Ministry of Mythinformation

Happy New Year News and Updates on the Way!

2009-12-31T22:49:00.001-08:00

What's been going on? Stay Tuned...

Project Censored 2010

The Book

The Top 25 Censored Stories

Media Freedom International

Media Freedom Foundation News

Media Freedom Foundation News Analysis

The Daily Censored Blog

Dialogue a Key Ingredient of Democracy Missing in US Corporate News Media

2009-10-27T09:22:00.001-07:00

For anyone imbibing US corporate news media, the outcome is certain: they will be treated to a zero-calorie infotainment diet served on traditional feeding intervals at the networks, or for the insatiable junk food news consumer, round the clock cable news menus heavy on advertiser appetizers and tabloid dessert specials. This is a recipe for a literal Truth Emergency in our society. When we rely on corporate media outlets to provide context for national discourse, we find ourselves in a sea of information but are left with a paucity of understanding regarding anything relevant in our daily lives.

So-called “news” topics range from Tyra Banks’ figure fluctuations to the Balloon Boy hoax; from the White House Beer Summit to the death of Michael Jackson; while We the People become bloated from ubiquitous, no news nonsense. Absent from this smorgasbord of purported news programming¬ is any actual information, or news, generating healthy democratic dialogue and responsive representative government policy on the most important issues facing the general public– our faltering economy, lack of healthcare, and issues of war and peace.

The purpose of the free press, as enunciated by key founders of America, was to keep the citizenry informed, engaged, and in dialogue with one another about the crucial issues of the day. The health of any democracy can be diagnosed by the degree to which information flows freely in the culture. Anything that interferes with that free flow of information is a form of censorship, which acts to derail, distort, and deny the efficacy of any true democratic experiment.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison supported a vigorous public arena of discourse, debate, and competing ideas. In short, they wanted to encourage the process of dialogue and free expression as vehicles to achieve the best of democratic possibilities.

Jefferson opined that newspapers would better serve the country, by reporting the facts of matters at hand, than any form of government. In his first inaugural address, Jefferson said, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” Now imagine Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly advocating honest, open dialogue on their corporate media programs.

Madison warned, "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.” Now envision that Americans demand that the truth be spoken across the so-called public airwaves. The sharing of knowledge becomes a dialogue that leads to informed opinions and choices, ones that measure up to the national values and principles in our founding documents.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are not just words on parchment. They are the very concepts that make us humane in the modern world. The media, the supposed free press, should be encouraging robust dialogues while fighting for the future of all Americans, not just for the insurance companies, banks, big pharma, and the military industrial complex. In keeping with the founders’ notions of natural rights and intent in providing for the general welfare, we would do well to note that healthcare is a human right, workers have the right to the fruits of their labor, environmental degradation is a crime against humanity, and war is terrorism. These positions should all be part of our national discourse in a truly free press. Where are these voices in the corporate media cacophony?

Instead, the privileged institutions of corporate media are daily miring us in cynicism (reports of personal scandals, rampant corruption, and Congressional stagnation), rationalizing us into deep denial (falsely claiming the recession is over while key public indicators refute this), and leaving us footing a multi-trillion dollar tab for Wall Street bailouts and illegal wars (TARP, Iraq, Afghanistan, but nothing left for the public at home). A truly free press would herald these vile decrees and deeds as those of charlatans and demagogues. We must be the change we wish to see and we must not rely on spoon-fed, top down, corporate media propaganda. We must become the media in the process of sharing knowledge with each other on the road to a better world. Since the corporate media are not in the business of news and are not beholden to empirical truths, rather, only to shareholder profits and their own bottom line, they should not be trusted.

If a failing corporate media system ensconced in hyper-reality creates an excited delirium of knowinglessness, that system must be declared incapable of accurately informing the citizenry. The public must turn to independent journalism based in muckraking traditions, with transparent fact-based reporting that asks the tough and critical questions of itself and its leaders. An actual free press would provide factual knowledge and encourage us to engage with each other in our local communities on a daily basis in the quest to solve societal problems.

This is possible with our collective efforts, so long as we simultaneously reject the projected imaginings of the corporate media profiteers and their industry of illusion. The health and meaningfulness of our cultural dialogue, as well as the future of our republic, may well depend upon how swiftly and significantly we address the current Truth Emergency and what we do about it.
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Mickey Huff is most recently co-editor with Peter Phillips, of Censored 2010 (where many of the ideas in this essay are further developed); is associate professor of History at Diablo Valley College; former associate director of Project Censored; and on the executive committee at the Media Freedom Foundation. He blogs at http://dailycensored.org and http://mythinfo.blogspot.com, and helps maintain http://mediafreedominternational.org. He can be reached at mhuff@dvc.edu.

What Would You Expect In Return If You Gave Someone 64 Million Dollars?

2009-10-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

What Would You Expect In Return If You Gave Someone 64 Million Dollars?
By Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff

You'll find the answer to the title question and other puzzling social and political issues in the new book from Project Censored, Censored 2010, co-edited by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, and researched this year by over two hundred faculty and students at nine colleges and universities. The work includes the annual selection of the twenty-five most important news stories not covered by the US corporate media and a comprehensive critical review of media today.

1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
Federal lawmakers responsible for overseeing the US economy and approving over $700 billion in bailout funds have received millions of dollars from Wall Street firms. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional and presidential candidates in the Republican and Democratic parties. The donors include investment bankers Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, insurer American International Group, and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
Schools in the United States are more segregated today than they have been in more than four decades. Millions of non-white students are locked into “dropout factory” high schools, where huge percentages do not graduate, and few are well prepared for college or a future in the US economy.

3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago.

4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
One of the most lethal patches of ground in North America is located in the backwoods of North Carolina, where Shearon Harris nuclear plant is housed and owned by Progress Energy. The plant contains the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country.

5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
US deregulation of toxic substances, such as lead in lipsticks, mercury in electronics, and phthalates (endocrine disruptors) in baby toys, may not only pose disastrous consequences to our health, but also to our economic and political status in the world. International markets are moving toward a European model of insisting on environmental and consumer safety. Hundreds of companies located in the US produce or import hundreds of chemicals designated as dangerous by the European Union.

6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
According to a study by The Center for Responsive Politics, special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008, or $32,523 per legislator per day—more than any other year on record. This was a 13.7 percent increase from 2007.

7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
Obama’s retention of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense makes Gates the first person ever in US history from an opposing party to be kept on as Secretary of Defense or War. Gates was formally a senior CIA official under Reagan who helped undermine the CIA analytical division’s commitment to objective intelligence.

8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
A 2008 study done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that eighty-three of the top publicly held US companies have operations in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the Virgin Islands. Fourteen of these companies, including AIG, Bank of America, and Citigroup, received money from government bailouts.

9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza during its recent military campaign was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released March 25, 2009.

10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
In November 2008, Ecuador became the first country to examine the legitimacy and structure of its foreign debt. An independent debt audit documented hundreds of allegations of irregularity, illegality, and illegitimacy in contracts of debt to predatory international lenders. The loans, according to the report, violated Ecuador’s domestic laws, US Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, and general principles of international law.

Peter Phillips is Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and former director of Project Censored. Mickey Huff is Associate Professor of History at Diablo Valley College and former associate director of Project Censored. They both serve on the executive committee of the Media Freedom Foundation and work with Media Freedom International publishing Validated Independent News and Investigate Reports in support of a truly free press, in contrast to corporate media propaganda. They are co-editors of Censored 2010 from Seven Stories Press.

8th Anniversary of September 11th Attacks- Still Many Unanswered Questions

2009-09-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Fifth Annual 9/11 Film Festival at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, CA Opens This Week, Held September 9th and 10th.

As we approach the 8th anniversary of the tragedy now known simply as 9/11, those who have studied the events of that day still have a significant body of historically documented unanswered questions. These people are not just "conspiracy theorists" or "crazy leftists." Rather, this group of healthy skeptics is comprised of concerned citizens, including professors, architects, engineers, former military and intelligence officers, airline pilots, scientists, theologians, college students from across many disciplines, and even some former members of the official commission and supporting staff itself.

The corporate mainstream media have largely ignored these issues, airing convenient and popular American myths instead of factual analysis put forth by scholars and independent thinkers, which was the the focus of Professors Huff and Rea in their study published in Censored 2009, Deconstructing Deceit. Given the significance of what these people and their ideas represent, we should all try to do our part to ask more questions and push for a truly independent investigation into the attacks and surrounding events of that day. Further, given the events of 9/11 themselves have been used to justify large swaths of public and foreign policy in ensuing years, it is even more crucial to examine critically and on the basis of facts the events of that day, regardless of where forensic evidence may lead. We owe it to ourselves as a free society to say "no more" to relentless hierarchical information control and propaganda.

This year, in Oakland, CA, the Fifth Annual 9/11 Film Festival will be held at the Grad Lake Theater on Wednesday and Thursday, September 9th and 10th. For more details about films and speakers, please see the festival website and blog.

"Truth comes as a conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as a friend." –Rabindranath Tagore

It's time for a real discussion and investigation. We have to look back in order to see forward with more clarity, more integrity, and more zeal.

No News: Avoidance of Taboo Topics in Corporate Media Creates Propaganda Distractions

2009-08-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

No News. That's what we get when we tune in to the corporate media's so-called news programs, which run in 24/7 cycles.

Perhaps we all need a primer in just exactly what corporate news media outlets are all about:

Maybe we need a chart to break it down, looking at, say, "the most trusted name in news" as some would have us believe:

No news is not news. We can do better, and we will. Here is another installment from Project Censored and Media Freedom International on the failures of corporate media to report truthfully, inquisitively, openly or critically about the key issues of our time. Such a paucity of validated news sources can be found in corporate media, some activists and scholars have referred to the current dilapidated state of information dissemination in the US as a literal Truth Emergency. For more on this movement, see the forthcoming Censored 2010 edited by Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, and Project Censored published by Seven Stories Press this fall.

Taboo News and Corporate Media

By Peter Phillips
8/1/09

The corporate media in the United States are ignoring valid news stories, based on university quality research. It appears that certain topics are simply forbidden inside the mainstream corporate media today. To openly cover these news stories would stir up questions regarding “inconvenient truths” that many in the US power structure want to avoid.

For example, current research indicates that public schools in the United States are more segregated today than they have been in more than four decades. According to a new Civil Rights report, published at the University of California, Los Angeles, schools in the US are 44 percent non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students in the US. Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago. Millions of non-white students are locked into “dropout factory” high schools, where huge percentages do not graduate. The most severe segregation in public schools occurs in the Western states, including California—not in the South, as many people believe. Most non-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. Schools in low-income communities remain highly unequal in terms of funding, qualified teachers, and curriculum.

Other taboo stories include civilian death rates in Iraq and questions on 9/11. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and a professional survey company in Great Britain, Opinion Research Business (ORB) report that the United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since our invasion six and half years ago. In a January 2008 report, ORB reported that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003…. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000.” A 2006 Johns Hopkins study confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces. Iraqi civilian death levels in the summer of 2009 likely now exceed 1.2 million.

Former Brigham Young University physics professor Dr. Steven E. Jones and some 700 scientific professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, and physics have now concluded that the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of physics. Especially troubling is the collapse of WTC 7, a forty-seven-story building that was not hit by planes, yet dropped in its own “footprint” in 6.6 seconds in the same manner as a controlled demolition. To support this theory, Jones and eight other scientists conducted chemical research on the dust from the World Trade centers. Their research results were published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal Open Chemical Physics Journal, Volume 2, 2009. The authors write, “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.” Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide, which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction and is used in controlled demolitions of buildings.

Each of these taboo news stories is based on solid scholarly research. These stories represent the failure of the corporate media in the US to keep the American people democratically informed on important issues. This lack of coverage of critical and potentially political news stories is what many thousands of people in the US are now calling a Truth Emergency. Political activists at all levels must support full news transparency as an important component of building a non-exploitative world based on democracy, truthfulness, and human rights.

Peter Phillips is Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University, President of Media Freedom Foundation, and the former director of Project Censored. Daily non-corporate independent news is now on-line at the Media Freedom Foundation website.

Coming Soon! Censored 2010

2009-07-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

The latest edition of Project Censored's research, the Top 25 censored news stories that didn't make the news, and more accounts of media democracy in action will be available by October 1st, this fall, for Media Accountability Day. Order your copy today! Or, make a generous tax-deductible donation of $100 or more to the Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored and get an autographed copy by the editors in appreciation. Please don't forget to support your local, independent, media! And if you don't have that kind of news media in your community, you need to Be the Media!

Truth Emergency Issues in Media Reform

2009-07-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Importance of Including Truth Emergency Inside the International Progressive Media Reform Movement

By Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff

An international truth emergency, now in evidence, is the result of fraudulent elections, compromised 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, and continued top down corporate media propaganda across the spectrum on public issues. Glenn Beck recently was able to say on national Fox News television that 9/11 Truth people openly supported the shooting at the Holocaust Museum. Beck claimed that 9/11 truth proponents see James von Brunn as a “hero.” Beck’s statement is completely without factual merit and represents a hyper-realist slamming of a group already slanderously pre-labeled by the corporate media as “conspiracy theorists.”

Conspiracies tend to be actions by small groups of individuals rather than massive collective plots by entire governments. However, small groups can be dangerous, especially when the individuals have significant power in huge public and private bureaucracies. Corporate boards of directors meet in closed rooms to plan to how best to maximize profit. If they knowingly make plans that hurt others, violate laws, undermine ethics, or show favoritism to friends, they are involved in a conspiracy.

The main method of critics of unofficial investigations into 9/11, election fraud, and other controversial issues is to lump together all the questions and/or lines of inquiry as if they all have equal validity. Obviously, they do not. This, however, allows critics to dismiss fact-based, transparent inquiries into major problems with official explanations of these crucial matters by focusing on the most absurd claims only. These are fallacies of overgeneralization, straw persons, appeals to authority, and red herrings that provide distractions from actual fact-based, scientific investigations. These tactics avoid the debates about truth entirely. We the people must not be afraid to openly discuss, research, and validate these issues.

Here is a case in point: former Brigham Young University physics professor Dr. Steven E. Jones and some 700 scientific professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, and physics have now concluded that the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of physics. Especially troubling is the collapse of WTC 7, a forty-seven-story building that was not hit by planes, yet dropped in its own “footprint” in 6.6 seconds in the same manner as a controlled demolition.

To support his theory, Jones and eight other scientists conducted chemical research on the dust from the World Trade centers. Their research results were published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal Open Chemical Physics Journal, Volume 2, 2009. The authors write, “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.” Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide, which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction and is used in controlled demolitions of buildings. This should be a part of our political discourse given how much of the policy in the past eight years has been based on assumptions about 9/11.

These are some of the reasons we are in a truth emergency, which is predicated on the inability of many to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Corporate media, Fox in particular, offers “news” that creates a hyper-reality of real world problems and issues. Consumers of corporate news media—especially those whose understandings are framed primarily from that medium alone—are embedded in a state of excited delirium of knowinglessness. This lack of factual awareness of issues like election fraud in 2000 and 2004, and the increasing evidence of 9/11 Commission report inaccuracies, leaves people politically paralyzed.

To counter knowinglessness, media activists need to include truth emergency issues as important elements of radical-progressive media reform efforts. We must not be afraid of corporate media labeling and instead build truth from the bottom up. Critical thinking and fact-finding are the basis of democracy, and we must stand for the maximization of informed participatory democracy at the lowest possible level in society.

