Disturbing Truths About Our Government
By PAUL BUCHHEIT, COUNTERPUNCH
Not because the government does too much. But because it's done too little.
Consider a few disturbing truths:
-- We cry 'socialism!' at the mention of higher taxes, but we allow a
businessman to make enough money to pay the salaries of every police
officer, firefighter, and public school teacher in the city of Chicago.
-- The richest 1% had a big slice of the American income pie in 1980.
Since that time, they've cut a second piece of the same size for
themselves, and then a THIRD piece! Three times as much in 25 years. They
got this extra pie not from being good hard-working little boys, but from
tax cuts and deregulation.
-- As Howard Zinn argued, low-income people go to jail for thefts of a few
hundred dollars. The people who take BILLIONS from society by calling
their income "carried interest" instead of income are considered shrewd
capitalists.
-- And how about corporations, the driving force of a 'revitalized'
economy? Right now the 500 largest non-financial corporations are sitting
on $1.8 trillion in cash instead of investing in people. And they're not
paying much in taxes. The portion of federal revenue derived from
corporate income tax decreased from 33% in the 1950s to 12% in 2005.
Companies have saved billions by moving their headquarters to tax havens
such as Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. Business-backers claim that the
U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates among OECD countries, but
the U.S. is actually the fourth lowest among OECD countries in the
collection of corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP.
Tea Partiers, we should get mad together at government, because they've
done too little to correct these injustices. It is not in their own best
interests to raise taxes on the rich.
And we should get mad together at the mainstream media for not reporting
on the abuses of the small percentage of very wealthy people who make it
so hard on the rest of us.
Paul Buchheit teaches in the School for New Learning at DePaul University.
--
Pete
Belief is the death of intelligence--Robert Anton Wilson
Showing posts with label corporate media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporate media. Show all posts
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Manipulation, propaganda, imagery & PR wizardry
America's Nightmare: The Obama Dystopia
By Andrew HughesGlobal Research, May 23, 2009
After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the "Great Black Hope" in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.
Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. "Change" was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic nightmare.
Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.
The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, never mind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sherrifs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.
The "War on terrorism" has mutated in to a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.
Homeland Security now defines "Terrorists" as those who believe in the Constitution, the first, second and fourth amendments. Returning veterans are being targeted for a denial of their second amendment rights. A "Terrorist Watchlist" of more than a million and rapidly growing, is being used as the basis for denying citizens the rights to travel and to work.
Obama is now mulling over the idea of indefinite detention without trial for U.S. citizens. This, from a teacher of the Constitution ! Bills are in congress to criminalize free speech on the Internet via the Cyberbullying Act which will make hurting somebody's feelings a felony. Just like the Patriot Act this will morph in to a criminalization of political free speech and any criticism of the Government.
"Cyberterrorism" is being used as a pretext to bring government regulation to the the last stronghold of unbiased information. Washington has realized that it's getting harder to get away with their Fascist agenda and are moving to control the field. The populace have become more aware of just what kind of "Change" Obama intended to deliver.
There has been a growing resistance on a state level with several invoking their 9th and 10th Amendment rights in a valiant attempt to stop the Federal Vampire from draining the last drops of blood, the last vestiges of Freedom and Hope.
This is the Dystopic Nightmare that America finds itself in today and each day brings new assaults on Freedom and Sanity. The framework for total control of the citizenry, the economy and the media is being built upon in a relentless aggrandization of Govermental power. Obama sits atop his new Empire still smiling that sickeningly disingenuous smile surrounded by his seasoned courtiers who have worked for decades to bring America in to this new era of the New World Order.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Community fights racist frame-up of city councilor
Published Dec 4, 2008
Boston’s African-American community of Roxbury and a broad coalition of supporters are standing strong with City Councilor Chuck Turner, who has come out fighting ever since his Nov. 21 arrest. The attack on Turner, who has been charged with extorting $1,000 and lying to the FBI, is viewed as part of a frame-up scheme to undermine the African-American community’s right to strong political representation. Turner won in the last election with more than 80 percent of the vote.
 Hundreds support Chuck Turner at City Hall rally, Nov. 24. WW photo: Liz Green |
At 6 a.m. on Nov. 21, seven armed FBI agents had gone to Turner’s front door, terrorizing his household. He was arrested an hour later at City Hall, where he was already beginning his work day, and taken in handcuffs to Worcester, 45 minutes from Boston.
