feb. 5, 2003]
OOPS!
Within hours of Powell's pronouncements, TV crews descended on the "chemical weapons sites" featured in his presentation -- only to find old dust atop ancient rubble. The reason was revealed the following morning, when the BBC's Channel 4 reported, "Downing St. Dossier Plagiarized".
Plagiarism is a form of theft. It turns out that Powell's "top intelligence" briefing to the UN had been lifted verbatim from a woefully outdated student thesis! [BBC Feb. 6, 2003]
CLIP
GOING NUCLEAR IN BAGHDAD
They're just getting started.
Cancer rates across Iraq -- particularly among children -- are already 12 to 15 times higher than pre-war levels. For the people of Iraq, as well as any occupier, constant exposure to uranium dust from hundreds of tons of Depleted Uranium munitions fired during Desert Storm (and hundreds of tons more from any new invasion) carries lethal risks. DU is 60% as radioactive as the uranium used in nuclear bombs. It enters human lungs, wombs and DNA as easily as it does open wounds and the food chain. And exploded DU rounds remain lethal for millions -- some experts say billions -- of years. [Bringing The War Home]
Now the boys around Bush are keen to try out their new "Robust Earth Penetrators" by gang-raping Iraq. (You're right, it's obscene.) These cosseted men, who have never been near a battlefield or seen the dazed expressions of maimed children, figure their "little" nuclear bombs will burrow far enough into their mother planet to stop radiation from leaking out and freaking out the entire world. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sept. 29, 2002]
But common sense and many experts warn that a more likely scenario would see "dirty" detonations raining a radioactive dust storm downwind, killing plenty of people in mosques and souks in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iran -- depending on whether the Shamal is blowing. Entire regions would be rendered uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years.
But hey, say Rumsfeld and others who pushed for the "baby nukes", we won't know till we try it.
Just like Hiroshima.
GEORGE, DICK, DONALD AND PAUL MEET THE "INFORMATION AGE"
To everyone following this global cliffhanger, it looks like we're coming quickly down to a tripwire that could capsize the global applecart. Within weeks, a conscienceless Frankenstein armed with wicked weapons of mass destruction may be once again loose in our midst.
Or maybe not.
For all their firepower and media mesmerization techniques, the Bush junta never reckoned on running head on into an uncontrollable source of constantly updated, augmented and corroborated information available 24/7 to anyone who can log online.
No one did.
For the first time in known human history, power-crazed bureaucrats are finding it difficult to get away with almost anything. In this truth-telling time of personal camcorders and computers, exposure of official deceptions can be embarrassingly swift -- posted on the web for a whole wide wired world to see.
If you can type it, you can probably find it online: Flight 800, Oklahoma City, Gulf War Illness, Operation Northwoods, the "sober drunk" syndrome. The real stories behind official mythology can be found in leaked documents, declassified papers, eyewitness accounts, expert commentary, fully referenced mainstream and alternate news stories, magazines and e-books, news photos, video footage and recorded interviews. All are available in an instantly accessible, exponentially-expanding, electronic library called the Internet.
HOW IT WORKS
Forget B-52s. Real power comes from networked hominids tapping keyboards. As a Secretary of State discovered, all it takes to verify an official "story" is to go online and type in a few key search words. Try "powell presentation" or "bush cocaine" -- then hit the key appropriately labeled "Enter".
The results can be spectacular. Thanks to a Cambridge professor's recollection and online retrieval, Bush's only buddy willing to send reluctant soldiers into the irradiated ruins of Baghdad could face a humiliating non-confidence vote within days.
Former Labour minister Glenda Jackson told BBC Radio 4, "If that was presented to Parliament and the country as being up-to-date intelligence and in fact as we now know they simply lifted it from a university thesis, it is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament on the issue of a possible war with Iraq."
Another former Labour minister, Peter Kilfoyle, said he was "shocked" at the way the dossier had been doctored. "It just adds to the general impression that what we have been treated to is a farrago of half-truths, assertions and over-the-top spin. I am shocked that on such thin evidence -- a Californian postgraduate thesis -- that we should be trying to convince the British people that this is a war worth fighting." [Telegraph Feb. 8, 2003]
The implications for Washington's war plans are serious. If Tony Blair loses a vote brought against him by his own party, the present Prime Minister of England will find himself suddenly unemployed. And Bush will be bereft of major backers.
BLACKOUT
Back in the USA, if "news managers" chose to expose the mass marketed "threat" of a shattered country they know to be bogus, outraged Americans would not take such betrayal lightly. And a blueprint drawn up long before Sept. 11 allowed its architects to kick it into high government gear could quickly come unraveled. [BBC Feb. 6, 2003]
But extensive U.S. televised coverage of Powell's prevarications and a story taking the rest of the world by storm never occurred.