Progressive media activists should openly support 9/11 Truth and other truth emergency issues as important components of building a new non-exploitative world based on media democracy, full transparency and openness, and fundamental human rights.
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Peter Phillips is Professor of Sociology, Sonoma State University; President, Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored; 9/11 Truth Steering Committee

Mickey Huff is Associate Professor of History, Diablo Valley College; Executive Committee, Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored; 9/11 Truth Advisory Committee

Project Censored at the Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA

2009-06-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

In late May of 2009, the team at Project Censored were honored to speak at the Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA. This is an amazing independent bookstore with an incredible history and we were delighted to be there. The folks at FORA TV were there to record as well. The topic of the evening was The New American Censorship: America's Top Censored Stories of 2009. See the video at Fora.tv here. Thanks to the folks at Book Passage and FORA TV for making it happen.

Infotainment Society

2009-06-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

Junk Food News for 2008/2009

By Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, and Frances A. Capell

See the full study here.

The late New York University media scholar Neil Postman once said about America, “We are the best entertained least informed society in the world." From Jessica Simpson’s weight and Brangelina’s escapades, to Britney Spears’ sister and the Obama’s First Puppy, Americans are fed a steady “news” diet of useless information laden with personal anecdotes, scandals, and gossip.

Since the middle of the 1980’s, Project Censored at Sonoma State University has annually researched this phenomenon. Topics and in-depth reports that matter little to anyone in any meaningful way are given massive amounts of media coverage in the corporate media. In recent years, this has only become more obvious.

For instance, CNN’s coverage of celebrity Anna Nicole Smith’s untimely death in early 2007 is arguably one of the most egregious examples of an over abused news story. The magnitude of corporate media attention paid to Smith’s death were clearly out of synch with the coverage the story deserved, which was at most a simple passing mention. Instead, CNN broadcast “breaking” stories of Smith’s death uninterrupted, without commercials, for almost two hours, with commentary by lead anchors and journalists. This marked among the longest uninterrupted “news” broadcasts at CNN since the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Anna Nicole Smith and 9/11 are now strange bedfellows, milestone bookends of corporate news culture.

While news outlets were obsessing over Smith’s death, most big media giants were missing a far more important story. The US ambassador to Iraq misplaced $12 billion in shrink-wrapped one hundred dollar bills that were flown to Baghdad. This garnered little attention due to the media’s morbid infatuation with Smith’s passing. This is clearly news judgment gone terribly awry if not an outright retreat from journalistic standards. The once trivial and absurd are now mainstreamed as “news.” More young people turn to late night comics’ fake news to learn the truth or tune out to so-called reality shows often scripted as Roman Holiday spectacles of the surreal. Welcome to the Infotainment Society: American Media in the 21st century.

Here are the Top Ten Junk Food News Stories for 2008 and 2009 as chosen by Project Censored students and the online community via http://projectcensored.org:

1.Olympic Medalist Michael Phelps Hits a Bong
2. Jessica Simpson Gains Weight
3. First Lady Michelle Obama's Fashion Sense
4. The Brangelina Twins
5. Lindsay Lohan Dating a Woman
6. The Presidential First Puppy
7. Heidi Montag "Marries" Spencer Pratt
8. Barry Bonds Steroid Trial
9. Jamie-Lynn Spears Gives Birth
10. The Woes of Amy Winehouse

The British tabloid News of the World published an exclusive photo of Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps smoking marijuana from a bong on Sunday, February 1, 2009, with the headline, “What a Dope.” The picture was allegedly taken during a November house party while Phelps was visiting the University of South Carolina. The incident occurred nearly three months after the swimmer won eight gold medals for America at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Phelps quickly apologized to the public for his "regrettable behavior. " The bongs owner reportedly tried to sell it on eBay for $100,000. In the weeks following, Phelps lost his sponsorship from Kellogg's cereal.

Photos of Jessica Simpson performing at a Florida Chili Cook-off looking a bit heavier than usual surfaced during the week of January 26, 2009. The purportedly unflattering shots of a curvier looking Simpson in an outfit that included "a muffin-top-inducing leopard belt" immediately made news headlines. Was she pregnant? Was she picking up eating habits from her NFL star boyfriend? Or was she simply hungry for publicity? President Obama even noticed Simpson was “in a weight battle” during a pre-super bowl interview.

The US is not only becoming a nation of obese people, but is on the verge of another phenomenon the equivalent of cultural and mental obesity. We are a nation awash in a sea of information yet we have a paucity of understanding. We are a country where over a quarter of the population know the names of all five members of the fictitious family from The Simpsons yet only one in a thousand can name all the rights protected under the first amendment to the US Constitution. Journalistic values have been sold out to commercial interests and not even our core, national and constitutionally protected values are sacred.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. Mickey Huff is an Associate Professor of History at Diablo Valley College and Associate Director of Project Censored. Frances A. Capell is a Project Censored intern. For the full report see: Infotainment Society at the Project Censored homepage.

Project Censored Validated Independent News: Stories Under Review

2009-03-25T16:12:00.000-07:00

Here are some stories currently under review at Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored as compiled by the Director, Dr. Peter Phillips.

These are validated independent news stories ignored, distorted, or undercovered by the corporate mainstream media. This is part of a new and ongoing role Project Censored is playing in reporting valid news, vetted by college and university students and professors, and making the stories available to the public.

*The United States is operating secret “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror. According to human rights lawyers, the US has also attempted to conceal the number and whereabouts of detainees. Reprieve, a human right’s organization, claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006 and that the US may have used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed. By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001.

*In October of 2008, over 5,000 U.S. physicians signed an open letter calling on the President and Congress "to stand up for the health of the American people and implement a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance system." The letter follows a survey last spring that shows 59 percent of U.S. physicians support national health insurance, The letter argues that whereas most leading Democrats offer a “mandate model” of reform—under which the government would require people (or their employers) to buy private health insurance—this would merely augment the role and profits of private insurers, whose overhead is four times that of Medicare’s Dr. Oliver Fein, signer of the letter, comments that the single-payer approach provides care to all who need it and requires no new money.

*The Guardian in London has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields and the targeting of medics and hospitals.

A month-long investigation also obtained evidence of civilians being hit by fire from unmanned drone aircraft said to be so accurate that their operators can tell the color of the clothes worn by a target.

Some of the most dramatic testimony gathered by the Guardian came from three teenage brothers in the al-Attar family. They describe how they were taken from home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of Israeli tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing, and sent by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian houses to clear them.

Medics and ambulance drivers said they were targeted when they tried to tend to the wounded; sixteen were killed. According to the World Health Organization, more than half of Gaza's 27 hospitals and 44 clinics were damaged by Israeli bombs.

The Geneva convention makes it clear medical staff and hospitals are not legitimate targets and forbids involuntary human shields.

*Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress. According to the Government Accounting Organization more than 38,000 foreign corporations doing business in the U.S. had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax as well. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

Source: Most Companies In US Avoid Federal Income Taxes GAO, Common Dreams, 8/12/08

*The US Navy reactivated the Fourth Fleet after fifty-eight years so that it could begin patrolling Latin American waters in what the Department of Defense said was an effort to combat terrorism, drug trafficking and other activities. The presidents of both Bolivia and Venezuela have stated that they see the reestablishment of the fleet as a new sign of aggression toward their governments and the region.

In 2009, the Ecuadorian government will not renew Washington’s permit to operate in Manta, which is the US’s only permanent military base in South America. The fleet provides a floating base for US interventions throughout the continent.

*Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers which are provided by American corporations. This high tech surveillance and censorship program is known in China as “Golden Shield”. American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric supply the technology. Their end goal is to use the latest in people tracking technology to create an airtight consumer cocoon - a place where consumerism can be enjoyed without the threat of democracy breaking out.

*In 1989, Congress passed legislation barring U.S. companies from selling any products in China that have to do with "crime control or detection instruments or equipment.” However, while fingerprinting technology appears on the Commerce Department's list of banned products, there is no explicit mention of "face prints",

*A study by Center for Responsive Politics has found that special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008, more than any other year on record. This was a 13.7 percent increase over 2007. The Center calculated that interest groups spent $17.4 million a day lobbying Congress in 2008.  

For the third straight year, pharmaceutical/health interests spent more on federal lobbying than any other economic sector--$478.5 million. The second-biggest spender among industries in 2008 was electric utilities, which spent $156.7 million on lobbying. Third was insurance interests at $153.2 million, and oil and gas companies paid lobbyists $133.2 million. Pro-Israel groups, food processing companies and the oil and gas industry increased their lobbying expenditures the most (as a percentage) between 2007 and 2008.

*A highly controversial report pushing for the building of a peripheral canal on the California Delta was funded in part by Bechtel Corporation. Bechtel is one of the world's largest engineering and construction firms and is a leading advocate of the privatization of water systems. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) report recommends the construction of a peripheral canal.

*Central Valley chinook salmon and Delta fish populations are in a state of collapse, largely due to massive increases in water exports from the Delta in recent years. A broad coalition of recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, Delta farmers, Indian Tribes and environmentalists are opposed to the peripheral canal because it would result in the diversion of more water from the Delta and further exacerbate the current fishery collapses.

*Matthew Rothschild with the Progressive magazine writes that President Obama needs to tell Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Dick Cheney, right now, for war crimes.

Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code, Section 2441 makes it illegial for a person to commit, or conspire to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason…”

Cheney was clearly in on, as when he repeatedly defended waterboarding and talked about the need to go to the "dark side" Cheney was supervising such treatment in the White House, which would qualify as committing this crime.

For each of these offenses, Cheney could receive life in prison, according to the statute.

"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the Bush administration has committed war crimes," said Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.), "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

More Sources for above stories:

Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets.org, January 29, 2009

Source: The Guardian (U.K.) March 23, 2009 - updated March 24, 2009

Source: China's All-Seeing Eye Naomi Klein, Rolling Stone, May 29, 2008

Bechtel and the Big Dig Dan Bacher, CounterPunch , 7/22/2008

Source: Fourth Fleet Threatens Peace, Democracy in Latin America Jose A. Cruz, People’s Weekly World Newspaper, 6/6/2008

The Return of the Fourth Fleet BBC 5/10/2008

Source: US Accused of Holding Terror Suspects on Prison Ships Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian/UK, June 2, 2008

5,000 Doctors Challenge Private-Insurance System Staff Writers, Kansas City InfoZine, October 8, 2008

Text of Letter to President Obama for single payer national health insurance.

Bush/Cheney Mission Accomplished Redux: 6th Anniversary Early Edition

2009-03-17T18:43:00.000-07:00

Iraq by the numbers...

Overview

More Specifics

One million dead Iraqis, four million refugees, almost 5,000 US soldiers dead and another 35,000 wounded Americans with hundreds of thousands applying for VA benefits...a bankrupt economy and a $3.2 trillion war. Blame the new guy. Mission Accomplished.

Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, recently remarked upon former Vice President Dick Cheney's glowing assessment of the Bush administration's accomplishments in Iraq. See his analysis from Informed Comment published here (and see below). It's amazing how history can be rewritten in real time by political actors and validated by a compliant, corporate, lap dog press. Cheney's stuff happens approach to history is stunningly self serving and naive at best, rank propaganda and blatant lies at worst. All the more reason we should listen more to Prof. Cole's commentary and others like him. America has seen enough of this kind of deception and Orwellian revisionism in the 21st century already. Winston Smith would blush...

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Cheney's Mission Accomplished
by Juan Cole

Dick Cheney: "I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do...."

What has Dick Cheney really accomplished in Iraq?

An estimated 4 million Iraqis, out of 27 million, have been displaced from their homes, that is, made homeless. Some 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq. A couple hundred thousand are cooling their heels in Jordan. And perhaps a million are quickly running out of money and often living in squalid conditions in Syria. Cheney's war has left about 15% of Iraqis homeless inside the country or abroad. That would be like 45 million American thrown out of their homes.

It is controversial how many Iraqis died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. But it seems to me that a million extra dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is entirely plausible. The toll is certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Cheney did not kill them all. The Lancet study suggested that the US was directly responsible for a third of all violent deaths since 2003. That would be as much as 300,000 that we killed. The rest, we only set in train their deaths by our invasion.

Baghdad has been turned from a mixed city, about half of its population Shiite and the other half Sunni in 2003, into a Shiite city where the Sunni population may be as little as ten to fifteen percent. From a Sunni point of view, Cheney's war has resulted in a Shiite (and Iranian) take-over of the Iraqi capital, long a symbol of pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism.

In the Iraqi elections, Shiite fundamentalist parties closely allied with Iran came to power. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading party in parliament, was formed by Iraqi expatriates at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982 in Tehran. The Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party is the oldest ideological Shiite party working for an Islamic state. It helped form Hizbullah in Beirut in the early 1980s. It has supplied both prime ministers elected since 2005. Fundamentalist Shiites shaped the constitution, which forbids the civil legislature to pass legislation that contravenes Islamic law. Dissidents have accused the new Iraqi government of being an Iranian puppet.

Arab-Kurdish violence is spiking in the north, endangering the Obama withdrawal plan and, indeed, the whole of Iraq, not to mention Syria, Turkey and Iran.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed by the war and its effects, leaving most without a means of support. Iraqi widows often lack access to clean water and electricity. Aljazeera English has video.

$32 billion were wasted on Iraq reconstruction, and most of it cannot even be traced. I repeat, Cheney gave away $32 bn. to anonymous cronies in such a way that we can't even be sure who stole it, exactly. And you are angry at AIG about $400 mn. in bonuses! We are talking about $32 billion given out in brown paper bags.

Political power is being fragmented in Iraq with big spikes in the murder rate in some provinces that may reflect faction-fighting and vendettas in which the Iraqi military is loathe to get involved.

The Iraqi economy is devastated, and the new government's bureaucracy and infighting have made it difficult to attract investors.

The Bush-Cheney invasion helped further destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, setting in play Kurdish nationalism and terrifying Turkey. Cheney avoids mentioning all the human suffering he has caused, on a cosmic scale, and focuses on procedural matters like elections (which he confuses with democracy-- given 2000 in this country, you can understand why). Or he lies, as when he says that Iran's influence in Iraq has been blocked. Another lie is that there was that the US was fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq as opposed to just Iraqis. He and Bush even claim that they made Iraqi womens' lives better.

The real question is whether anyone will have the gumption to put Cheney on trial for treason and crimes against humanity.

© 2009 Juan Cole
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.

The New American Censorship

2009-03-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

Much has been afoot these few months of 2009. We are now not only promoting Censored 2009, but writing Censored 2010.

For starters, and why I am not writing here as often, you can see the Project Censored blog at Daily Censored news. The Director of Project Censored, Dr. Peter Phillips, and I have been giving several talks about the future of Project Censored International and the Media Freedom Foundation across the US.

We have also posted more investigative research at the Project Censored website, including the study I did with Dr. Paul Rea on 9/11 media myth making titled Deconstructing Deceit. It can also be seen here. We need to generate a healthy climate of debate in the US, and here is a fine topic to begin such a quest.

Stay tuned for more...we're getting ready to choose the top censored stories at Project Censored, the top Junk Food News and News Abuse stories, and finish more investigative research about media censorship issues.

Cheers

P.S. Just in case, yesterday, March 15th, you were supposed to Beware the Ides of March. Hope all is well...

