Mainstream media (corporate funded): Television networks, large US newspapers, AM radio, NPR and
PBS mislead via selective presentation, distortion and distractions
(sex, pop culture, consumerism, sports).
Mainstream media has extensive ties to CIA and the profit motive distorts
their integrity on the most critical stories.
Democracy Now!, The
Nation, Mother Jones, The
Progressive, FAIR, Counterpunch,
largely ignore Peak Oil in their analyses and refuse to mention
the war games of 9/11 that paralyzed the air defenses over New
York and Washington. 90% of their work is good, but they ignore
the 10% that is the most important part.
Mother
Jones published a major article on how Bush supposedly won
in Ohio in 2004 that ignored most of the evidence of vote fraud and the
corruption of the election in many other states (Ohio was not the only
stolen election in 2004).
The refusal of the "left" media to examine evidence for 9/11
complicity parallels similar avoidance of the coup against President Kennedy
-- this refusal to investigate helped the plotters succeed.
Neither the mainstream
nor independent media have focused on the best evidence for 9/11 complicity or
permaculture solutions to Peak Oil. Instead, the media's
9/11 strategy is highlight hoaxes to avoid the real story. Independent media that strives for accuracy and is not funded
by governments, corporations or philanthropic foundations (often
with oil company investments) is the most reliable, and yet the
most difficult to find. No news service covers all issues or
all aspects of any issue -- it is important to read a wide variety of
sources and be cautious.
The internet has the best sources for news ignored by mainstream and
"alternative" publications. However, there are websites that
resemble news sources but are just electronic vacuum cleaners
that post a mix of real and fake that are hard to differentiate. These
sites include Rense.com, Alex Jones / Prison Planet / Infowars, The
Barnes Review / American Free Press, the Power Hour, David Icke and
the LaRouche cult. The establishment likes to control the extremes,
and probably sponsors some "conspiracy" sites to misdirect government critics.
Open forum websites where anyone can post anything
often attract disinformation. The
indymedia network allows anonymous postings,
which allows hoaxers to post nonsense and
personal attacks on their forums. Global Research, a Canadian website
with material on 9/11 complicity, has a forum
where unknown agents posted extremely offensive Holocaust Denial material
-- which was used by mainstream media to smear the website's sponsor.
The Wikipedia encyclopedia has also allowed anyone to publish anything without a vetting
process to check facts -- Wikipedia has now been forced to require a modest effort at verification. Editorial peer review is not
censorship.
Weapons of Mass Disinformation Media Manipulates Minds
The media is not in cahoots with big business -
the media IS big business Big Brother is You, Watching
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).
OilEmpire awarded Best Mega Media
Research
9-11 Coverage Analysis from Digital
Style Designs
The biggest stories that are not in the US media:
-- the social impacts of Peak Oil
and how the consequences could be mitigated
-- the mountains of evidence that the Bush administration let 9/11 happen in order to trigger invasions of the Middle East and the Homeland Security surveillance society.
Fortunately, "Peak Oil" has 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, Working Assets, 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.
In addition, since September 2003, the 9/11 scandal has 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. Unfortunately, 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.
have ignored their quality work, even as some of them privately acknowledge
it is excellent.
It is not a coincidence that the entire 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?
The crucial point is that the FBI could not undertake this frame-up [Warren Commission] without full confidence that the National Security State, of which it is a member, had both the will and the means to accomplish all aspects of the cover-up. There were multiple shooters from multiple locations. Thus, masses of evidence would have to be ignored or destroyed. Scores of witnesses would need to be overlooked, dismissed, intimidated, or eliminated, most especially Lee Harvey Oswald. August committees would have to be formed whose witting members would pressure, seduce, or trick the others into sufficient compliance to fool the people. High-ranking well-respected trusted members of society who control the media would have to be complicit in fronting the salesmanship. Minions of the intelligence community, only relatively few of whom were in on the planning stages of the assassination, had to be counted upon to do their part to conceal the plotters of the assassination from the American public. The media would have to be ready and able, and known in advance to the FBI and others to be ready and able to bewilder and confuse the people. In fact, none of the plotters involved in the cover-up would have dared to undertake such a cover-up without the full faith and understanding that the media was under the control of the ruling class and would be used to facilitate, rather than expose, the cover-up. Think! How the hell could any such plotters ever dream of getting away with such a crime but for their control of the fictionally named "free press"? We shall in any case prove such control and use of the media. This "national security state" is not jargon, but the ugly reality behind the façade of democracy in American life.