At the first word of the arrest, activists and allies went into high gear. Rank-and-file union leaders from United Steel Workers Local 8751—the Boston School Bus Drivers—along with organizers from the International Action Center, Women’s Fightback Network, Restore Our Heat & Lights Campaign, the Boston Workers Alliance, the youth group FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) and other community groups came forward to mobilize solidarity, defend the Turner household and offer whatever assistance was necessary.
People’s lawyers Barry Wilson and John Pavlos were secured and political supporters gathered in Worcester. Turner left the court surrounded by 40 supporters holding up signs and chanting, “Chuck, Chuck, Chuck!” He immediately spoke out to the throng of media, proclaiming his innocence and condemning the FBI abuse as well as the attack on his constituents’ right to the representative of their choice.
Horrific attacks on Turner from the Boston media and all corners of the capitalist establishment have thrown the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” out the window. In an unprecedented action, City Council President Maureen Feeney stripped him of all his committee chair positions and called for a special session of the City Council to consider removing him.
On Nov. 24 Turner, along with 500 supporters, held a rally and news conference on the steps of City Hall to demand that Feeney call off the City Council hearing and restore him to his committee positions. Feeney had to cancel the session.
About 70 community and grassroots supporters, including a delegation of more than 35 rank-and-file members of Local 8751, participated in another news conference and rally at Turner’s district office in Roxbury on Nov. 26. Turner said: “The media has not produced one story on the fact that I am the only Boston city councilor who in the modern era has maintained an office in the community. There has not been one story around the fact that my campaign owes Terri [Turner’s spouse] and I $140,000 because of our investment of our own resources in the maintenance of the district office.”
A mass meeting is scheduled for Dec. 2, and a Solidarity Day rally for Dec. 9. Turner’s next court appearance is at 3 p.m. on Dec. 10 at the Moakley Federal Court House in Boston. Visit SupportChuckTurner.com for details.
Turner’s massive support is based on four decades of grassroots activism and community organizing. He fought for jobs through the Third World Jobs Clearinghouse and United Community Construction Workers. He was a founder of the Boston Workers Alliance, the only organization of unemployed workers in the state, which also fights for formerly incarcerated workers’ right to a job.
Turner has fought on every community and progressive issue, from immigrant rights to foreclosure and eviction blockades and against war. Recently he spearheaded a campaign to restore heat and lights to those whose utilities have been shut off.
The attack on Turner seeks to cut off the grassroots leadership necessary to bring about the change people are looking and hoping for.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Michael Sullivan, who is prosecuting Turner as well as State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson (see Workers World, Nov. 13), is a notorious right-wing Republican whose specialty is politically motivated false prosecutions. He prosecuted the Plymouth 25—Native activists and allies who were the victims of a police riot against their peaceful demonstration on the National Day of Mourning (“Thanksgiving” Day) in 1997.
Turner’s case is part of a national campaign of racist, politically motivated prosecutions. These include the cases of: African-American Milwaukee Alderman Michael McGee, who was convicted in October based on similar FBI entrapment and trial by media; Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana, who was subjected to an unprecedented FBI raid of his congressional office and was forced out of his committee positions by Speaker Nancy Pelosi even before being indicted; and Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who was lambasted for defending herself from racist guards at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
These are but the most recent chapters in a long history of racist political frame-ups and abuse by the FBI that goes back to the attacks on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, Adam Clayton Powell and Shirley Chisholm.
Robert Traynham of the International Action Center said: “Sullivan should be fired for politically motivated, racist frame-up prosecutions and abuse of the FBI. The FBI should cease and desist from its longstanding pattern of frame-ups and harassment of oppressed community leaders.”
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Bracing for a Major Disappointment
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081118_bracing_for_a_major_disappointment/
Sorry about the title of the piece - that was in Pfaff's original. Also, sorry about these postings regarding the inevitable disappointment progressives are going to feel initially from the Obama administration. Don't despair, push!--PeteBy William Pfaff
BRUSSELS—The Americans who voted for Barack Obama as president were promised change they could count on, but it rather looks as if they may actually be asked to make do with a mildly refurbished Clinton administration, with many of the same officials and nearly all of the same policies. The policies are drawn from the same centrist Democratic Party sources as those of Bill Clinton, and Obama’s admirers might even find themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state—which makes no sense whatsoever.
Are there no significant differences of view on war and peace between the two of them? Why did the American (and international) public have to endure a year and a half of Democratic Party primaries in addition to the national election contest if the Democratic race could have been settled by the flip of a coin between people who believed in the same policies and thought the same thoughts?