Dear Progressives For Obama: Say It Ain't So...

2009-02-18T22:21:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama Administration Continues US Military Global Dominance

By Dr. Peter Phillips, Professor of Sociology and Director of Project Censored

The Barack Obama administration is continuing the neo-conservative agenda of US military domination of the world— albeit with perhaps a kinder-gentler face. While overt torture is now forbidden for the CIA and Pentagon, and symbolic gestures like the closing of the Guantanamo prison are in evidence, a unilateral military dominance policy, expanding military budget, and wars of occupation and aggression will likely continue unabated.

The military expansionists from within the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush administrations put into place solid support for increased military spending. Clinton’s model of supporting the US military industrial complex held steady defense spending and increased foreign weapons sales from 16% of global orders to over 63% by the end of his administration.

The neo-conservatives, who dominated the most recent Bush administration, amplified this trend of increased military spending. The neo-cons laid out their agenda for military global dominance in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC) report Rebuilding America's Defenses. The report called for the protection of the American Homeland, the ability to wage simultaneous theater wars, to perform global constabulary roles, and to control space and cyberspace. The report claimed that in order to maintain a Pax Americana, potential rivals — such as China, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea — needed to be held in check. This military global dominance agenda required forward deployment of US forces worldwide and increasing defense/war spending well into the 21st century. The result was a doubling of the US military budget to over $700 billion in the last eight years. The US now spends as much on war/defense as the rest of the world combined, making Americans the highest war-tax payers in the world.

Barack Obama’s election brought a moment of hope for many. However, the Obama administration is not calling for decreased military spending, or a reversal of US military global dominance. Instead, Obama retained Robert Gates, thus making Obama the first president from an opposing party, in US history, to keep in place the outgoing administrations’ Secretary of Defense/War. Additionally, Obama is calling for an expanded war in Afghanistan and only minimal long-range reductions in Iraq.

The US military industrial complex is deeply embedded inside the Washington beltway. According to the most recent reports from OpenSecrets.org, 151 members of Congress in 2006 had up to $195.5 million of their personal assets invested in defense companies.

Major defense contractors were seriously involved in the 2008 elections. Lockheed Martin gave $2,612,219 in total political campaign donations, with 49% to Democrats ($1,285,493) and 51% to Republicans ($1,325,159). Boeing gave $2,225,947 in 2008 with 58% going to Democrats, and General Dynamics provided $1,682,595 to both parties. Northrop Grumman spent over $20 million in 2008, hiring lobbyists to influence Congress, and Raytheon spent $6 million on lobbyists in the same period. In a revolving door appointment, Obama nominated Raytheon’s senior vice president for government operations and strategy, William Lynn, for the number two position in the Pentagon. Lynn was formally the Defense Department’s comptroller during the Clinton administration.

The International Monetary Fund's prediction for global economic growth in 2009 is 0.5 percent—the worst since World War II. The United Nations' International Labor Organization estimates that some 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide this year. There are an estimated 62,000 U.S. companies expected to close in 2009, and while official unemployment is at 7 percent in the US, when you add people no longer looking for jobs and part-time workers, joblessness is closer to 14 percent. The military-industrial-political elite are worried about the potential of increasing global insecurity. The answer inside the Obama Administration is to continue high defense/war spending to insure military control of both domestic and foreign instabilities.

The military, industrial, congressional, and administrative elite profit from defense spending, both financially and ideologically. Insider profit taking from pentagon spending is widespread in Washington. But perhaps more important is the belief that this global military machine is seen as necessary for the protection of US corporate interests and the American upper classes in an increasingly destabilized world. Given that belief, the Obama administration is unlikely to change the defense spending policies of the previous US administrations without significant disruptive pressure from anti-war activists and global empire resisters.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored a media research organization. His 2006 study on the Global Dominance Group in the US is available online here.

Another Year of Fear

2008-12-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

Another Year of Fear has come and gone. See my latest bit at the new Project Censored blog The Daily Censored for more info you don't hear on the nightly corporate news. Also, feel free to give the gift of a tax deductible donation to Project Censored if you are so inclined.

I'll have many updates of the past semester of activities as I was so busy I didn't have a lot of tome to post...but there's always next year...cheers!

Cautionary Tales From the Land of Hope

2008-11-11T22:26:00.000-08:00

Post election waves of hope and exhilaration are hard to deny in the progressive circles of America. An end to eight years of the Worst rule the country has arguably ever seen is certainly cause for celebration. But how much? Friend and colleague, Professor Robert Abele, cautions on Obama: The Great Disappointment that may yet unfold. As we're reminded, Cornell West, the philosopher from Princeton, said it best: “I will vote for Obama on November 4, and then be his harshest critic on November 5.” Let us all pay close attention to the real struggles that lie ahead. Let us be hopeful and vigilant. See more from Abele, including his radio commentaries, at his Modern Day Patriot website, Spotlight on Freedom.

Progressives, Beware of Premature Euphoria
By Dr. Robert Abele

Cornell West, the philosopher from Princeton, said it best: “I will vote for Obama on November 4, and then be his harshest critic on November 5.” I follow that line of reasoning. One should never give a pass to the President or President-elect, especially when they are poised to spurn half of the voters who voted for him. This is the case with the Obama presidency, for the following reasons.

First, these commentaries have previously made references to Obama’s deep corporate connections. His votes on the bailout, opposition to single-payer health care, increase of the military budget, and opposition to significant minimum wage increase are all in line with his corporate sponsors, from whom he has taken millions of dollars in campaign contributions. If that is not enough, consider his main economic advisors, Penny Pritzker and Robert Rubin. Pritzker was deeply involved in the fraudulent lending schemes that led to the home foreclosure crisis we now face. The bank she owned and operated, Superior Bank, engaged in deceptive and faulty lending practices, contributing to the crisis. When federal regulators closed the bank in 2002, Pritzker and her husband had already made millions from it. After threats to take them to court, the Pritzkers agreed to pay the government $460 million. Robert Rubin was Treasure Secretary under President Clinton, and was a fervent supporter of banking and market deregulation, including Clinton’s ultimate repealing of the Glass-Steagall Act, which paved the way for the crisis we are now experiencing.

Next, let us briefly examine his appointment of Rahm Israel Emanuel as his Chief of Staff. Emanuel is a right-wing Democrat, a former Clinton official, who was and is a rabid militaristic supporter of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. He is also quite adept at raising special interest money. Add to this Obama’s voting record on Israel. For example, while Israel was engaged in an all-out assault of the civilian population in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, Obama voted in favor of a Senate resolution expressing “steadfast support for the State of Israel.” When coupled with his fawning speech earlier this year to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one can see that not only will there be no change from the Bush Mideast policy, but Obama may well be to the right of Bush on the Palestinian question. This leads to the next issue.

Third, don’t expect a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq under an Obama administration. Obama’s call for a “residual force” to remain in Iraq leaves him the wiggle room necessary to keep troops there indefinitely. Obama himself said that we have to keep “logistical and intelligence support” in Iraq, in addition to “providing training for the Iraqi military,” in addition to keeping a “counter-terrorism strike force” there, in addition to “protecting our diplomatic forces,” our civilians, and our embassy there. These are all direct quotes from Obama himself, so don’t expect us to suddenly back out of Iraq. [The quotes come from an interview with Stars & Stripes, taken from Frank J. Menetrez, “Now What?” Counterpunch, November 6, 2008]

Fourth, out of Obama’s own mouth has come the following ideas: bombing or invading Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda; expanding the war in Afghanistan; condemning Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as an enemy of the U.S.; keeping Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense; opposing Bush’s impeachment. This list could be expanded far beyond what I’ve just mentioned, if time permitted.

Let’s be clear about this, before becoming too disappointed: Obama is no liberal, and definitely not a revolutionary. While in some areas he might be better than Bush and McCain, it is dubious that his presidency is going to differ that much from the Bush policies, at least when it comes to economic and foreign policy. We might expect more of him in other areas, but given the people with whom he has already surrounded himself, progressives should be prepared for further disappointments to come.
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Time will tell. We should celebrate the end of an era, but the public voice should now have more of a say about where we are going as a people domestically as well as in a global context. We owe it to the world and the next generation of Americans to right our many past wrongs. Let's hope Obama meant some of what he said, though early signs of what he'll do tell another tale.

Project Censored 2009: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007-08

2008-10-03T21:48:00.000-07:00

Project Censored, the media research group at Sonoma State University (SSU), has just released it's annual report on the top stories that didn't make the corporate mainstream news from the past year. The book is published by Seven Stories Press. Censored 2009, edited by director Dr. Peter Phillips with Dr. Andrew Roth, exposes the major stories Americans should know and care about that the "free press" just doesn't deliver. The top stories for this year can be viewed at the PC website and the piece in the North Bay Bohemian can be read here.

Project Censored award winning journalist and researcher Stephen Lendman has just written about the Project in a piece titled Project Censored's Media Democracy Advocacy which looks at the history of the Project as well as details in this year's volume. A lecture series hosting authors of this years top censored stories is presently underway at SSU for those in the Bay Area wishing to attend. The series is being broadcast at Free Speech TV this fall as well.

As acting Associate Director of Project Censored, I invite everyone to explore this year's book and help support media democracy in action. Our currently calamitous and critical condition as a fragile free society depends upon a well informed citizenry and I strongly believe that Project Censored is a major force in the direction of strengthening our society's democratic institutions and principles. Help spread the word if you can and read more about the Project and its history below in a reprinting of Stephen Lendman's recent article.

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Project Censored's Media Democracy Advocacy - by Stephen Lendman

For 32 years, Sonoma State University's (SSU) Project Censored has pioneered US media democracy, research, and First Amendment issues. Founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, it's now headed by Professor Peter Phillips, currently on sabbatical leave, with Professor Mickey Huff in charge as Interim Associate Director of the program until his return.

PC works cooperatively with numerous independent media groups, primarily to train SSU students "in media research, First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States." Since its founding, it's trained over 1500 students in investigative research and the importance of our most fundamental right without which all others are at risk and now currently hang by a thread.

PC is a "partnership of faculty, students, and the community" to conduct research "on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media." Each year, it ranks the top 25 and publishes them in its yearbook, "Censored: Media Democracy in Action." The latest "Censored 2009: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007 - 2008" may now be purchased at bookstores or online at http://www.projectcensored.org/store/.

The current edition is larger than ever. It includes the year's honorable mention choices and additional chapters covering these topics:

-- Updates on previous PC stories;

-- Junk Food News and News Abuse;

-- The News is Good!: Stories of Hope and Change from 2007 and 2008;

-- Oiling the Dangerous Engine of Arbitrary Government: Newspaper Coverage of the Military Commissions Act (aka the torture authorization and habeas rights revocation act);

-- Universal Healthcare, Media, and the 2008 Presidential Campaign;

-- US Media Bias, Human Rights, and the Hamas Government in Gaza;

-- The Gardasil Sell Job - on the controversial human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine thought to be unsafe for adolescent girls, yet Merck dishonestly markets it in collusion with the FDA;

-- Fear & Favor 2007: How Power Still Shapes the News;

-- Index on Censorship 2007 - 2008;

-- Truth Emergency Meets Media Reform;

-- Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan -- Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations;

-- The Pentagon's Child Recruiting Strategy;

-- Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information; and

-- Thirty-Three Years of US Military Domination and Economic Deception.

In all, over 400 power-packed pages of vital information in the current PC Censored 2009 edition. Must reading for everyone. Even those familiar with the issues for more information than they now know.

Project Censored's Definition of "Modern Censorship"

It's the dominant media's "subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality" in their role as "guardians of power" and to serve their single-minded pursuit of profit. It includes ignoring vital news stories. Parts of them. The whys that explain them, and systematically withholding vital truths from the public. It's done through and because of political, economic and legal pressures in fundamental violation of a free and open press. Run by CEOs, not journalists. Serving their interests and advertisers, not ours.

PC believes in a "healthy and functioning democracy." Supports independent media and the right of free people to be informed. It also holds the dominant media accountable and serves as an antidote to their practices.

Why Project Censored and Why Now?

Democracy requires a free, open, vibrant and diverse media. Elements very much absent under our corporate-dominated system. As a result, the media system today is in crisis. Fiction substitutes for fact. News is carefully filtered. Dissent marginalized, and supporting the powerful substitutes for full and accurate reporting. Aggressive wars are thus called liberating ones. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good. Anything government does, we're told, business does better, so let it, and patriotism means supporting lawless imperial regimes.

Media scholar and activist Robert McChesney asks whether "the media system....promote(s) or undermine(s) democratic institutions and practices. Are media a force for social justice or oligarchy?" Given their concentrated state, profits as a be all and end all, and partnership with an imperial state, their current condition is corrupted, broken, and in violation of the public trust they disdain. "Rich media, poor democracy" for McChesney. A powerful antidemocratic force. More dominant than ever. Hyper-commercially driven. Unresponsive to public needs, and serving only the interests of wealth and power the way Alex Carey brilliantly explained in his classic work, "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:"

He wrote: "The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." Journalist Walter Lippmann called it the "manufacture of consent" in a democratic society where it can't be done by force, and Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman titled their landmark 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent" to describe the dominant media's "propaganda model" to program the public mind.

It "filter(s) out the news to print, marginalize(s) dissent, (and assures) government and dominant private interests" control all information dissemination. It's done through a set of "filters" to remove what's unacceptable and "leav(es) only the cleansed residue fit to print" or broadcast.

It raises the dilemma James Madison posed that "A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives."

Today it's from the media, and therein lies the problem. An opportunity as well from alternative sources and organizations like Project Censored promoting the best they have to offer. Publishing it in annual volumes. Spreading it by word of mouth through lectures, on-air discussions, and in classroom instruction on journalism as it was meant to be in a free and open society. Understanding Thomas Jefferson's warning that emerging "banking institutions and moneyed incorporations" would destroy our democratic freedoms and replace them with a "single and splendid government of an aristocracy" if given a free hand.

What Lincoln also feared by "see(ing) in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country....corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Made easier today given the dominant media's power and ability to use it against the public interest the way Alex Carey explained:

Through a "propaganda-managed democracy....to identify the free-enterprise system in popular consciousness with every cherished value, and to identify interventionist governments and strong unions with tyranny, oppression and even subversion." Carey called propaganda "communications where the form and content is selected with the single-minded purpose of bringing some target audience (the public or a company's employees, etc.) to adopt attitudes and beliefs chosen in advance by the sponsors." It's as important in democratic societies as in authoritarian ones. In addition, "the success of business (or government) propaganda persuading us that we are free from (this type influence) is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century."

Even truer today with round-the-clock news. Hundreds of cable channels, and a more dominant media than in Carey's day. All the greater need for organizations like Project Censored to dispel official propaganda with real news and information that refutes it. All the more reason also to support its vital work. Countering the giants with what a free society needs to survive.

Stories the Dominant Media Censor

Hundreds of them have been covered since 1976 when PC's top story was "Jimmy Carter and the Trilateral Commission." Carter was a charter member of David Rockefeller's organization to counter the threat of democracy - too much of it. To assure that political power rests with the few. That public interests go unaddressed. That governments serve multinational banks and giant corporations. That people and resources are exploited for their benefit, and that popular democratic movements are suppressed. David Rockefeller chose Jimmy Carter to be president for that agenda. To be an interregnum executive after the turbulent Nixon years, then hand back the office to Republicans in 1980.