-- Michael Green, Besmirching History:
Vincent Bugliosi Assassinates Kennedy Again, www.ctka.net/besmirch.html
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
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 process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried
out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it
would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. ... To tell
deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact
that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again,
to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny
the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of
the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary."
- George Orwell, on "Doublethink" from his book of faction,
"1984"
“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
Infowar and Disinformation: From the Pentagon to the Net
by Daniel Brandt
From NameBase NewsLine, No. 11, October-December 1995
So one important aspect of infowar, it would seem, is
disinformation. This makes it especially difficult: it's not enough
to be merely informed, because now it's also necessary to consider the
motives and agendas of every source of information. With twice as much
access to information today, that means four times as much work. Few
of us are up for the challenge.
Just when the stakes are highest, our major reporters, pundits, and
political representatives are least helpful. Their one-liners are too
predictable, they are too easily manipulated by forces they should be
trying to expose, and apart from endless analyses of the nuances of
presidential party politics, or what the jurors are thinking at the
O.J. trial, they have little to say about issues that matter. Millions
of ordinary people are sensing this, and are looking toward alternative
media such as zines, the Internet, and talk radio.
We could all use some help. Academia has been out to lunch for years;
there's little point in wasting much time there. The populist right
and the incredible shrinking left, much to the delight of the elites
who manipulate them both, still waste their time attacking each other.
Small wonder that the neo-Luddites are nervous, the militias suspicious,
and the authorities would like to monitor everyone. Welcome to the wonderful
Information Age.
Besmirching History
Vincent Bugliosi Assassinates Kennedy Again
By Michael Green
Copyright 08/08/07
... The crucial point is that the FBI could not undertake this frame-up [of the Warren Commission] without full confidence that the National Security State, of which it is a member, had both the will and the means to accomplish all aspects of the cover-up. There were multiple shooters from multiple locations. Thus, masses of evidence would have to be ignored or destroyed. Scores of witnesses would need to be overlooked, dismissed, intimidated, or eliminated, most especially Lee Harvey Oswald. August committees would have to be formed whose witting members would pressure, seduce, or trick the others into sufficient compliance to fool the people. High-ranking well-respected trusted members of society who control the media would have to be complicit in fronting the salesmanship. Minions of the intelligence community, only relatively few of whom were in on the planning stages of the assassination, had to be counted upon to do their part to conceal the plotters of the assassination from the American public. The media would have to be ready and able, and known in advance to the FBI and others to be ready and able to bewilder and confuse the people. In fact, none of the plotters involved in the cover-up would have dared to undertake such a cover-up without the full faith and understanding that the media was under the control of the ruling class and would be used to facilitate, rather than expose, the cover-up. Think! How the hell could any such plotters ever dream of getting away with such a crime but for their control of the fictionally named "free press"? We shall in any case prove such control and use of the media. This "national security state" is not jargon, but the ugly reality behind the façade of democracy in American life.
"The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not
by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but
still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."
-- Aldous Huxley (author of "Brave New World")
"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship."
-- William Blum - Rogue State, on how governments control their citizens
"The de facto censorship which leaves so many Americans functionally
illiterate about the history of US foreign affairs may be all the more
effective because it is not official, heavy-handed or conspiratorial,
but woven artlessly into the fabric of education and media. No conspiracy
is needed. The editors of Reader's Digest and U.S. News and World Report
do not need to meet covertly with the man from NBC in an FBI safe-house
to plan next month's stories and programs; for the simple truth is that
these men would not have reached the positions they occupy if they themselves
had not all been guided through the same tunnel of camouflaged history
and emerged with the same selective memory and conventional wisdom."
-- from Killing Hope, Ù.S. Military and CIA Interventions since
WWII, by William Blum, p. 19, Common Courage Press, 1995.
The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance
in the major media.
-- William Colby, former Director of the CIA
During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather
than information.
-- Joseph Goebbels
We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things
the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy
flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets,
and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.
-- Katharine Graham (now deceased owner of the Washington Post) at a 1988
speech at CIA headquarters www.namebase.org/davis.html
Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public
mind. -- US General William Westmoreland, Commander in Vietnam
The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and
what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda
accomplishments of the dominate political mythology."
-- Michael Parenti
www.michaelparenti.org
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
local food production
renewable energy
transportation alternatives
"green" building
alternate currencies
local investing
personal and social responses
business and governmental responses
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
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.
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"
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?"
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.
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"
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.
"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