Where is the sweeping change Barack Obama was promising the electorate? Looking back, he was rarely specific about the changes he intended to make. He constantly invoked the principle of change, without going much into the messy details, for which—admittedly—he was criticized at the time.
Many who voted for him, as did this writer, relied upon his evident qualities, in comparison with his predecessor and most of his competitors, which were that he clearly was very intelligent, as well as balanced and mature: He was an adult, who spoke to his audiences as fellow adults. This was his great difference from Hillary Clinton. Personally very intelligent, she has spent too long in the shady political precincts of ambition and calculation. She could never have made the speech Obama made on race. (Possibly he will never again be able to make such a speech. He has himself said that we must settle down now to being disappointed by Obama.)
The disappointment problem is international. Because of the enormous expectations Obama’s election has aroused abroad, above all among America’s European allies, any Obama-Clinton restoration of Clintonism would be met with incomprehension and disappointment. This is not because the Clinton administration was so awful, but because it was so confused in perception and lacking in foreign policy direction that it was easy for George W. Bush to merge it into the Great War on Terror. He had simply to add fear, security hysteria, lies about mass destruction weapons, and torture.
Europeans had never thought of Americans as torturers. When it turned out that the sponsors and defenders of torture occupied the highest offices of government in the United States, with the chief legal enablers of torture in the White House counsel’s office itself, and heading no less than the Department of Justice, a chill passed through the Western alliance. It was noted that the chosen euphemism for torture by the president, lawyers and the CIA was “enhanced measures,” a direct translation of the term employed by the Gestapo.
I was just in Brussels to speak to the European Ideas Network, sponsored by the Christian Democratic-Center Right-Conservative group, the largest in the European Parliament. The audience seemed taken aback when I answered their question about what will change in European-American relations under Barack Obama by replying, “Probably not much.”
The president-elect has said he will stop torture and extra-legal imprisonment, but on fundamental matters of transatlantic relations, he clearly has indicated that he wants an alliance in which the Europeans contribute more. (This will undoubtedly be a welcome change from the Bush effort to split the European Union by encouraging hostility toward the West Europeans by the pro-American former Warsaw Pact governments.)
The U.S. contribution to the Georgia fiasco has undermined its reputation among the East Europeans. In the future, there probably will be more American consultation and good will in transatlantic relations, and perhaps even in dealing with Russia (there certainly is nothing to gain from hostility). However, Barack Obama himself said in his Berlin speech that he expects the Europeans to contribute a lot more to “winning” the war in Afghanistan.
This is not a popular idea; the European governments have been encouraging regional diplomatic solutions for Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. Most Americans may be surprised to know that there is West European concern (as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told a Brookings audience in Washington last week) that the new American administration might try to take all this over for itself, and thereby wreck the progress already made. After all, it was Barack Obama who said that he would himself talk to the Iranians.
Visit William Pfaff’s Web site at www.williampfaff.com.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Reinventing the Evil Empire
The failure of the American media is again evident in the coverage of the Georgian-Russian conflict. The US media presented the conflict as a Russian invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual fact the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian military launched a sneak attack to kill and to drive the Russian population out of South Ossetia, a separatist province. Russia responded, as would any nation defending its lands. South Ossetia has been under Russian control since the fall of the USSR. Now the Grand Idiot Bush screams shrilly that independence for South Ossetia isn't what "the world" wants - and we know how much of a handle Uncle George has on that, don't we?--Pete, with an assist from Paul Craig Roberts (he wrote the first three lines!)
August, 26 2008
Russia Russia 's action against Georgia
Entire Article:
August, 26 2008
By Stephen Lendman
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For the West, everything changed but stayed the same, hard-wired and in place. Things just lay dormant in the shadows during the Yeltsin years, certain to reemerge once a more resolute Russian leader took over. If not Vladimir Putin, someone else little different.
Ten former Warsaw Pact and
The
The US media downplays the threat and hails a pact Zbigniew Brzezinski (a Polish national, former Carter National Security Advisor, and key Obama foreign policy strategist) calls a watershed in the two countries' relationship - "This changes the strategic relationship between the US and Poland. There is a clear and explicit understanding that if there are negative consequences of stationing the missile shield, the
On the one hand, a surprising statement from a man critical of Bush administration policies, its failure in
The major media also downplay the dangers and explain nothing about the high stakes. Instead they beat up on Russia and highlight comments from Secretary Rice that missiles aren't "aimed in any way at Russia," or White House spokesperson Dana Perino saying: "In no way is the president's plan for missile defense aimed at Russia. (It's to) protect our European allies from any rogue threats" that suggests Iran, but, clearly means Russia, according to Hauke Ritz's recent analysis in Germany's influential Leaves for German and International Politics journal.