The same year, PC covered:

-- the "Corporate Control of DNA;"

-- selling banned pesticides and drugs to third world countries;

-- unsafe workplaces causing "untold numbers of injuries, disease and deaths....;" and

-- the sale of worthless and harmful non-prescription drugs to the public along with 20 other censored stories.

The top two 1977 stories covered the myth of black progress and "Cancer, Inc." About billions spent for cures, yet the US rate was 50% above the world average. It's still epidemic. Kills millions. Is a huge health care industry money-maker and too profitable for providers to want a cure.

In 1978, nuclear power plant dangers won top honors, and long before the proliferation of GMO foods and their hazards, the feasibility of organic farming ranked second.

Dumping illegal/dangerous production on third world countries was called "The Corporate Crime of the Century" and PC's top 1979 story. Number two was that "The (Iranian embassy) Seizure Should Not Have Been A Surprise" even though as late as summer 1978 the US media portrayed the Shah "as a modernizing, reform-oriented leader (with) a broad base of popular support."

In 1980, the distorted coverage of El Salvador's civil war won top honors followed by "Big Brother Is Listening to You" - the National Security Agency (NSA) that can do it today with much improved technology and legally with institutionalized spying legislation in place. Most recently The Protect America Act of 2007 and FISA Amendments Act of 2008. They assail civil liberties. Legalize warrantless wiretapping. Remove judicial oversight, and grant telecom companies retroactive immunity post-9/11 to violate our privacy.

"The Real Story Behind Our Economic Crisis" and the flagrant miscarriage of justice in Greensboro, NC ranked one and two in 1981.

Back then, a lack of "a competitive economy, monopoly, militarism, and multi-nationalization" (were) at the root of our economic crisis." Those factors still apply but much more as well. The current situation far exceeds any crisis since the 1930s. Is in most respects unparalled. No one fully understands it. How much harm if may cause. Its effect on world economies. How bad things may get or what alleviating measures may work best, if any.

Industrial capitalism is eroding. Replaced by a kleptocracy. Grand theft America. Rewarding criminals for their crimes. Backed by the full faith and credit of the government with taxpayer money. An unimaginable wealth transfer to the rich. When this ends, things won't ever be the same again in our lifetimes. The old system didn't work. The new one will be worse, and along the way the human fallout will be catastrophic. Talk about a big story. Short of armageddon or world war, it doesn't get any bigger than this. Factors responsible include:

-- the ruinous effects of militarization; a permanent war economy for profit and dominance; unsustainable spending for it; the accumulation of mountains of unrepayable debt; the drain on a weakened economy; the implications are chilling - a future default, hyperinflation, potential bankruptcy, and demise of the republic;

-- a speculative finance-created crisis; called financialization or Frankenstein finance;

-- a totally deregulated, anything goes, environment permitting the most extreme, outrageous practices; free from government oversight that created the real under and unreported dilemma of: multiple imploding bubbles affecting housing, mortgage finance, and an alphabet soup menu of levered-up, high-risk securitized assets amounting to financial alchemy and largely outright fraud; the most dangerous being a "quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble" (a thousand trillion) crucial to contain to avoid the implosion of the entire global banking system and world economies with it; in a word, potential financial armageddon touching everyone; in 2003, Warren Buffett called derivatives a "time bomb" that pose a "mega-catastrophic risk;" said they're "financial weapons of mass destruction" capable of wrecking the whole economic system;

-- at the root of today's crisis is a corrupted, broken system; Chicago School fundamentalism; unfettered capitalism; unbridled greed, and the human wreckage it causes; driving it is a government-business partnership for global dominance and the single-minded pursuit of profit;

-- no freedom in our "free markets;" they're manipulated (up and down) for profit in either direction; in a crisis like today, small, expendable, and less favored enterprises are destroyed to benefit powerful ones like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and the Rockefeller family JP Morgan Chase Bank; the scheme is for greater consolidation among fewer giant players; the losers - the vast majority of people unaware that what's going on was planned; although this time the best and brightest were too smart by half; they may have set off a chain reaction global financial market meltdown; world governments are frantically scrambling to contain it with no idea if they can because the current crisis is unprecedented; no one's sure what can work, and the sums needed are unimaginable; in the trillions, with a fraction of it proposed for starters; a down payment; perhaps international help to raise more; and

-- fraud on a massive scale involving many trillions of dollars; placing world economies at risk; a Ponzi scheme writ large; a calculated crime; the greatest one ever with media complicity through silence as things progressively worsened and now approach the abyss; the story is still unfolding; it won't be easily or soon resolved; and its outcome is far from clear; one thing that is: this affects the entire world community of nations and everyone in them; there's no place to hide anywhere.

In 1982, fraudulent toxicity and cancer testing was PC's top story followed by "Americans 'Bugged' by Super-Secret (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance) Court." Institutionalized, illegal spying goes way back.

In 1983, "Israel: Merchant of Death in Central America" as the region's largest arms supplier and Ronald Reagan's massive peacetime military buildup ranked one and two.

In 1984, the myth of the "well-publicized Soviet military buildup" (to incite fear), and the Reagan administration's use of "international terrorism" as a pretext to assail civil liberties were the year's top two stories.

In 1985, intense saturation El Salvador bombing and unregulated military toxic waste were PC's picks for numbers one and two.

In 1986, spying on US Central American policy critics took top honors, followed by the Reagan administration's official policy of suppressing information from the public - with near-silence from the dominant media.

In 1987, PC's top story was on "The Information Monopoly" - what journalist/author Ben Bagdikian wrote about in his book, "The Media Monopoly," now titled "The New Media Monopoly" in its seventh edition. Ranked second was the "Contra-drug connection in America."

In 1988, George HW Bush's 25 years of "Dirty Big Secrets" was PC's top story followed by "How the EPA Pollutes the News and the Dioxin Cover-Up."

In 1989, media dominance again took top honors in an story titled "Global Media Lords Threaten Open Marketplace of Ideas." Second ranked was "Africa Turning into the World's Garbage Can."

In 1990, PC's top story was on the Cheerleader Press' Gulf War coverage. Second ranked was "The S & L Crisis: The Solution Is Worse Than the Crime" - about Reagan era criminal bankers and the $500 billion taxpayer bailout it cost. Appropriate to look back on given today's financial crisis. The unease about how bad it may get, and the realization that this time things are far more potentially disastrous than anything experienced in the past. See above comments under 1981's top story.

In 1991, "CBS and NBC Spiking Iraq Bombing Carnage Footage" ranked first. Number two was "Operation Censored War" about the secretive GHW Bush administration and an obliging cheerleading media.

In 1993 (the next PC-listed year), "The Great Media Sell-Out to Reaganism" won top honors followed by corporate crime dwarfing what occurs on streets. The US prison gulag system (by far the world's largest and adding 1000 new inmates weekly, mostly poor blacks and Latinos) holds 2.3 million inmates. People not rich enough to buy justice. Seldom are corporate criminals prosecuted, and when they are, punishment is inconsequential by comparison.

In 1994, the US killing its young (through violence, poverty and indifference to human needs) ranked first. Second was "Why Are We Really in Somalia?" Humanitarian intervention is never the reason. Strategic resources (especially oil and gas) always are primary along with advancing our imperial agenda and making the world safe for capital.

In 1995, PC's top story was "The Deadly Secrets of the (US) Occupational Safety Agency" - keeping 170,000 toxically-exposed workers uninformed about the risks. Second-ranked was about a "Powerful Group of Ultra-Conservatives (including influential Christian fascists) Secret Plans for Your Future." They haven't changed and are now more dangerous than ever.

In 1996, "Telecommunications Deregulation: Closing Up America's Marketplace of Ideas" ranked first after passage of the (grand theft media) Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowing greater than ever consolidation. Number two was a story on cutting social services by balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. Now affecting everyone to advance a global militarist agenda.

In 1997, PC's top story was "Risking the World: Nuclear Proliferation in Space." One part of an agenda for "full spectrum dominance" over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any potential challengers using all weapons in our arsenal. "Shell's Oil, Africa's Blood" was number two for the year.

In 1998, the Clinton administration's aggressive global arms sales ranked first followed by personal care and cosmetic products being potentially carcinogenic.

In 1999, PC's top story was on the secret Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). Designed to undermine national sovereignty by creating an open field for capital. Next was the story of chemical corporations profiting from breast cancer.

In 2000, multinational corporations profiting from international brutality ranked first followed by Big Pharma putting profits ahead of human need. By developing products like Viagra instead of cures for diseases killing millions in developing countries.

In 2001, World Bank and multinational corporate collusion to privatize water took top honors followed by OSHA failing to protect US workers.

In 2003 (the next listed year), PC's top story was on FCC efforts to privatize the airwaves followed by a story on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to privatize social services and make them available only to those who can pay.

In 2004, top ranked was "The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance" followed by how "Homeland Security Threatens Civil Liberty" with plenty of ammunition from pre-and-mostly-post-9/11 repressive laws.

In 2005, PC's top story was on the unprecedented 21st century wealth inequality threatening the economy and democracy followed by a story about Attorney General John Ashcroft's attempt to strike down Alien Torts Claim Act (ATCA) protections against corporate human rights abuses in foreign countries.

In 2006, the Bush administration's obsession with secrecy ranked first followed by the media's failure to cover the Fallujah and overall Iraqi civilian death toll.

In 2007, PC's top story was on the "Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media" followed by "Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran."

In 2008, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) denial of habeas rights for everyone (including US citizens designated "unlawful enemy combatants") won top honors followed by the Bush administration moving toward martial law by inserting an obscure provision in the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 annulling the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1878 Posse Comitatus Act.

Project Censored's current top 25 2009 stories are just out and available for purchase as explained above. Top ranked was about "Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation" as documented by Johns Hopkins researchers earlier and British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). Other selected stories included:

-- the North American Union (NAU) Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) or militarized NAFTA;

-- InfraGard on the FBI deputizing business;

-- the US International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) training Latin American security forces in counterterrorism techniques; a possible scheme to restart the region's dirty wars;

-- two George Bush executive orders (EOs) criminalizing the anti-war movement and allowing the Treasury Department to seize property from anyone opposing the administration's Middle East wars;

-- The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (HR 1955) - called "the thought crime prevention bill;" passed by the House and introduced in the Senate in August 2007 (S. 1959) but not acted on;

-- Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking - or near-slavery in America;

-- executive orders (EOs) can be changed secretly even though the Constitution has no provision giving presidents the right to make new law through one-man decrees;

-- Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify;

-- the American Psychological Association's (APA) complicity in CIA torture;

-- El Salvador's Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror;

-- Bush profiteers collecting billions from the No Child Left Behind Act scheme to destroy public education in America by privatizing it;

-- Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq through fraud, waste and other war profiteering schemes;

-- Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste;

-- Worldwide Slavery at a time most people don't know it exists, let alone in America;

-- the Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights;

-- the UN's Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights;

-- Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers;

-- Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction;

-- Marijuana Arrests Set New Record;

-- NATO Considers "First Strike" Option while the US 2001 Nuclear Policy Review, 2002 and updated 2006 National Security Strategy, and other US documents assert the right to wage preventive or proactive wars with "first strike" nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction;

-- CARE Rejects US Food Aid - because it causes more hunger than it prevents;

-- FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs;

-- Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror; and

-- Bush's Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer - to stop his exposure of subprime predatory lending fraud responsible for much of the current world financial crisis.

Project Censored annually present awards for the corporate media's most important suppressed stories. For its work, its Director, dedicated staff, and student interns deserve our award for being one of our national treasures. Holding the dominant media accountable.

Follow their work. Support their activities. Know what's at stake. A free and open society. The type media vital in it. The risk of losing it, and need for assertive, decisive action to assure that won't happen. Nor will it if Project Censored can help it.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions on world and national topics with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening at Global Research.

Seven Years of the 9/11 Truth Emergency

2008-09-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago the New Pearl Harbor of the Twenty First Century took place. President Bush anointed it as such in his journal the very night of September 11th, 2001, and even suggested Osama bin Laden was to blame without a shred of evidence (that still has yet to be produced). What followed was a government and corporate media induced frenzy of nationalism, jingoism, and fear that paved the way to the disaster that is the present. Politicians of many stripes propounded mythological ideals of exceptionalism while an unpopular, unelected president took to the National Cathedral to essentially declare a war on anyone opposing Pax Americana. He set a with-us-or-against-us binary framework from which Americans and the rest of the world would operate and be judged. Anyone questioning the increasingly unilateral authoritative executive branch would be seen as traitors and terrorists. The Bush administration and cowed Democratic "opposition" drove America off the cliff of reason while common sense, decency, civil rights and constitutional principles whithered on the vine...extant, but not accessible as viable options as neocon, would-be despots lodged themselves in an increasingly tyrannical and imperialist U.S. government. At the root, the pivotal and yet to be openly investigated events of September the 11th. Yes, America was attacked that fateful day, but perhaps in ways that differ strikingly from what many were lead to believe.

Scholar and author Peter Dale Scott recently remarked about the significance of 9/11 and all that followed, "In short, we are living in an on-going state of emergency whose exact limits are unknown, on the basis of a controversial deep event – 9/11 -- that is still largely a mystery." Many activists and journalists have argued that the post-9/11, post-fact, corporate media driven mirage many perceive as reality constitutes an actual Truth Emergency in America. This seems to be the case, and the still unexplained events of 9/11 are at the heart of the plethora of deceptions and onslaught to liberties that have relentlessly ensued including attacks on the core of our democratic principles- the suspension of habeas corpus, endorsement of torture, unchecked wanton surveillance, embedded reporting, voter intimidation and ballot tampering. They continue to this day, a war on the public, most recently surrounding the hypocritical events taking place outside the corporate sponsored political party conventions, one-time vehicles for exercising our participatory rights in the election selection process.

Prof. David Ray Griffin, 9/11 scholar, eloquently pointed out the myths versus realities in interpretations of 9/11 events, yet most Americans, even progressives, refuse to even consider or research the many problems factually known about 9/11 and the following government studies. Griffin attributes this to what he calls the true dominant belief in America, the nationalist faith (seen in series here). Dr. Paul Rea and I recently argued a similar notion in a chapter of the newly published Censored 2009 book titled "Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information." JFK once said, "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." This very phenomenon is what we suggest surrounds 9/11 itself (the chapter will be linked here shortly, but some of these issues were also recently discussed here on Bonnie Faulker's "Guns and Butter" radio show at KPFA in Berkeley, CA).

In the chapter, Rea and I argued that media and government myth making, not actual investigative journalism or independent commission reports, are what Americans were treated to post 9/11. Media driven historical myths about American exceptionalism and triumphalism were consistently relied upon to explain and understand present events a priori. Accordingly, one would never actually have to look at the facts on the ground about 9/11 to believe the official view- it would simply be The Word, like sacred scripture, heretical to challenge. Further, cognitive dissonance should be avoided by the masses, so, believing and perpetuating the myth yields rewards for obedient and loyal lapdogs in the press and public alike. This mythic memo to the nation reads, "We need to stick together in times of crisis." In fact, it was argued by many in government that citizens should not question authority but rather follow orders in these now dangerous times. Slavery is the new freedom. Many are now being arrested before they do anything illegal, for thought crimes against the dominant nationalist mythological narrative. Others watch in silent approval, doing nothing to come to the defense of liberty under attack.