The spookiest episode in this story came 24 hours after the BBC exposed empty excuses for mass murder in Iraq. By then, TV-watching, newspaper reading Americans interviewed by Lifeboatnews in Florida and California had yet to learn of a gaffe that has punctured Powell's pretensions and blown Bush's credibility abroad.
As Iran accelerates its nuclear weapons program to defend against an American attack they know is coming, and France moves this morning to block NATO from initiating plans to involve Turkey, mainstream media in Canada, Britain and across the USA continue to ignore revelations that shared U.S. and British "intelligence" on Iraq is years out of date. And cribbed from public sources. [Global TV Feb. 10]
Commenting on the media's self-censoring stories that trash all pretenses for war, Lifeboatnews editor Paul Grignon gripes, "It's as fixed as wrestling."
WHITE HOUSE WATCHERS
The American media's big snooze is good news for pretenders who remain in power only as long as they continue to hoodwink the people they seek to rule. By waving flags, suppressing contrary information, and pointing to successive "threats" of their own devising, the Bushwhackers depend on the zombie-like behavior of sedated and distracted masses, and a military as robotic as their weaponry. In their mutual rush to parrot empty slogans and do the bidding of "authorities" bent on conquest and murder, few question the consequences, veracity or legitimacy of their actions.
But deep questions are being raised, in an intense international forum called the Internet. Immune to cruise missiles and faked intelligence briefings, the power of the ever-wakeful web is to network the global village outside the filters of controlled information -- exposing official lies almost as fast as they can be floated.
No wonder the day after Sept. 11 a President-select announced that one of his first objectives was to get control over the Internet. Since then, his lavishly funded Department of Cyber Security is working to force all servers to submit to federal surveillance. [CBC Sept. 12, 2001]
But it may already be too late.
When critical mass is reached and the hundredth monkey logs on, it's all over for the Bush regime and their successors. Even now, with more than 620 million people logged on worldwide, incessant Internet revelations are illuminating a gang who:
1. Stole an election by rigging votes in Florida
2. Blocked investigations and interceptors that could have foiled 9/11
3. Experimented with mailing an army-designed strain of anthrax to Americans to boost sales of a vaccine jointly controlled by the Bushes and bin Ladens
4. Paved the way for a police state with freedom-canceling proclamations copied almost verbatim from laws issued by someone named Adolf Hitler. [NUA Internet Trends 2002; All Fall Down: The Politics of Terror and Mass Persuasion]
All this with nary a murmur from a cushy, compliant and culpable press owned by the same corporations who manufacture costly armaments for the conflicts their news networks "sell".
It's all documented online for anyone who cares to look. But information is only as powerful as the actions it prompts. Next weekend, organizers say that worldwide protests coordinated through the worldwide web could outnumber the massive anti-war demonstrations that ended years of unprovoked aggression against the people of Vietnam.
BAGHDAD OR BUST
Despite the ballyhoo over a bogus briefing that appears to have hardened Russia's resolve to stick with China, France and Germany in opposing a war they cannot justify, the Gang of Four still intends to crush Iraq. [BBC Feb. 9, 2003]
It only makes sense when they admit that their long-standing agenda is not really concerned about Baghdad's bogeyman. "Project for the New American Century" notes that while Saddam Hussein poses no threat to the United States, the dictator can be "used as an excuse" to further aims that are all about oil. Whoever controls the world's last big oil fields, also controls a world running on empty. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sept. 29, 2002]
What happens next is anybody's guess. Intended as an indelible lesson to the world, we could be weeks away from unprecedented "live fire" demonstrations over Baghdad, Basra and Tikrit.
Or maybe not.
Type "peace protests" and hit Enter.
###

See also, "The Psychology of Mass Subservience to Terror" at www.heartcom.org/psychtyranny.htm
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken (In reference to U.S. terror threat assessment now raised at "Orange" level... "FBI officials stressed that they had no specific information indicating that new attacks were planned." accordinh to MSNBC and NBC NEWS) - See also: Terror Alert Raises Security Nationwide at http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=542&e=3&u=/ap/20030208/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_alert"


www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=287

Freezerbox: the Hunter S. Thompson interview

The mainstream press, you mean?
Yeah, the mainstream press is uh, is uh, in the bag, in the pocket of Bush and the military and they seem to like it there! Not all of them, I've got a lot of good friends, good people in journalism, that feel more strongly than I do, or at least as strongly.
Right.
The uh, New York Times, eh, yeah, it's a different animal. There's not too many papers like that. But the press in general, the media, the TV, is doing a disgraceful job in covering this situation in this country and around the world. This is where I have to bring some subjectivity into it that I believe is right! A president that came in here, uhhh... about two years ago...