He explained that
According to Ritz,
In an August 20 Veterans of Foreign Wars convention address, Bush was essentially on this theme in focusing on "terrorism" and saying: "We're at war against determined enemies, and we must not rest until that war is won." Georgia "stands for freedom around the world, now the world must stand for freedom in Georgia" - clearly linking Russia's response with "terrorism" and suggesting from his September 2001 address to a joint session of Congress and the America people that: "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Any that are "will be regarded....as a hostile state." Clearly,
The BBC echoed the US media, covers all the bases, mentioned the Iranian threat, singles out Russia, obfuscates facts about the conflict, sides with Washington and Poland on the new missile deal, and quoted Polish President Lech Kaczynski saying: "no one (with) good intentions towards us and (the West) should" fear the missiles. It also cited a miraculous turnaround in sentiment saying two-thirds of Poles now favor them. Astonishing since overwhelming opposition was recently evident, so it's hard imagining it shifted so fast.
High-Octane
The Wall Street Journal asserted that Poles "see the US as their strongest ally" given "two centuries of invasions and partitioning by Russia" and other European powers. It also highlighted
Schoenfeld (a senior editor of the hawkish, pro-Israeli Commentary magazine) cites "
Nonetheless, Schoenfeld supports the Polish agreement in the face of a "pugnacious Russia (determined to acquire) economic and military power (and) not afraid to use threats and force to get (its) way (with) nuclear weapons central to the Russian geopolitical calculus." It's reminiscent of "the dark days of communist yore (and captures the threat of what) we and
Entire Article:
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Let The Russert Revisionism Begin!
by Justin Raimondo, AntiWar
June 18, 2008
Enough already with the encomiums to Tim Russert, whose untimely death has sparked a veritable chorus of eulogies depicting him as the epitome of objectivity and the greatest of journalists. This is all coming, quite naturally, from his fellow journalists and intellectual gatekeepers, who share his prejudices, his politics, and – alas! – his shortcomings. It's time for a little Russert revisionism.
As Bill Moyers pointed out in Buying the War, his trenchant PBS documentary on how the War Party successfully sold us on the invasion of Iraq, Russert's show was a favored venue for the administration to publicize stories they had planted in the media. Administration officials would get booked on Meet the Press and point to their phony reports as "proof" of Saddam's WMDs.
Remember back when Vice President Dick Cheney was going around making speeches in which he asserted that "we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," that this was not in doubt, and he knew it for a fact? Few were skeptical, and the New York Times came out with yet another Judy Miller "scoop" that seemed to confirm Cheney's claim.
Citing anonymous U.S. government officials, the Times averred that the Iraqis were engaged in a global effort to gather the means to make nuclear weapons according to a design that specifically included aluminum tubes. "And there," says Moyers, "on Meet the Press that same morning was Vice President Cheney" citing Scooter Libby's best buddy. Clearly trying to create the impression that Saddam Hussein already had nuclear weapons, or that he was well on his way to acquiring them, the vice president ticked off three elements essential to the construction of a nuclear device: technical expertise, a viable design, and fissile material. According to Cheney, the Iraqis had all three – and Russert just sat there, not challenging Cheney but actually cueing him:
Cheney: "The third thing you need is fissile material, weapons-grade material. Now, in the case of a nuclear weapon, that means either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. And what we've seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs."
Russert: "Aluminum tubes."
Cheney: "Specifically aluminum tubes. There's a story in the New York Times this morning – this is – I don't – and I want to attribute the Times. I don't want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it's now public that, in fact, he has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge."
There were plenty of scientists in our very own Department of Energy who were warning the administration that this aluminum tube scenario was based on highly dubious "evidence," but Russert, the alleged reporter, was too busy kissing Cheney's butt to go out and find them. There were plenty of national security bureaucrats of one sort or another who strongly doubted the narrative Russert was allowing Cheney to present, unchallenged, on the most-watched political television show on the airwaves, but Russert didn't know about them, and doubtless didn't want to know about them at the time. In retrospect, however, Russert realized, at least to some extent, how badly he'd been used::
Moyers: "Critics point to September 8, 2002, and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable. Someone in the administration plants a dramatic story in the New York Times. And then the vice president comes on your show and points to the New York Times. It's a circular, self-confirming leak."