But, there is hope. And it is not the cynical public relations pablum of the political season. Not everyone is going along and not everyone buys the official views about 9/11 put forward by the U.S. government and its affiliated corporate propaganda bureaus. A new poll by World Public Opinion finds no global consensus, no majority on who was behind 9/11 and an increasing number of people believe in alternative theories which place the U.S. government at the center of 9/11 crimes. Time will tell, but time may be short. The war on activists, journalists, and citizenship itself are increasing at an alarming rate from the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and Military Commissions Act to the very real and rampant beatings in the streets, preemptive arrests and extended detentions. We must all act now to save a dying republic. Obama/McCain are not going to do it for us.

There are many paths of action given the travails in arenas of environment, health care, infrastructure, social programs, education, the economy, and foreign policy. But one path should be considered and remain evident: demanding the truth about 9/11 in an open and transparent, actually independent investigation. The events of 9/11 are a grand cloak used to distract and dissuade Americans away from duties of citizenship. They also have been used as justification of a blackout on freedom of information and a crackdown on a free press. Given 9/11 is the centerpiece of propaganda and deception, it is a psy-op, shock and awe moment that cannot be ignored, rather, it must be understood for what it is in its entirety. A cataclysmic event, a staging exercise in audacity, a usurpation of the role and rights of the public, a staggering abuse of the good will of the people, a sham excuse for the privatization and militarization of most every facet of our society, and a tipping point toward tyranny in our fragile democracy. Institutional means to deal with this crisis have been taken off the public table by the establishment itself, those of impeachment, grand jury investigations, public protest, free open inquiry, and fair elections. We must act beyond the means offered by a corrupted system and transcend our current state of unimaginative despair. We have not been able to bring justice to a lawless regime in Washington, regardless of their crimes and the supporting evidence. This is due in large part to the aforementioned nationalist myth laden mindset injected into the America psyche via the Trojan Horse of 9/11. This must be widely exposed so the vision of who we really are as a people can be corrected and our path righted toward more equal and just society.

Historian Howard Zinn recently prescribed revolution. Thomas Jefferson would agree as he stated, "Every generation needs a new revolution." We the People are past due. Not through violence will this be achieved, but through the process of seeking and speaking the truth. The price of liberty IS eternal vigilance. The only way to fight the phantoms of nationalist mythology is to critically think and examine the facts in the real world, no matter where they may lead. And we should demand no less of our "leaders" present or future.

Let's pull of the blinders, America. Let the chorus of truth sing. Let's wake up from the nightmare of the last seven years and let freedom ring.

A Mythic Return...

2008-08-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

After some time on a couple writing projects, teaching "History of US Media" in Berkeley and a few online history courses this summer, and settling in to some new gigs, I am now trying to get back to the "blogosphere" on a more regular basis. So, an update and a few personal remarks seem in order.

We're now getting into the Fall Semester for 2008, an election year, so, there will be much to report that goes unmentioned in the corporate mainstream press. Also, I have the distinct pleasure and honor of filling in for Dr. Peter Phillips at Sonoma State University as Interim Associate Director of Project Censored and Adjunct Lecturer in Sociology. I'll be teaching Sociology of Media, working with Project Censored research and PR teams for the new book, Censored 2009, which is coming out October 1st. I feel incredibly fortunate to have such an opportunity.

This year's book is a great collection of censored stories from the past year and I had the good fortune of working with the Project Censored team co-authoring two chapters in book as well as continuing as a Community Evaluator. "Truth Emergency Meets Media Reform" addresses issues within the growing media reform movement with reports from the Santa Cruz and Minneapolis conferences. And with friend and co-author Dr. Paul Rea, "Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information" deals with the ongoing role media play in obscuring fact based analysis of the events of 9/11. For interested parties, the Left Coast book release party is on October 23rd at Sonoma State University. See the Project Censored website for details.

Also, I'm hosting the Modern Media Censorship Lecture Series, with the help of Kate Sims, which begin this Thursday, August 28th at Sonoma State University, where we are proud to have scholar Michael Parenti speak on "Orthodoxy and Diversity in the News Media." The full schedule of lectures by award winning journalists featured in this year's Censored volume is online at the above link to the series itself. Hope to see some of you there! If not, all lectures should be streaming online and available at Free Speech TV.

Of course, that's not all that's happening. I am also settling in to the Assistant Professor of History gig at Diablo Valley College where I've taught a variety of classes over the past eight years. While this means my time elsewhere is a thing of the past, it's very nice to be on board there at long last! I'll still be at Berkeley City College now and again doing History of U.S. Media, but DVC is my new home. I hope to be designing more courses there in the near future.

I'm also back at my fifth year teaching a course on the events of September the 11th. This is timely for a number of reasons. Not only is it coming up on the 7th anniversary of the tragedy, but the government, via NIST, has finally come out with what they say is the definitive reason for the failing of WTC7 in New York. Rebuttals abound. Architects and engineers have responded, gaining more attention even in the NY Times, but NIST continues to ignore. At any rate, this provides more fodder for discussion and more evidence in a pattern of official obfuscation that's become commonplace on 9/11 issues. This will be further addressed once again at this year's 9/11 Film Festival at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, CA. I'll be giving a talk on media myth making after a new film with Dr. David Ray Griffin (by Ken Jenkins) called "9/11 and Nationalist Faith" before running up to Sonoma to host a lecture with researcher Stephen Lendman, an associate of the Centre for Research on Gloalization. Lendman has written a fabulously readable review of media scholar Bob McChesney's The Political Economy of Media here-- part one and part two. Coupled with Bruce Dixon's "Hidden History of US Broadcasting," one has a fine introduction with what's wrong with global corporate media systems.

If that's not enough, I'll be continuing the media lecture series in Sonoma through December and speaking again at the Fremont, CA library late fall for the film series run by Dr. Paul Rea (co-author of mine in the new Project Censored book) talking about the latest Errol Morris film, Standard Operating Procedure. Also hoping to work more with Ramsey and the folks at PM Press and arrange some civil liberties events on campus with new colleague, Dr. Bob Abele, who runs Spotlight On Freedom. Much to do! And, I'm also not forgetting the most important thing- spending time with the fam!

Stay tuned for more blog commentary on history and the present, media myth making, and other sundry affairs.

Cheers! MSH

"UnAmerican" Thoughts on the Fourth of July

2008-07-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Thomas Jefferson once said that dissent was highest form of patriotism. In recognition of the chief editor of the Declaration of Independence, let's take some of Tom's advice in this regard.

Well, my friends at AK Press do. They always have a party for America in July. But, it's not the kind of party most Americans have. The San Francisco Bay Area is special that way. That's why the Left Coast is called home for so many.

Past Blog entries here on the July Fourth celebration address other views, reminders of how some Americans see this national dearth day. In celebration of the Fourth, (and the First Amendment!), these views should be part of our discourse, common debates about the direction of our Republic in trying times. But in corporate media and out of the mouths of Democrats and Republicans alike we hear only one, monolithic, heroified, mythological tale of Brand America: The Benevolent Superpower.

Here's another Ode to Patriotism in America on the Fourth, post 9/11 War on Terror style. Remember, it's always good to stir up a little commotion for the holidays. ;)

Published on Friday, July 4, 2008 by The Progressive

Why I’m Not Patriotic
by Matthew Rothschild

(In memory of George Carlin.)

It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out.

Spare me the puerile parades.

Don’t play that martial music, white boy.

And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s.

You see, I don’t believe in patriotism.

It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic.

Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game.

Yet most people accept it without inspection.

Why?

For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion.

The victims of colonialism, from the Congo to the Philippines, fell at nationalism’s bayonet point.

World War I filled the graves with the most foolish nationalism. And Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan brought nationalism to new nadirs. The flags next to the tombstones are but signed confessions-notes left by the killer after the fact.

The millions of victims of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot have on their death certificates a dual diagnosis: yes communism, but also that other ism, nationalism.

The whole world almost got destroyed because of nationalism during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The bloody battles in Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s fed off the injured pride of competing patriotisms and all their nourished grievances.

In the last five years in Iraq, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died because the United States, the patriarch of patriotism, saw fit to impose itself, without just cause, on another country. But the excuse was patriotism, wrapped in Bush’s brand of messianic militarism: that we, the great Americans, have a duty to deliver “God’s gift of freedom” to every corner of the world.

And the Congress swallowed it, and much of the American public swallowed it, because they’ve been fed a steady diet of this swill.

What is patriotism but “the narcissism of petty differences”? That’s Freud’s term, describing the disorder that compels one group to feel superior to another.

Then there’s a little multiplication problem: Can every country be the greatest country in the world?

This belief system magically transforms an accident of birth into some kind of blue ribbon.

“It’s a great country,” said the old Quaker essayist Milton Mayer. “They’re all great countries.”

At times, the appeal to patriotism may be necessary, as when harnessing the group to protect against a larger threat (Hitler) or to overthrow an oppressor (as in the anti-colonial struggles in the Third World).

But it is always a dangerous toxin to play with, and it ought to be shelved with cross and bones on the label except in these most extreme circumstances.

In an article called “Patriot Games” in the current issue of Time magazine (July 7), Peter Beinart, late of The New Republic, inspects his navel for seven pages and then throws the lint all around.

“Conservatives are right,” he says. “To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours.”

And then he criticizes, incoherently, the conservative love-it-or-leave-it types.

The moral folly of his argument he himself exposes: “If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, why shouldn’t they love Canada-which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles-even more? And what do liberals do,” he asks, “when those universal ideals collide with America’s self-interest? Giving away the federal budget to Africa would probably increase the net sum of justice and equality on the planet, after all. But it would harm Americans and thus be unpatriotic.”

This is a straw man if I ever I saw one, but if the United States gave a lot more of its budget to eradicating poverty and disease in Africa and other parts of the developing world, it might actually make us all safer.

At bottom, note how readily Beinart disposes of “liberty, justice, and equality.”

He has stripped patriotism to its vacuous essence: Love your country because it’s yours.

If we stopped that arm from reflexively saluting and concerned ourselves more with “universal ideals” than with parochial ones, we’d be a lot better off.

We wouldn’t be in Iraq, we wouldn’t have besmirched ourselves at Guantanamo, we wouldn’t be acting like some Argentinean junta that wages illegal wars and tortures people and disappears them into secret dungeons.

Love of country is a form of idolatry.

Listen, if you would, to the wisdom of Milton Mayer, writing back in 1962 a rebuke to JFK for his much-celebrated line: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Mayer would have none of it. “When Mr. Kennedy spoke those words at his inaugural, I knew that I was at odds with a society which did not immediately rebel against them,” he wrote. “They are the words of totalitarianism pure; no Jefferson could have spoken them, and no Khrushchev could have spoken them better. Could a man say what Mr. Kennedy said and also say that the difference between us and them is that they believe that man exists for the State and we believe that the State exists for man? He couldn’t, but he did. And in doing so, he read me out of society.”

When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why.

Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons?

No, that just makes us enormously powerful, with the capacity to destroy the Earth itself.

Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries?

No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so.

Are we the greatest country because we are one-twentieth of the world’s population but we consume one-quarter of its resources?

No, that just must makes us a greedy and wasteful nation.

Are we the greatest country because the top 1 percent of Americans hoards 34 percent of the nation’s wealth, more than everyone in the bottom 90 percent combined?

No, that just makes us a vastly unequal nation.

Are we the greatest country because corporations are treated as real, live human beings with rights?

No, that just enshrines a plutocracy in this country.

Are we the greatest country because we take the best care of our people’s basic needs?

No, actually we don’t. We’re far down the list on health care and infant mortality and parental leave and sick leave and quality of life.

So what exactly are we talking about here?

To the extent that we’re a great (not the greatest, mind you: that’s a fool’s game) country, we’re less of a great country today.

Because those things that truly made us great-the system of checks and balances, the enshrinement of our individual rights and liberties-have all been systematically assaulted by Bush and Cheney.

From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the new FISA Act, and all the signing statements in between, we are less great today.

From Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo, we are less great today.

From National Security Presidential Directive 51 (giving the Executive responsibility for ensuring constitutional government in an emergency) to National Security Presidential Directive 59 (expanding the collection of our biometric data), we are less great today.

From the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to InfraGard and the Terrorist Liaison Officers, we are less great today.

Admit it. We don’t have a lot to brag about today.

It is time, it is long past time, to get over the American superiority complex.

It is time, it is long past time, to put patriotism back on the shelf-out of the reach of children and madmen.

(Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine © 2008 The Progressive)
-------------------

Which Fourth will we celebrate? Professor Juan Cole suggests:

Your Fourth of July and My Fourth of July

Your Fourth of July is blood for oil.

My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace.

Yours is the imperial presidency and "so what?" to public opinion.

Mine is "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Yours is profiling and discrimination.

Mine is "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."

Yours is "My country right or wrong."

Mine is avoiding "Offences against the Law of Nations"

Yours is the veto of child health care and rejection of Kyoto,

Mine is an America that cares about the wellbeing of our children.

Yours is a monarchical presidency above the law.

Mine is, with Tom Paine, "in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

Yours is aggressive invasions of countries that did not attack us first.

Mine is "and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends."

Yours is water-boarding and electrocution.

Mine is the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Yours is the stench of a million moldering corpses, military rule over 27 million, and the creation of oceans of misery.

Mine is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Yours is off-shore drilling, coddling polluters, 'heckuva job Brownie.'

Mine is a stewardship of America the beautiful for succeeding generations.

Yours is the privatization of war and the deployment of whole divisions of "contractors. . ."

Mine is an America where privates do not risk their lives for a tenth of what a mercenary is paid by the Pentagon.

Yours is the erection of protest zones as zoos for citizens.

Mine is, "or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Yours is the swagger of the flight jacket and the bombs raining down.

Mine is the schooling of the next global generation.

Mine is America, the pure sunbeam of peace.

(With apologies to Kahlil Gibran.)
----------------------------------

How ever we celebrate America on the Fourth, let's remember why we are celebrating: The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the ideals ensconced in the Declaration, and the blessings of Liberty and Justice FOR ALL humankind. And remember, Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

R.I.P. George Carlin, American Radical

2008-06-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

Published by John Nichols at The Nation.

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. -- George Carlin,

The last vote that George Carlin said he cast in a presidential race was for George McGovern in 1972.

When Richard Nixon, who Carlin described as a member of a sub-species of humanity, overwhelmingly defeated McGovern, the comedian gave up on the political process.

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians," he explained in a routine that challenged all the premises of today's half-a-loaf reformers. "Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"

Needless to say, George Carlin was not on message for 2008's "change we can believe in" election season.

His was a darker and more serious take on the crisis – and the change of consciousness, sweeping in scope and revolutionary in character, that was required to address it.

Carlin may have stopped voting in 1972. But America's most consistently savage social commentator for the best part of a half century, who has died at age 71, did not give up on politics.

In recent years, in front of audiences that were not always liberal, he tore apart the neo-conservative assault on liberty with a clarity rarely evidenced in the popular culture.

Recalling George Bush's ranting about how the endless "war on terror" is a battle for freedom, Carlin echoed James Madison's thinking with a simple question: "Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"

Carlin gave the Christian right – and the Christian left – no quarter. "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State," Carlin said. "My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

Carlin's take on the Ronald Reagan administration is the best antidote to the counterfactual romanticization of the former president – in which even Barack Obama has engaged – remains the single finest assessment of Reagan and his inner circle. While Carlin did not complain much about politicians, he made an exception with regard to the great communicator. Recorded in 1988 at the Park Theater in Union City, New Jersey, and later released as an album -- What Am I Doing in New Jersey? – his savage recollection of the then-concluding Reagan-Bush years opened with the line: "I really haven't seen this many people in one place since they took the group photograph of all the criminals and lawbreakers in the Ronald Reagan administration."