Right, barely elected.
Barely elected, yeah, and I guess it's only been two years, and he's taken this nation from a, uh, um, let me think looking at it from a, uh, just objectively, from a prosperous nation at peace to a broke nation at war.
Right, but I mean, there were those assholes who flew the plane into the World Trade Center.
Who were they indeed? Now, [cough] do you believe that, that a bunch of Arabs jumped up from some kind of a campfire and fucking mountains over there and snuck into this country and hijacked those planes and did that by themselves?
Well what are you proposing? I mean I think they were funded years ago by the CIA and it was a blowback, but, I don't think there was any direct... Are you saying there might be some other American agency or some international agency that directly supported them in that?
Uhh, this is tricky territory, but yeah, that's what I'm getting at.
Really.
I can't sit here and jerk up documents like Joe McCarthy, there's no proof of that. But I'm sure there is. And the idea that we're getting the whole story, uh, through the uh, the media, or from the president, is absurd on it's face because you never do, for one thing. And there's so many unanswered questions and loose ends and uh, lets see, well, lies! Yeah, about what happened. That they, in the run-up to that day, the years, I wrote a column about it right after it happened.
Yeah, I've read it. I thought that was great, the thing about your phone conversation with Johnny Depp, right?
Yeah, that was one of them. Yeah, that one and the one right before it. I was just finishing my sports film for ESPN when, I was about to go to bed, and I had been up all night, you know the usual, you know struggle, deadline...
Mmhmm.
And sort of on my way to bed, I saw something on the, heard or saw, something about a plane hitting the World Trade Tower. The first reports were of the "small plane"--like one of those things that sometimes hits buildings around the world. That got my attention just enough not to go straight to bed. I turn around and have a look at the TV set, just in time to see that other one go straight in. Jesus.
Um...
Hang on a second there... there's so many things about who uh, oh boy, this is a dangerous area. But I talked to witnesses, I'm just thinking of one in particular, a guy, a driver who watched the, just happened to be taking uh, maybe the owner of the Giants, I forget who he was, but he was out at the Meadowlands. But he saw both of them hit.
Right.
Direct line of sight. The first one, he didn't get really get a line on, but it got his attention, though he hadn't seen the approach. But the second one, he said, uh, and I heard this from other people, but very few, really, calm and sane accounts the moments of insanity. I happened to see the second one go in, but just the last few seconds, as it came out of the left, stage left, and then plowed right into the front of the center of the TV picture and the center of the building, uh, perfectly. And I wrote that it was one of the most efficient, uh, most skillful and just about impossible um, acts of piloting... That's a very rare, uh, uh pilot... can take a big plane and plant it right as if a target or bulls-eye was on the side of the building. Apparently that second plane approached, and veered off, and made sort of a half-loop and then sort of came back and aimed again and then hit the building.
Right.
Have you heard this, or did you see that, or do you know about it?
Yeah, well I've seen the tape so many times.
But have you seen what would be before the tape that we see, like a minute before the hit?
No, I haven't.
Well, I haven't either, really. But there were eyewitnesses. And several people have said that, but you had to be watching. This guy happened to be at the Meadowlands. Cause I've kind of seen it as something that's really horrible and atrocious but not that hard to pull off. I mean it just seems like they got some box-cutters and they hijacked a plane and they flew it into a building. It doesn't seem like there was that much skill or that much preparation really. It's pretty broadly assumed that there's is a lot more to that story than the uh, the simple, kind of evil guys who just wanted to learn enough about flying to take a plane off but not land it.
Right.
Remember, everything we know about that, that incident, and it was a horrible thing, I mean tragedy! Uh, and about Iraq and about Afghanistan and the people allegedly inside those countries, you know, Bin Laden... Everything we know in this country is spun through the CIA or NSA, but lets call it the CIA.
Do you think that the foreign press is any better off?
Well the foreign press is not necessarily...don't agree with us, do they? No, I would say that, the, just the round-the-world feeling about our invasion of Iraq using, I'm not sure what the hell they're using now as a pretense. Did they say the World Trade Towers?
What, the pretense for invading Iraq?
Yeah, is it more of that stuff or is it...?
No, they want to spread democracy now, that's the message.
Well I've been dealing with these guys for forty years. I've been covering politics and I was in the air force and kind of around that stuff. I know... something about the structures and behavior of the military and politics, the White House. And uh, it gives you a certain perspective, at least to ask questions.
Yeah, your depth of knowledge and personal experience...
Well, plus if you go back and read some of the things I've written, I don't stand by that first column I wrote on the World Trade Tower, uh, tragedy. Like I said, I was just going to bed, and they called back and said, 'you gotta write another column about the bombing in New York.' Nobody really knew what it was. And I wrote a column, and it's in the book.