Russert: "I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the New York Times. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that. My concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them."
As Moyers pointed out in his scathing documentary, some journalists – not a lot, but a few of the really good ones – "didn't wait for the phone to ring."
Russert wanted to believe, as did the reporters and pundits who constitute the "mainstream" media, not only because this was the bipartisan consensus at the time, but also because of the incestuous relationship that often exists between journalists and the individuals whose doings they cover. The former are dependent on the latter for their bread and butter: if they don't toe the line and deliver the right cues at the right moment, then they might not get that "scoop," and – worse – they could soon find themselves frozen out of the information pipeline that runs through Washington like an underground sewer.
Okay, so Russert was an enabler of the neocons, who allowed his vastly influential program to function as the War Party's sounding board, but then again, so many were duped that it seems vindictive to emphasize this point so soon after his tragic death. Right?
Wrong. It wasn't just his sycophancy in the presence of power that motivates my little exercise in Russert revisionism – it's what was clearly his vehement hostility to anyone who challenged the status quo in any way and sought to provide an antidote to the Dick Cheneys of this world. Example number one: his disgraceful interview with GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who made opposition to the war and our foreign policy of "preemptive" imperialism the linchpin of his remarkable campaign.
In what has got to be one of the worst examples of high-handed hectoring and attempted intellectual intimidation I've seen in my lifetime, Russert tore into Paul the way he should have lit into Cheney, impugning his integrity, spending half the interview on the arcane subject of the Civil War – which Paul had never made a speech about, and obviously wasn't even a minor issue in the campaign.
When Paul raised the issue of U.S. intervention in the Middle East as fueling al-Qaeda's jihad and support for bin Laden, Russert fell back on that old neocon canard: "So you see a moral equivalency between the West and Islamic fascism."
When Paul pointed out that Bush was intent on invading Iraq just as soon as he got into office, and his war moves had little to do with 9/11, Russert's response was open hostility:
"You mentioned September 11th; a former aide of yours, Eric Dondero said this. 'When September 11th happened, he just completely changed,' talking about you. 'One of the first things he said was not how awful the tragedy was, it was, "Now we're going to get big government."' Was that your reaction?"
How pathetic: Russert couldn't be bothered to get on the phone and talk to even one of many CIA employees who were trying to counter the administration's line of BS about Saddam's alleged WMD, but he went and dug up the demented Dondero, a fool who has made a career out of gunning for the Good Doctor ever since he was fired from Paul's staff. Now that's American journalism at its best.
Oh yes, Russert did his research, all right, but he only utilized it to the War Party's advantage. He sucked up to power and was little more than a stenographer for high government officials whose confidence he coveted. He was, in short, a great journalist, at least by today's standards, and that's why the media blowhards are turning his death into a celebration of… themselves. Because they're virtually all the same – shameless, sycophantic suck-ups who will do anything to advance their careers and could care less about where it takes the country.
The sad state of American journalism is why Antiwar.com was founded: it's why we continue to provide you with the real news about vital issues of foreign policy, war and peace, and the myriad deceptions of our rulers. The "mainstream," which is defined by its subservience to the powers that be, has simply abdicated its responsibilities, the execution of which are so vital to a free society. Few journalists exemplified this abdication more clearly and consistently than the late ringmaster of Meet the Press.
~ Justin RaimondoCopyright Antiwar.com
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Chronology of a Lie
By Gary Leupp, Counterpunch
In his Antiwar.com columns investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter has been doing a masterful job of exposing Dick Cheney’s relentless campaign to vilify Iran, build a case for an attack, bomb the country and produce regime change before the administration’s term ends. The campaign as many have noted parallels in several ways the propaganda blitz that preceded the War in Iraq. Cheney and his neocons cabal seek to skew the reports of mainstream intelligence agencies to confirm their allegations (in this case, the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an immanent threat to Israel and the U.S., Iranian Quds Force training of Iraqi “insurgents” in Iranian camps, Iranian provision of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) to these “insurgents,” Iranian contacts with al-Qaeda, etc.). If they fail to do this, they circumvent the intelligence community and find ways of disseminating disinformation through their own announcements, editorials by their supporters, and stories planted in the corporate press. Since Cheney got Bush to sign an Executive Order giving his office the same powers to classify as the president has, his operations are shrouded in secrecy.