But there was no nostalgia for past fights, no resting on laurels, for this topical comedian. He read the papers, he followed the news, he asked questions – the interviews I did with Carlin over the years were more conversations than traditional Q & A's – and he turned it all into a running commentary that focused not so much on politics as on the ugly intersection of power and economics.

No one, not Obama, not Hillary Clinton and certainly not John McCain, caught the zeitgeist of the vanishing American dream so well as Carlin. "The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

Not just aware of but steeped in the traditions of American populism – more William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Victor Debs than Bill Clinton or John Kerry – Carlin preached against the consolidation of wealth and power with a fire-and-brimstone rage that betrayed a deep moral sense that could never quite be cloaked with four-letter words.

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying – lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else," ranted the comedian whose routines were studied in graduate schools.

"But I'll tell you what they don't want," Carlin continued. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers – people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

Carlin did not want Americans to get involved with the system.

He wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.

Carlin was a leveler of the old, old school. And no one who had so public a platform – as the first host of NBC's "Saturday Night Live," a regular on broadcast and cable televisions shows, a best-selling author and a favorite character actor in films (he was even the narrator of the American version of he provided the narrative voice for the American version of the children's show "Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends") – did more to challenge accepted wisdom regarding our political economy.

"Let's suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There's just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there's potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let's everybody get some potatoes. "Everybody got a potato? Joey didn't get a potato! He's small, he can't hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes." "No, these are my potatoes!" That's the Republicans. "I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they're mine. If you want some of them, you're going to have to give me something." "But look at Joey, he's only got a couple, they won't last two days." That's the fuckin' difference! And I'm more inclined to want to share and even out," he explained in an interview several years ago with the Onion.

"I understand the marketplace, but government is supposed to be here to redress the inequities of the marketplace," Carlin continued. "That's one of its functions. Not just to protect the nation, secure our security and all that shit. And not just to take care of great problems that are trans-state problems, that are national, but also to make sure that the inequalities of the marketplace are redressed by the acts of government. That's what welfare was about. There are people who really just don't have the tools, for whatever reason. Yes, there are lazy people. Yes, there are slackers. Yes, there's all of that. But there are also people who can't cut it, for any given reason, whether it's racism, or an educational opportunity, or poverty, or a fuckin' horrible home life, or a history of a horrible family life going back three generations, or whatever it is. They're crippled and they can't make it, and they deserve to rest at the commonweal. That's where my fuckin' passion lies."

Like the radicals of the early years of the 20th century, whose politics he knew and respected, Carlin understood that free-speech fights had to come first. And always pushed the limit – happily choosing an offensive word when a more polite one might have sufficed. By 1972, the year he won the first of four Grammys for best comedy album, he had developed his most famous routine: "Seven Words (You Can't Say on Television)."

That summer, at a huge outdoor show in Milwaukee, he uttered all seven of them in public – and was promptly arrested for disturbing the peace.

When a version of the routine was aired in 1973 on WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation radio station in New York,. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC. Pacifica was ordered to pay a fine for violating federal regulations prohibiting the broadcast of "obscene" language. The ensuing free-speech fight made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rile 5-4 against the First Amendment to the Constitution, Pacifica and Carlin.

Amusingly, especially to the comedian, a full transcript of the routine ended up in court documents associated with the case, F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," recalled Carlin. Proud enough that you can find the court records on the comedian's website.

There will, of course, be those who dismiss Carlin as a remnant of the sixties who introduced obscenity to the public discourse – just as there will be those who misread his critique of the American political and economic systems as little more than verbal nihilism. In fact, George Carlin was, like the radicals of an earlier age, an idealist – and a patriot --of a deeper sort than is encountered very often these days.

Carlin explained himself best in one of his last interviews. "There is a certain amount of righteous indignation I hold for this culture, because to get back to the real root of it, to get broader about it, my opinion that is my species--and my culture in America specifically--have let me down and betrayed me. I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon. And I think this culture of ours has such promise, with the promise of real, true freedom, and then everyone has been shackled by ownership and possessions and acquisition and status and power," he said. "And perhaps it's just a human weakness and an inevitable human story that these things happen. But there's disillusionment and some discontent in me about it. I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word 'cynic' has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. 'George, you're cynical.' Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?
------------------------------------

One of my favorite bits by Carlin was the one on euphemisms and distortion of language in America. A choice quote to live by from that skit which can be read here, "Let's not have a double standard here, one standard will do just fine." Thanks for reminding us for all those years, George. Seems we still haven't caught on, though. You'll certainly be missed..."what a guy."

Long Awaited Update

2008-06-09T20:59:00.001-07:00

Hello!

I've been more than a bit swamped over the last month with many new happenings as my profile now indicates. Just returned from the National Conference on Media Reform in MN as well. Much to update, much to say...so much more is on the way...

Stay tuned...

Who Is Afraid of the Light Brown Apple Moth? Or, Checkmate as Payback!

2008-04-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

Indeed, who IS afraid of the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM)? Apparently the California Secretary of Agriculture Kawamura for starters. Why is the state of California AGAIN (see below) planning to poison its citizens with a carcinogenic pesticide-pheromone cocktail called Checkmate (nice strategic and metaphoric name with its applications) in efforts to "eradicate" a relatively nonexistent pest to protect potentially future private profits at the expense of public health? Why would the state earmark almost $75 million of taxpayer money to poison its citizens? Read on...

Well, Redpill8 has a blog entry that's a great place to start. And thanks to Redpill for some of the LBAM graphics!

Please read the aforementioned links and the ones below if you like to have healthy children, breathe clean air, eat great organic food, and drink pure water. If you believe in the right to live and pursue your happiness without being poisoned by the state in the name of corporate or elite political interests, please research this crucial issue more. Is the LBAM such a pest in CA? And how have others dealt with similar problems with the LBAM? What is this all about anyway?

Furthermore, what happened in Santa Cruz, CA last fall surrounding LBAM issues when urban populations were literally test subjects of the spray? The headlines could read...

Let's hear from a Santa Cruz city council member...

And what of the political ramifications of the onslaught against public health by the state for corporate interests? Scholar and author Michael Parenti and a colleague of mine in psychology at Diablo Valley College, Jerry Cross, suggested Checkmate was Payback from the Bush administration to punish the Blue State areas of CA. Why spray the LIBERAL and urban San Francisco Bay Area where no crops really grow, virtually no LBAMs have been seen, and millions of people live while NOT spraying the CONSERVATIVE central valley where especially cash crops actually DO grow (not to mention what would happen to many migrant workers in fields subjected to the spraying if it went there)? Hmmmmm...much to consider.

On that note, the State of California seems to have a similar preemptive strike policy on the LBAM to that of the Bush administration on Iraq for alleged but nonexistent WMDs. Alleged but nonexistent. Interesting. Like the LBAM and potential future missing profits (however that may be measured)? Like how the U.S. has been at war every year since WWII with people of (a light brown) color around the globe. Now it's time for the moth of light brown color to pay, too. Light Brown. Notice that it's the Brown moth. Like the Africanized killer bees that never came in the 1990's. They had to be Africanized, much more aggressive then the European bees the corporate media told us. How subtle from a country that practiced race based slavery for several hundred years and then had that fuel segregation and discrimination both domestically and abroad in its foreign policy throughout the 20th century. Khalil Bendib expressed this best in his recent editorial cartoon "Shock and Awe, California" seen here:

When are people going to wake up to this historical nonsense? The LBAM spray is not proposed out of some historical vacuum. The U.S. government has long experimented on and attacked its citizens for profit or political gains. Sad, but true. So...

See details below to get involved!

Wednesday, April 23rd, we're holding a teach-in about this crucial public health issue and onslaught on the population by the state for corporate interests. Details about the teach-in and more information below:

BERKELEY CITY COLLEGE-- Eco Fair from April 22nd to the 24th

Event: "Who is afraid of the Light Brown Apple Moth? Or, Checkmate as Payback." LBAM Spray Teach-In- Wednesday, April 23rd, Noon to 2 P.M. BCC Downstairs Auditorium

A teach-in about the political, environmental and human health implications of the proposed Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) Spraying this summer in the Bay Area with speakers:

Pauline Bondanno, Berkeley Unified School District, Health Educator
Jerry Cross, Diablo Valley College, Psychology
Tara Levy, Naturopathic Doctor
Michael Parenti, PhD, Author, Scholar
Maxina Ventura, East Bay Pesticide Alert, DontSprayCalifornia.org
Nan Wishner, Chair, Albany Integrated Pest Management Task Force

Audience Q&A to follow.

Moderator/Facilitator/Organizer: Mickey Huff, History, Critical Thinking, Media Studies

Contact information: Mickey Huff, event organizer, mhuff@peralta.edu

This event is part of the BCC Eco-Fair and is free and open to the public, wheelchair accessible. BCC, part of the Peralta Community College District, is located at 2050 Center Street, one block west of the Downtown Berkeley BART.

Other information about the Spraying is below...and plenty of information will be available at the event.

Listen to Michael and Maxina with others on the second part of KPFA's
Living Room with Kris Welch on the LBAM Spray (around 33 minutes in). And...

LBAM Spray
Pesticide Alert
Cal Alliance to Stop the Spray
Don't Spray Op/Ed

See you there!

So what? The Iraq War at Five

2008-03-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

I don't normally look to the late night pop icons of court jester politics for insight or deep wisdom on national affairs (like about a quarter of the nation's youth), but, Jon Stewart's rendition of the last five years in Iraq was too close to home to pass up, I'm afraid. Notice how if we go backwards, Bush's policy makes sense, at least to him. This threads nicely with the last post here. We could laugh if it weren't so true.

The quotes are rich in their factual and moral bankruptcy. This history needs to be remembered...as do the polyanish politicos and pundits.

Remember all the right people that got it wrong on Iraq?

Let's take another romp down memory hole lane to see media complicity in the current state of affairs. It's long, but worth repeating below in addition to linking the original media research from the FAIR piece above.

'The Final Word Is Hooray!'
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

3/15/06

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.

Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)

"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)

"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/13/03)

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)

Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)

"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)

Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)

"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."
(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)

Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)

"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it."
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)

"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."
(Newsweek, 3/17/03)

"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad guys. I saw them."
(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)

"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)"
(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

CORRECTION

This advisory mistakenly included an out-of-context quote from William Raspberry’s April 14, 2003 Washington Post column. FAIR's advisory inaccurately presented Raspberry’s column as an example of overly optimistic pundit commentary about the invasion of Iraq. Contrary to FAIR’s presentation, Raspberry’s column called attention to and rejected the same sort of premature triumphalism and marginalization of critics that was the subject of FAIR's media advisory. FAIR should have presented the Raspberry column as an exceptional example of a media figure challenging the conventional wisdom early in the Iraq War.

FAIR sincerely regrets the error and offers an apology to William Raspberry and to our readers.

Also in the advisory, the Tony Snow item originally dated 4/27/03 has been corrected to 4/13/03.
----------------------------------

But, in defense of the wrong, according to most politicos and pundits, in retrospect, from the Monday morning quarterback chair, everyone got it wrong, so, no biggie. Yet the mainstream press continues to herald those in the wrong as experts.

However, as former UN inspector and U.S. Marine Scott Ritter reminds us in 2004, NOT EVERYBODY got it wrong.

Indeed, what a tall tale was told to the public on Iraq, WMD, 9/11 and Saddam and Bin Laden, on and on. And where are these really wrong pundits and politicos today? Fired? Demoted? Disgraced? Mea Culpa-ed? No. As NBC illustrated in the link above. You may know, too, as we see them still as experts, sometimes everyday, telling us how it isn't again and again.

America is in a Truth Emergency. We are adrift in falsities. We are at a tipping point. We can tip in different directions. One toward fascism, the other toward more representative democracy (and in the U.S., the other many utopian avenues are unfortunately on hold in appears, though not by my choice-- this is not at all a tacit endorsement of any Democratic candidate for November of 2008, either). We need to wake up and reclaim our place recreating a more just society. We need to demand justice and rule of law or all else is meaningless. Exhibit A, ad infinitum- Election fraud, 9/11 cover up, endless war, spreading empire, torture, immigration and environmental racism, the Katrina failures, the private for profit prison population, outsourcing, the destruction of the middle class, further oppression of the working poor, whittling of the commons, more media monopoly, the subprime scam, Wall Street bailouts at taxpayer expense, mass overspending and national indebtedness, clear skies but no clear skies, no child left behind what's already the end of the line, water scarcity, global warming, no habeas corpus, privatization of everything, an end to the American experiment justifies the means of the corporatist class, and on and on it goes. The ruse is on. Choose your tragedy turned comedy of errors now status quo late night elixir for what ails us all. The End of America. So, the time is nigh for a new path. Again, Naomi Wolf:

As has been stated by many wise folks, become the change you seek in the world. And one place to start is by controlling your own information and knowledge: For starters, Be the Media!

And to see how Americans reacted to VP Cheney's "So" moment, see the latest PIPA poll piece with a link to the actual poll data. Only 18% of Americans think the VP was right to not care about public opinion and majority rule (though that is still alarming). Still further evidence of how far decayed our republic has become.

What to do? Stay informed. Stay in touch. Knowledge is power! To learn more about what you're not being told by the corporate press, don't just rely on late night jokers to learn about what's going on...see Project Censored's new updated website for a light to shine on the darkness. Only together armed with the truth can we turn things around.

To be continued...

Vox Populi

So?

2008-03-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

This says it all...VP DC in action. Commenting on American democracy and the theoretical role of the majority in public opinion on government policy, the VP, in disagreement with the current 64% majority of the public against the Iraq War, says, "So?" The public is just a meaningless, fickle obstacle. Unless the public is used (when manipulated by corporate media administration cheerleaders) to agree with official propaganda, in which case the VP is merely following the wishes of the people (and their manufactured consent on nonexistent WMDs and false connections between Hussein, 9/11, and Al Qaeda). Watch the live footage and see the link:

Got Democracy?

Truly amazing. Over 4,000 dead Americans and over a million Iraqis. The bulk of the American people, and the world for that matter, want the U.S. to step aside from the mess the illegal invasion created in Iraq. Second in charge, runner up to the leader of the free world replies: So? So. So, Dick won't be "blown off course" by the realities of a democracy he allegedly serves. The Iraqis should be heartened by such a regal display of egalitarian prowess and ringing endorsement of government of, by, and for the people coming from one of those leading their occupation, I mean liberation. Let them eat Cakewalk. Are we winning the hearts and minds yet, anywhere? Is impeachment still off the table, Madame Speaker?

Catching Up...

2008-03-06T20:42:00.001-08:00

So many things have happened in the past month or so, it's been hard to keep up. Not just on the home front with tenured apps, committee work, meetings, conference follow-ups (with an update soon at www.truthemergency.us), and the rest.