In his Antiwar.com columns investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter has been doing a masterful job of exposing Dick Cheney’s relentless campaign to vilify Iran, build a case for an attack, bomb the country and produce regime change before the administration’s term ends. The campaign as many have noted parallels in several ways the propaganda blitz that preceded the War in Iraq. Cheney and his neocons cabal seek to skew the reports of mainstream intelligence agencies to confirm their allegations (in this case, the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an immanent threat to Israel and the U.S., Iranian Quds Force training of Iraqi “insurgents” in Iranian camps, Iranian provision of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) to these “insurgents,” Iranian contacts with al-Qaeda, etc.). If they fail to do this, they circumvent the intelligence community and find ways of disseminating disinformation through their own announcements, editorials by their supporters, and stories planted in the corporate press. Since Cheney got Bush to sign an Executive Order giving his office the same powers to classify as the president has, his operations are shrouded in secrecy.
In his latest piece Porter follows the campaign to blame Iran for supplying EFPs to those attacking U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. In January 2007 some military officials asserted that EFPs that could penetrate U.S. armored vehicles were being manufactured in Iran and supplied to Iraqi Shiite militias by the Iranian government. They prepared a draft for a proposed military briefing to announce this claim, which then circulated in Washington and was leaked to the press. However, the document “met with unanimous objection from the State Department, Defense Department, and the National Security Council (NSC) staff, as administration officials themselves stated publicly.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley all wanted to build upon the negotiations with Iranian officials which had occurred in Iraq to that point. These had been based on the desire of both sides to support the Maliki government, which has warm ties with Tehran. The Cheney camp had opposed those talks.
In a press briefing on Jan. 24, 2007, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Department Spokesman Sean McCormack was asked if the government has any evidence for Iranian supply of EFPs to Iraqi forces. He answered indirectly: “You don't necessarily have to construct something in Iran in order for it to be a threat to the U.S. or British troops from the Iranian regime.” He implied that outsiders might be instructing Iraqis on how to produce EFPs.
On February 2, Hadley distanced the National Security Council from the draft report. “The truth is,” he told reporters at a news briefing, “quite frankly, we thought the briefing was overstated. We sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts.” Meanwhile the intelligence community was preparing a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that did not support the claim about EFPs but merely accused Iranians of training fighters of Mahdi Army led by Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiery nationalist who is not Iran’s favorite Iraqi politician although he may be the most popular man in the country. Rice and Gates both stated their expectation that the planned briefing on Iranian involvement in Iraq would reflect the views contained in the NIE.
Then Cheney made his move. On Feb. 9 presidential spokesperson Dana Perino was asked when the briefing would be held. “Decisions on that,” she replied, “are being made out in Baghdad.” Gen. David Petraeus (whom former CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon, a known opponent of an Iran attack, has described as an “ass-kissing little chicken-shit”) had just arrived to assume command of U.S. forces in Iraq. On February 11 three military officers in Iraq gave a briefing to the press in which they stated that the EFPs could only have been manufactured in Iran and were being supplied to Iraqi militiamen by the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards with the knowledge of the Iranian government.
“Cheney,” Porter writes, “had used the compliant Petraeus to do an end-run around the national security bureaucracy. Petraeus had already reached an agreement with the White House to take Cheney’s line on the EFPs issue and to present the briefing immediately without consulting State or Defense.” This circumventing of normal channels is of course Cheney’s modus operandi, as scathingly documented in the four-part series about Cheney in the Washington Post last July by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, stated that he could not “from his own knowledge” confirm that the Quds Force was providing bomb-making kits to Iraqis, and one of the officers at the briefing backed off the claim of Iranian complicity. Still, the story was “out there,” in the press, and as Porter writes, “Cheney now had a potential casus belli against Iran.” Or one might say, another one to try to foist upon an impressionable public. This, from the only top official who’s never backed off his claim that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11.
In September 2007, Congress passed the neocon and AIPAC-backed Kyl-Lieberman resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. In October the Treasury Department designated the Quds Force “terrorist”---“for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.” Very creative thinking there. Iran’s religious leadership hates the Taliban and almost went to war with Afghanistan when it was led by the group in 1998. It supports U.S.-backed Afghan puppet president Hamid Karzai, who told the Washington Post in January 2008: “We have had a particularly good relationship with Iran in the past six years. It’s a relationship that I hope will continue. We have opened our doors to them. They have been helping us in Afghanistan. The United States very wisely understood that it is our neighbor and encouraged that relationship.”
On May 8 Los Angeles Times correspondent Tina Susman reported from Baghdad: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was cancelled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran.” Don’t you just love the matter-of- fact tone of that? They planned to lie, but somebody opposed to the lie and its consequences was apparently able to abort the effort. Isn’t it obvious that Cheney and the neocons in general believe it perfectly permissible to lie to the people in order to justify wars? And they just hate it when somebody gets in their way.
Remember how a member of Bush’s inner circle (Karl Rove?) told the New York Times’ Ron Suskind in summer 2002 the “the reality-based community” had it all wrong, that the world doesn’t “really work anymore” on the basis of “judicious study of discernible reality.” “We’re an empire now,” he boasted, “and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Combine that Nazi-like faith in the Big Lie; the liars’ smug confidence that the system will continue to protect them even as they’re exposed by the “reality-based” folks whom they find laughable; and the obvious fact that the Congress and media lack the will to call them on their lies. These evidences of system-wide bankruptcy are grounds for profound pessimism in the short term.
NBC’s Keith Olbermann last week talked with former Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan about the prospect for a U.S. attack on Iran. “So knowing what you know,” he asked, “if Dana Perino gets up there and starts making noises that sound very similar to what you heard from the administration, from Ari Fleischer in 2002, from other actual members of the administration and the cabinet, you would be suspicious?” “I would be,” replied McClellan. “I would be. I think that you would need to take those comments very seriously and be skeptical.”
We Americans are being hit by EFP (Extremely False Propaganda) designed to do much worse than penetrate the thin armor of our media-numbed and infotainment- conditioned brains. It’s designed to hurl us and our children into a Long War against the Islamic world. And those of us who are skeptical---or more than skeptical: aware, disgusted and alarmed---will I fear wake to the fait accompli of an attack before Cheney and Bush hand over power to successors who will patriotically go along with the program.
What we need is not mere skepticism, but the toppling of the liars.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
THE 2006 ELECTION: ANOTHER NAIL IN OUR DEMOCRACY'S COFFIN?
By Danny Schechter
New York, New York, November 28: After every election, there are post-mortems and then, after that, come the studies to confirm the presence of many institutional and deep seated flaws in our ritualized electoral-democracy.
Annually, journalists acknowledge their own limits and mistakes. The honest ones admit there was a uniformity of outlook in which the horse race is over-covered and the issues under covered.
They concede that there was a focus on polls without explaining their limits adequately or how polls in turn are affected by the volume and slant of media coverage. There are criticisms of how negative ads and entertainment values infiltrated election coverage, what Time magazine calls "electotainment." They bemoan the fact that there was more spin and opinionizing than reporting along with less investigative reporting.
And then they do it all over again.
It happened again this year, as if the media industry and the press corps never learns from its own mistakes and is doomed to repeat them. Why? Phil Troustine former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, told Nieman Reports, "too many reporters are cynics, not just skeptics. This leads to the sense that they are hard bitten realists when they are simplistic and often biased." They also work for corporate media outlets who design the coverage and assign the journalists. Mostly, they are not free or independent agents.
A 2006 survey by the Committee of Concerned Journalists of their own members revealed that many journalists think the news media is failing voters by not adequately covering this past year's campaigns.
"Only 3% give the press an A grade, while another 27% give the news media a B. At the same time, 42% give the coverage a C and 27% say D or F.
The poll surveyed 499 CCJ members between October 8 and October 15th. The Committee is a national consortium of journalists and journalism educators in various media."
The Mediaocracy blog, inspired by a book I wrote of the same name asks. "What are the particular concerns these journalists have? By large majorities they feel the news media has become sidetracked by trivial issues, has been too reactive and has focused too much on the inside baseball that doesn't really matter to voters, according to the survey.
In other words, most of the campaign reporting does not deliver what journalists think the public wants or needs. This is in line with other general surveys of reporters regarding the current state of their profession. A Pew Research Center report in 2000 showed that less than 40% of journalists surveyed said the media was fulfilling its public responsibilities."
THE LATEST STUDY
The Project on Excellence in Journalism has just assessed this past year's election after extensive on day research "On Nov. 7, a team of researchers from the Project for Excellence in Journalism monitored the coverage of 32 news outlets-18 web sites, six blogs, four broadcast networks, three cable channels, and NPR as the results rolled in and Congress changed hands. This report, "Election Night 2006": An Evening in the Life of the American Media," breaks down that performance by media platform and contains an evaluation of each individual outlet.
What did they find?