But many other things have also been happening, say, with the primaries, the non-selection horse race that it is; record violence in Iraq and Gaza; a major industrial agro meat recall; FCC shenanigans with further deregulating corporate ownership in local markets; the subprime crash hitting home, literally; the new recession; possible public pesticide spraying in the SF Bay Area for a non-existent alleged pest in the LIght Brown Apple Moth; tax time for the illegal IRS; possible $3 trillion + price tag for the Iraq and Afghan wars; telecom immunity for domestic spying c/o the Bushies; South American unrest and mobilizing attacks against Venezuela; the end of Castro; the forgetting of New Orleans; FBI admission of abuse of access to American citizens' communication and private information as well as subpoenas; acknowledgement and rationalization for illegal torture tactics by the current administration; kangaroo court tribunals for alleged 9/11 conspirators; lobbyists' continued corruption of the governing process; the death of a conservative icon that bucked (or Buckley-ed) the neocons; an Oscar for a film bought out by Disney, "Taxi to the Dark Side" for those that didn't know, that WON'T be distributed or shown for two years (that proves more use of torture by the U.S.); and on and on and on and on and on. I could have had a 100 blog entires...but there is only this one. I'll do better in the future. What one we may have...there is much afoot and now is a very interesting time to be alive. We should celebrate that...

Perhaps we could use some encouraging words from history, from another time of strife, one that necessitated change and yielded such for many in ways never dreamed. We could do it again--

Published on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 by the Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont)
Roosevelt: Words That Inspired

Seventy-five years ago, our nation was in the midst of one of the most dangerous and troubled periods in its history.

In March 1933, about 15 million Americans — 1 in 4 workers — were unemployed. Five million American families — 1 in 7 — were barely surviving on an inadequate patchwork of private charity and public relief.

In the little more than three years since the stock market crash of October 1929, more than 4,600 banks had failed. On March 3, 1933, a “bank holiday” was declared across the country and every remaining bank was either closed or about to be. The American economy was at a complete standstill.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt stood on the steps of the Capitol at noon, 75 years ago today, to take the oath of office as the 33rd President of the United States, a nation — and the world — was hanging on his every word. Never before or since had so much been riding on an inaugural address.

“This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper,” Roosevelt began. “So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

With those words, Roosevelt calmly outlined the depths of the crisis facing America and appealed to Americans not to lose faith in themselves or their nation.

“Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money,” he said. “It lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”

Roosevelt called for a greater role for government than had ever been seen before, and for more collective effort than had ever been seen before in peacetime in America. At a time when some openly speculated whether our nation would be better off under communism or fascism, Roosevelt never lost his faith in democracy.

“If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other,” he said. “We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.”

“Millions of his countrymen were anxious, and hungry, and afraid,” wrote Harry Hopkins, one of Roosevelt’s key advisors, in 1946. “With that one speech, and in those few minutes, the appalling anxiety and fears were lifted, and the people of the United States knew that they were going into a safe harbor under the leadership of a man who never knew the meaning of fear.”

But words always need to be followed by deeds.

What followed Roosevelt’s words were 100 days of the most intense legislative effort ever seen in Congress.

Within 36 hours of his inauguration, Roosevelt took control of the nation’s currency and banking system and called Congress into a special session to deal with the many crises — shuttered factories, abandoned farms and millions of broke, unemployed Americans who could not find work anywhere.

Much of what came to be known as the New Deal was forged in those 100 days that followed Roosevelt’s inaugural speech. There was a whirlwind of activity and not every program was successful. But when something didn’t work, he tried something else. Through it all, he spoke honestly and directly to the American people and let them know what was happening and why.

The New Deal could be seen as the backlash to the rampant speculation of the 1920s and the conservative belief that a free market will always do the right thing. Experience tells us that it rarely happens that way. Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself, but the capitalists always resented him for it. Conservatives still scoff at the idea of the common good.

For the past 30 years, conservatives have tried to discredit Roosevelt’s idea that government should act as a countervailing force to protect ordinary people from the harsh extremes of capitalism.

Now, as we watch rapacious free marketeers engage in behavior that would make the robber barons of the 19th century envious and watch the economy sink toward recession, we can see that the balance between public purpose and private gain needs to be restored.

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have too much,” Roosevelt said in his second inaugural address. “It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

That approach to government was Roosevelt’s greatest legacy, and even after 75 years of attacks from conservatives, that legacy still shines brightly.

As historian Henry Steele Commager wrote after Roosevelt’s death, “Under the New Deal, the noble term ‘commonwealth’ was given a more realistic meaning than ever before in our history.”

Indeed, we all ought consider the possibilities of enjoying as well as protecting that which is the commonwealth. We should celebrate what we can and continue to move ahead. We should seek the truth as a process, one which leads to a better world for all of us.

More soon...cheers for now.

Publicizing Truths With Consequence

2008-01-24T19:23:00.000-08:00

Truth Emergency US
Santa Cruz Media Summit: Live this weekend Jan. 25-27
Truth Emergency PNN

Update by Peter Phillips and David Kubiak

Many economists now doubt that government measures can prevent a major recession given the severe slump in the housing market, the subprime mortgage crisis, growing unemployment, declining consumer spending, and record high oil prices. Even harder times for working people are undoubtedly at hand, yet mainstream corporate media continues to lavish more attention on the Super Bowl and celebrity misadventures than measures to protect Americans from grave personal economic harm. We are spun, mislead, propagandized and amused to death by our media conglomerates and as a result the US has become the best entertained and least informed society in the world.

There is a literal truth emergency in the United States, not only regarding distant wars, torture camps, and doctored intelligence, but also around issues that most intimately impact our lives at home. For example, few Americans know that there has been a thirty-five year decline in real wages for most workers in the country, while the top 10% now enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens.

George Seldes once said, “Journalism's job is not impartial 'balanced' reporting. Journalism's job is to tell the people what is really going on.” Michael Moore’s top-grossing movie Sicko is one example of telling the people what is really going on. Health care activists know that US health insurance is an extremely large and obscenely lucrative industry with the top nine companies "earning" $93 billion in profits in 2006 alone. The health-care industry represents the country's third-largest economic sector, trailing only energy and retail among the 1,000 largest US firms.

Nevertheless, 16%of Americans still have no health insurance whatsoever and that number will not soon decline, as insurance costs continue to rise two to three times faster than inflation. The consequences are immediate and tragic. Unpaid medical bills are now the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the country, and the Institute of Medicine estimates that nearly eighteen thousand Americans die prematurely each year because they lack coverage and access to adequate care.

US private health care services differ markedly from other industrialized countries where single payer systems provide everyone with medical care as a basic human right. Unfortunately, objective media coverage and comparisons of single-payer public health care with our current profit-driven corporate system are almost non-existent at this time. To protect their bloated bottom lines, private insurance companies and HMOs invest heavily in lobbyists and corporate-friendly political candidates that promote their "indispensable" role in any future health care reforms. Besides their insider political influence, these firms deploy massive advertising budgets to discourage media investigations of the economic interests shaping our health policies today

Tens of thousands of American engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on issues like 9/11 truth, election fraud, impeachment, war propaganda, civil liberties/torture, and many corporate-caused environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a genuine truth emergency in the country as a whole.

Now, however, a growing number of activists are finally saying "enough!" and joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell the people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond forensic inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda and illicit political control to rouse the nation to reject a malignant corporate status quo.

This Truth Emergency Movement is holding its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz, California Jan. 25-27, 2008. Organizers are gathering key media constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to disclose, legitimize and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality in the US. In sum this truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists, whistleblowers and independent media activists can transform the way Americans perceive and defend their world.

You can join us on line with comments and responses here.

Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored, a media research organization. David Kubiak taught mass media and memetics for 10 years at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan and is the former executive director of 911truth.org. For information on the Truth Emergency movement see Truth Emergency. View the participants.

Also--Listen to a previous radio interview on Dennis Bernstein's Flashpoints on KPFA with co-organizers Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff. Click on the radio and forward to the half way mark for the spot. For a live link on Friday the 25th, see here for the whole show.

See you there!

Declare Mental Independence from the Corporate Media Coup

2007-12-16T10:48:00.000-08:00

"Publicizing Truths with Consequence: Independent Media Power vs. the Corporate Coup"

Quoting the Declaration of Independence is a tired cliche I never tire of...and neither have others throughout history when they found the republic in trying times.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
-- from the Declaration of Independence, 1776

Wise words, indeed. And oft looked upon as impetus for momentum by the abolitionists, women suffragists, and working classes. In fact, fifty years after the Declaration's public airing, others used those words to fight against new emerging tyrannies, especially those molded in the minds of the public by the nation's ruling institutions.

The great social utopian reformer, Robert Owen, of the New Harmony movement, wrote in 1826 on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, that America was again under tyranny and desperately needed a new declaration. He called it a "Declaration of Mental Independence" and it was directed at what he called a Hydra of Evils that oppressed the minds of humankind: private property, institutionalized religion, and patriarchal marriage. Owen railed against institutional control over the public mind and stated that the only true independence comes from control of one's own mind.

That was then. This is now. We still suffer these injustices that shackle the minds of many, but now we have an even bigger threat to add to the list: corporatism and corporate personhood. The rise of these developments are strangling our democracy. These same corporate institutions are poisoning the minds of the masses with establishment propaganda. These principles have not only infested civil government, but now a handful of corporations even own the people's megaphone. They are the media. They dictate the grand narrative of our times. They fashion the public mind.

Even President Lincoln showed great concern for this then young corporatist threat to America while in the throes of the Civil War when he said in an alarming letter to Col. Wm. Elkins dated November 21, 1864:

"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood...It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

Lincoln's vision was prescient. From our current perspective, enthroned corporations took control of our republic long ago. By the middle of the twentieth century, President Eisenhower warned us of the still growing threat of a corporatist tyranny in the Military Industrial Complex during his Farewell Address.

How could this happen? From the early 1900's, a big part involved controlling public opinion by manufacturing consent. This was honed to an art by the Committee on Public Information and George Creel in WWI. Walter Lippmann, Harold Laswell, and Sigmond Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays furthered such paths of institutional information control and the new science of propaganda, as it was then called. By the 1930's, the Nazis began to emulate that same system (Hitler and his Public Enlightenment minister, Joseph Goebbels, were staunch admirers of Bernays and the CPI). We all know how that turned out. Meanwhile, back in America...

Manipulation of public information was not only used to control opinions on foreign affairs, but on domestic ones, especially commercial consumer culture. As our ready access to relevant information was replaced more and more by advertising and institutional propaganda often connected to national security concerns, democratic discourse decayed. But, information is the life's blood of a democracy. Without it we wither as a free society.

Even the founders knew that their the great experiment of self-governance relied upon the education and literacy of those that were governed, IF government represented the rule of the people as an instrument of populist power and not elite agendas.

"A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." - James Madison, 1822

In the last twenty five years we have witnessed mass take over of public airwaves by major corporations. Former Dean at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, Ben Bagdikian warned that consolidation of information disseminators in private, for profit, corporate hands would further strangle diverse views. He stated this in his now classic work, Media Monopoly in 1983, which is now in its 6th edition with his predictions all coming to pass. Neil Postman, the late NYU communications professor, not only wrote about how Americans were Amusing Ourselves to Death but that Americans were the most entertained and least informed society in the modern world. This was largely the result of the spectacular success of corporate media propaganda and the commodification of information for profit to engineer consent and control the public mind. Even the means of measuring public opinion work to construct that which it claims to merely record. (For more information, see scholar Justin Lewis and the Media Education Foundation on constructing public opinion and the work of Retropoll on problems of public opinion research). Further, Project Censored has been showing the effects of these media control problems for over 30 years in their annual publications highlighting the most important news that didn't make the news. Even a casual perusal of the top 25 story lists from previous years is a massive wake up call to rescue our democracy from the clutches of corporate media oligopoly. And it requires more than getting the people's voice heard by the FCC.

We can break free from these ubiquitous media chains...

The time is now. We've gone from bad to worse. We must act to save our Republic from the tyranny of corporatist agendas. Tired of junk food news, celebrity tripe, and nationalist jingoism?

If not, watch this clip from Stop Big Media and see what passes for the news.

Let's act. Join us in Santa Cruz, CA this January 25-27, 2008, where we'll be:

STRATEGIZING FOR DEMOCRATIC SURVIVAL: A Collaborative Strategy Summit for Media Pros, Scholars, Activists and Whistleblowers Working for Truth, Transparency and an Informed Resurgent Democracy

See the banner link, contact and register, spread the news, and help save our democracy!

“News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” Lord Northcliffe

Declare mental independence from the corporate coup. Create an information commons. Let's publicize truths with consequence. See you in Santa Cruz for the New Year.

Dr. Paul Rea: How We Got Neoconned...

2007-12-06T23:13:00.000-08:00

For those who have wondered how exactly we've gotten to this point as a nation- mired in the war crimes of Middle Eastern conflicts and in violation of International Law, suffering civil decay at home, possibly staring down a massive economic crisis- there's a trail to follow. From the USA PATRIOT Act that no member of Congress read in its final form to the Military Commissions Act and even more. We have a president that already claims dictatorial powers, and has even joked about it. Are we moving toward martial law? It seems we may be.

Let's take a look. From the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act to H.R. 1955 and S. 1959, we are watching the republic die before our eyes. These are thought crime bills. There is- dare we say- a finger to point in a direction more factually supported than others. Where?

The Right, meaning the Republican AND leadership of the Democratic party now in charge of Congress. Critiques are in order. Even former architects of the War on Terror have proclaimed our post 9/11 foreign policy efforts illegal. Of course, this why they were based upon deception. Let's look at these propagandistic deceivers more carefully. Chiefly, we're talking about the Neocons.

The rise of Neoconservatism in America has brought us to this fascist brink. We ought pay more attention to these ideologues, their organizational efforts and publications at the Project for the New American Century, and take them at their words.

Dr. Paul Rea, a colleague, helps take these people to account, and further understand our present ideological tumult in light of 9/11 and what has come to pass in this fine excerpt titled Zealots of Dominance from his upcoming book on 9/11, "Returning to the Scene of the Crime." This is of critical importance to the understanding of our present perplexing condition as a hijacked democracy. Context is everything and Dr. Rea surely provides a disturbing look at the history of those who have orchestrated the Bush/corporatist coup. May we learn, grow, and thrive in light of such wisdom.

And a reminder, lest we find ourselves under pressure of new draconian laws- Just after Pearl Harbor, which was a classic LIHOP operation, Mr. Republican, Senator Bob Taft, had this to say about criticism in wartime...

"As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... Too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think it will give some comfort to the enemy ... If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and it will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur."
December 1941, quoted in The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism

This sobriety after Pearl Harbor, no less. After 9/11? No such Republican adherence to rule of law or open debate.

May we understand the roots of our current dilemma and speak out in light of Mr. Republican, Bob Taft and his (in)famous predecessor in the Bully Pulpit of the White House...

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Republican President, Theodore Roosevelt

Can one imagine Republicans saying these words today? We're lucky if journalists will even say these obvious things.

Debate and dissent must not be stifled. And clearly they must not be criminalized. We've been down this Alien and Sedition Act road before and it has always proven a disaster for democracy.

And one final word on the Neocon game- Recently after the debacle with the NIE on Iran, a tepid Congress still won't impeach. Lie after lie after lie while the rights of citizens who notice are whittled away. So, the current rogues in power deserve the utmost public ire. After all this, according to Taft and even TR, it's the least we can give them short of a prison sentence.