"l. The two most valuable things the news media offers on these fast-moving election nights now is a quick summary of key results for those wanting the headlines and deep veins of data that users can mine on their own. That may explain why TV Web sites fared well.
2. In contrast, rich narrative story telling and snap punditry, the long suit of the morning newspaper and the TV telecast, may be less valuable-at least as the numbers are rolling in on the first night.
3.Most news organizations are still finding their way in this new multi-media environment. Often they are trying to do too many things and lack the resources and flexibility to adjust to the speed of the news. They need to make clearer choices.
4. The Exit Poll may be more important today, not less, since users are probing that information directly, functioning as their own editors--going state by state, looking for demographic information, late deciders, and more. This is not just the purview of experts and academicians anymore."
5. When the system works-voting occurs without widespread problems and the media establishment isn't faltering-citizen sentinels, bloggers, and other observers, while potentially important watchdogs, have a more restricted role."
Sorry to disagree. The system is NOT working well. On November 26, three weeks AFTER the election, the NY Times discovered that voting machines in Florida swallowed 18,000 votes and worry that without a verified paper trail, results will be compromised. Their editorial was titled "Déjà vu" in Florida." The Times seemed shocked in concluding that electronic voting "could end up undermining democracy…"
"COULD?"
Now I am the one who is shocked. How is it that so many of our mainstream media outlets IGNORED this problem, and did not demand that it be fixed BEFORE the election. For years now, an election integrity movement has been crusading on this issue but they have been brushed aside, and are rarely in the news. There is no shortage of information on the subject.
BURYING THE LEAD
Years ago, Jim Naureckas of FAIR wrote: "In journalism, it's called 'burying the lead.' A story starts off with what everyone already knows, while the real news - the most surprising, significant or never-been-told-before information - gets pushed down where people are less likely to see it...."
Why? What accounts for media organizations looking away and covering elections the same way each year as if they are following routines?
Responds Naurekas: "many journalists are instinctively protective of the legitimacy of the institutions they cover." He then adds, "but the job of a journalist is not to promote but to question. The theory behind the First Amendment is that the system will be strengthened by an unflinching look at the system's flaws."
Too many journalists fail to separate the election outcomes from the self-interested financial interests that influence them or the way incumbents manipulate the system to their advantage. Elections are often determined by what's called the "Air War"-TV commercials, many negative attacks ads that do more misrepresenting than presenting, more selling than telling. The cost of these political ads on television, the third highest source of ad revenues for the industry, has more than quadrupled since 1982.
Today, commercial media has gone AWOL on this most obvious responsibility. "Pre-election news coverage of the candidates has in many cases all but disappeared," says Paul Taylor, chairman of the Alliance for Better Campaigns -- a MediaChannel Affiliate that advocates free airtime for candidates. "What little candidate coverage that remains is devoted to incumbents, by a margin of nearly five to one, over challengers."
In a study of media coverage, MediaChannel affiliate Norman Lear Center revealed that the amount of election-centered discourse provided by the typical local station during the height of the 2000 presidential primary season was just 39 seconds a night - far short of the five-minute standard advocated by a 1998 presidential advisory commission headed by then Vice President Al Gore.
Another MediaChannel affiliate, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, found that the total minutes of coverage of the 2002 midterm election on the national network news programs had declined by 78 percent over the coverage those networks devoted to the 1998 midterm election.
POLITICAL DEVOLUTION
All of this got worse in 2006. The media is failing us along with the political system it allegedly covers. There is a devolution underway, not reform and change.
Years ago in a book called "Hail to the Thief" on the outcome of the 2000 election, I wrote:
"The media is no longer, if it ever did stand apart from politics as a neutral--much less objective--watchdog operating outside the political system to strengthen democracy. In an age of corporate mergers and unprecedented media concentration, the media have in effect, merged with politics and now function as a key component of a system that Norman Mailer sees, with a whiff of the Mafia theory of Organization, as a "family."
"The American political body has evolved," he wrote in an essay in his l998 anthology The Time of Our Time" into a highly controlled and powerfully manipulated democracy overseen by a new species of aristocracy formed at the junction of four Royal Families--the ten thousand dollar suits of the mega-corporations, the titans of the media, the high ogres of Congress and the upper lords of the White House."
In 2006, years after all the hand-wringing over the fiasco in Florida, and the debacle in Ohio, I see no reason to revise this judgment.
News Dissector and filmmaker Danny Schechter is the "blogger-in-chief for Mediachannel.org. His latest film is InDebtWeTrust.(InDebtWeTrust.com) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
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