No More War Profiteers: Demand Financial Policy Recu$als from Elected Officials in Congress and the White House

2007-11-25T01:24:00.001-08:00

Your cost for the current wars is estimated at close to $2trillion over the next ten years for a family of four.

Where does it all go?

No-Brainer, long overdue. We need to put a stop to war profiteering and the Washington/corporate/lobby revolving door. Want to stop war? Bleed it dry. Not in human costs, but in capital.

Longtime friend, activist, fellow musician I've recorded with over the years, and cyber-pundit extraordinaire, the Artist General Mike Masley, finally gets his war profit recusal question asked by a major paper after five years of his relentless e mail lobbying...in the Seattle P-I this weekend.  Let's see where this meme goes!

Artist General's info and plan in the new Seattle P-I piece.

Artist General of the United States

Recusal Editorial

His plan:  To demand recusal from elected officials concerning any private profits they may accumulate due to in-office war policies FOR LIFE after their post was held (yes, for the rest of their lives).  Every journalist in this country ought to put this one at the top of the list for 2008 office seekers as a pledge and begin warming up by making it a lead question at every major press conference from here until next November (and then beyond).

Idea sound strange? What might history say? Does President Eisenhower's farewell address ring a bell? A a revolving door corporate/congress? It's not just for war profiteers, either. We need to stop this democratic chicanery along with the war profiteers and their political puppets.  Think this is a new problem?  Ask marine general Smedley Bultler about war profiteering in the early 20th century.  What'd he say about it?  Read War is a Racket from 1935.  We need to heed these warnings and act.  We can learn from the wisdom of the past.  But we must act in the present.   Following the money from 9/11 to war is a long road, but we need to look at the map to understand this planned navigation away from the public interest by elites to plunder the commonwealth. We need to ask when so much is at stake, who benefits? The Global Dominance Group is a good place to start.

Just look a couple years back even?  See Halliburton and the new tricky Dick. Take the money out of war for the warplanners, and politics will follow.

Again, Marine General Smedley Butler:

"To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

-We must take the profit out of war.

-We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

-We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes."

See more on War Profiteering as it goes unchallenged by journalists and politicos of many stripes.

It's obvious what we need to do as citizens. We must demand this obvious recusal of Washington's next crew.  Capitalism is the warfare state.  No war profits, no more revolving door deMockracy. This is just such a no-brainer.  And radical, to boot? That's how far gone we are as a republic. The P-I piece below...

Radical Ethics: No bucks from war
Seattle Post-Itelligencer EDITORIAL BOARD
November 24, 2007

Just less than a year from now, Americans will choose a new president. After years of debilitating public distrust, President Bush could assure a better atmosphere for his successor by adopting a rather singular idea, one that is an odd combination of radical thinking and good old American common sense.

President Bush (and, ideally, Vice President Dick Cheney, given his power) ought to promise not to accept any profit from war. In doing so, they would set a new, higher standard of White House ethics that might foster more rational public discourse on issues of war and peace.

The radical part of this idea is mainly its origin with Michael Masley, a colorful, bitingly humorous anti-war activist (he calls himself the nation's "artist general") who has been trying to get the media, Congress, anybody to ask Bush to promise never to accept any profits flowing from any military action he authorizes. But this left-wing, left-coast idea actually reaches into the heartland and history of the country. Americans have always had a healthy scepticism about unholy influence by money and power on military and foreign policy decisions. Indeed, great presidents have voiced the same concerns when they have warned about foreign entanglements (Washington), war profiteers (FDR) or the sway of the military-industrial complex (Eisenhower).

As much as we opposed the misguided Iraq war, we never much liked the "blood-for-oil" rhetoric. The administration could turn down some of the heat with a lifetime, no-war-profit promise. Bush's most ardent detractors (who actually might think the administration was deluded not just by neocon fantasies about promoting democracy but also by a desire to pump up profits of companies with which they have been connected) might find the chances laughably unrealistic. Perhaps, perhaps not.

Bush is said to believe history will look more kindly than contemporaries on the war, an idea that may not be entirely fanciful. Setting a new ethical course for himself and, by example, his successors might help clear the air for re-evaluation.

But even if this administration and Congress ignore the idea, the topic ought to draw discussion among 2008 presidential candidates, who have a lot of air time to fill in an overly long campaign. Forswearing profits from war is very little to ask of someone who would be president. More important, anything that can ease the painful levels of distrust among people for this or future administrations is worth consideration.

(This piece was also posted at Commondreams.)

==============================================
And if neoconservatives and other somnambulists call the P-I loonies or give the usual guff about war for freedom, occupation as liberation, the need to jail critics to protect America and the other worn, Orwellian doublespeak, ruse lines?

Ask them to please put Conservatism in Perspective and to recall the lines of another Republican (imperialist) Big Stick wielder of yesteryear, Teddy "Bully" Roosevelt, who once said:

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Or how about this one, from a man known as "Mr. Republican" in his day:

"As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... Too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think it will give some comfort to the enemy ... If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and it will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur."
That was Senator Bob Taft, after Pearl Harbor no less, in December, 1941.

The recusal is an idea whose time is long overdue and doesn't even approach criticism. It just states the obvious about conflicts of interest in "times of war." Thankfully a major paper has asked in public what should have been codified into law ages ago. Take action now. Call congress. Write the MSM. Make this a major issue in 2008 before it's too late. And while you're at it, suggest impeachment of the V.P. and a genuine investigation into 9/11 unanswered questions. It is the holiday season, after all. Ask and you may receive. But don't hold your breath.

Long live the Artist General! Long live the true Vox Populi!

MoM

State Terror: H.R. 1955 a Weapon of Mass Destruction of Civil Liberties

2007-11-21T12:40:00.001-08:00

Concerning the graduated repression of the Nazi regime, the Reverend Martin Niemoller, in 1945, stated, to the effect:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

Though this quote has taken on many forms and endured several disputes, the ultimate interpretation stands. That silence about liberty infractions equals civil death.

Further, on the notion of leading the public headstrong into oblivion, the Nazis said it best:

“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” Hermann Goering, 1946

Thus describes in many ways America today. From 9/11 to the non-sequitor of Iraq we've witnessed the success of establishment deceit, from violations of international law to constitutional abrogation. Not just in foreign affairs, but in domestic terms.

Consider the Ramifications of H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, Americans ought take note.

This is a controversial issue, but, it’s a very important one that threads past to present. The following is a civic exercise and rough draft of thoughts to come...updates soon on the horizon. Until then...

Recently, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1955, Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, by a staggering vote of 404 to 6. In hearings for the bill, testimony focused on political and peace activist groups in the U.S. and linked them with extremist groups abroad and claimed the two were the same in terms of a threat to Americans. This is the same tactic used dating back to the 19th century in America, so it is nothing new. But is it commensurate with American values ensconced in the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence?

Enter the thought police.

The use of propaganda to disinform the public and instill fear in the American population, especially to lead to war has been well established (Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII,Viet Nam and the Gulf of Tonkin, and most recently 9/11, WMD’s and Iraq to name a few). It was also commonplace for Congress to pass laws restricting the rights of citizens in the name of freedom and security. Remember the Espionage and Sedition Acts from WWI used to suppress criticism of government? The A. Mitchell Palmer Raids and the Red Scare after WWI? The internment camps in WWII for the Japanese? Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950’s and his Communist witch hunts based on false figures and conjecture? COINTELPRO during the Cold War and Viet Nam, all used to clamp down on free speech and assembly rights while the F.B.I. infiltrated peace groups as agent provocateurs and tried to force violence to discredit the antiwar movement and civil rights leaders? All this in the land of the free and home of the brave.

After 9/11 we had the USA PATRIOT Act, the suspension of Habeas Corpus, indefinite detentions, extraordinary rendition, flouting of international law, torture, and enemy combatants with no legal counsel held in off shore military prisons. Now, continuing the trend of rolling back founding principles and stifling debate and dissent, the Congress strikes again. This is a bipartisan measure, so it is not merely a one party issue. The outcry to this recent bill, while just beginning, is also very diverse consisting of veterans, NRA folks on the right as well as many civil libertarians and other veterans on the left. In fact, many groups opposing the USA PATRIOT Act have chimed in already. Read on...

Chief among the claims of those testifying to Congress about the “need” for this bill, which included groups with close ties to government and military industrial complex over the years like the Rand Corporation, was that anyone that questions the official government line on 9/11 is akin to a terrorist or material supporter to terrorism. One speaker, Mark Weitzman of the Wiesenthal Center (ironically founded by Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal to educate the public about war crimes), claimed that architects, engineers, and scientists that questions the official 9/11 narrative are the same as alleged violent Jihadist groups. This is the latest round of official conflation between terrorists and activists in the U.S. recently examined through the USA PATRIOT Act by Nancy Chang in her work “Silencing Political Dissent” at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Is there a link between these aforementioned groups? No, there is not. But that didn’t stop these folks from simply saying so on the public record while providing no evidence. And Jane Harmon, co-sponsor of the bill, a Democrat from southern CA., didn’t ask for any. Just like McCarthy. See the C-Span Video Footage for more details and context.

Given the government's own admission in several separate studies that they have not concluded how the WTC and towers Building 7 were destroyed, that the official commission report was widely censored by Bush loyalists, and that the F.B.I. dropped it's quest for Bin Laden due to lack of evidence (and the CIA disbanded the unit in charge of looking for him), over a third of Americans when polled still question what happened that day and who was responsible. Even NIST officials conducting the most thorough official investigation into Building 7 in New York claimed their work was flawed and hampered by significant restrictions.

While this in no way implicates any particular parties for the events of 9/11, it does lead reasonable people that have researched the facts to conclude a new investigation is needed and many questions have not been answered. The families of the victims of 9/11 submitted hundreds of questions to the commission, 3/4 of them went ignored or unanswered. We as Americans deserve better. Now these people are being potentially criminalized for their questions and nonviolent actions. Also, more personally, I teach a critical thinking course on 9/11. According to the language in the bill, I could be sent to prison for asking people to think for themselves based on factual evidence. In America, do you think this is appropriate action by government?

Regardless if one believes the counter arguments about 9/11 in America’s recent past, should these people be criminalized for questioning the government and asking for another inquiry into that fateful day? Review materials below, then opine supported by evidence as to what you think about this current situation. This is a civic exercise. Do we really live in a republic, a society based on principles of liberty? If so, we need to examine all of this.

NOTES:

The Text of H.R. 1955:

H.R. 1955

The video on C-Span (see after 39 minutes for specifics) of some supporters:

Video Footage

One of the sites shown alongside terror groups in a guilt by association tactic, this one founded by a Bay Area Republican and 20 year architect, Richard Gage:

AE911

Reactions:

911 Blogger

Details

Thought Crime

9/11 Terrorist Conflation

NRA Style Rebuttals

Center for Constitutional Rights Views

General info on 9/11 alternative views and unanswered questions:

Unanswered Questions from 9/11

9/11 Truth

9/11 Research

Random thoughts on 9/11, propaganda, and American history:

Mythinfo Blog

Discourse and widespread awareness through education is one way to address these key issues. Possible discussion prompts with friends, family, and the general public:

Remember, this can be a civic exercise. That's what counts. Watch the video, read the texts, see the reactions and consider the following: Is it commensurate with American values ensconced in the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence? Should people be criminalized for questioning the government and asking for another inquiry into 9/11 related issues? Why or why not? Are nonviolent groups that question the government on 9/11 issues the same threat as alleged Jihadist groups? How do you see this as part of a trend of repression of dissident voices in America? Explain and support. Talk to your family, your friends, strangers, your foes. Give it a go! The survival of our republic depends upon it. This is up to us, the people!

A final word from Benjamin Franklin:

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Where do you stand at this crucial juncture in American history?

Vox Populi

--This posting was also published here.

The Last Man Out on 9/11

2007-11-06T23:31:00.000-08:00

"Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend." Rabindranath Tagore, Philosopher

The testimony of the following, that of William Rodriguez, has legitimate challenges, but remains somewhat unresolved. However, it is a very important story about 9/11 that deserves scrutiny. Read on...

William Rodriquez, the last man out of the North Tower, WTC 1, on 9/11/2001 before its destruction, is a celebrity of tragedy. He had been a janitor at the building for 20 years. Before being rescued from the rubble, Rodriguez himself rescued numerous people from the WTC building. He was lauded by politicians and media heads across the board. He was wined and dined by the 9/11 Commission folks and seen as an all American hero that could be a poster boy for the war on terror. Until he gave his testimony about what he witnessed on 9/11.

Rodriguez heard explosions in the basement of the tower where he was stationed for work. Not only that, but he heard them and saw people running for the upstairs exit badly burned with skin hanging from their bodies. Point of interest- this was BEFORE the first plane hit the North Tower. Rodriguez explains in testimony to the 9/11 Commission (that was not published in the final volume edited by neocon and Condi Rice cohort, Phillip Zilikow) that he heard explosions below, saw burned victims, and THEN heard a huge explosion erupt far above, that being American Airlines Flight 11 at 8:46 A.M. Again, see the link above for more info from Willy's website.

Granted, this is eyewitness testimony, which can be questioned, and Willy puts on a grandiose show. While that may work against him in the long haul, it certainly tugs on the heartstrings, blending fact and emotion. His eyewitness testimony, however, is also quite damning in light of the omissions and distortions of the 9/11 report pointed out by Dr. David Ray Griffin and has been corroborated by other first responders. Also, for further dialogue, see this blog for more thought provocation about this issue. Moving along...

After his testimony, Rodriguez was attacked then studiously ignored by politicos and pundits. However, his testimony ought to be reconsidered in light of all that 9/11 has been used to justify. This is further possible evidence that 9/11 was something other than the official view and grand narrative claim it to be, as put forth by architect Richard Gage regarding the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC7. We ignore this story and these other scientific studies at our peril. The events of 9/11 are worthy of legitimate, transparent, and independent inquiry with public debate, not a sham government cover up underfunded and started over a year later where final Commission Report editors were all close allies of the Bush administration (and also, by the way, it should be stated, that all three major government studies contradicted each other and claimed their own conclusions were improbable at best but won't be debated). Given such farce, we should seek historic counsel. Thomas Jefferson once said that dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Let us all be patriots on this issue, now, in our generation. Let us not be attached to conclusions, merely allow us to see what is real.

I had the pleasure of briefly following Rodriguez on a radio interview prior to a presentation he had in Oakland, CA at the Grand Lake Theater on November 1st. It was on the Peter B. Collins show last week. It is a tale worth hearing with a critical mind for certain, regardless of ones' views on the matter.

All is all, 9/11 is wrought with far more problems than solutions and far more questions than answers. Scholars and researchers like Jim Hoffman, along with Steven Jones, Kevin Ryan, and Peter Phillips of Project Censored, have done commendable research on 9/11 issues in light of the overall paucity of information that has been reported via American mainstream media. Our "leaders" must be held accountable for this shoddy investigation and obfuscation around 9/11 issues. The victims and the families of that tragedy deserve no less. Truth is a process that reveals the obvious to the world. We need to open our collective eyes and consciousness and not fear what we may see...and then we'll see.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

Media Accountability and Project Censored

2007-10-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

"A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." James Madison

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." Thomas Jefferson

This weekend, Project Censored hosts the Second Annual Media Accountability conference at Sonoma State University in Northern California focuses on Media Censorship and the erosion of Civil Liberties. Project Censored, founded by Dr. Carl Jensen and in its 31st year now, is a major watchdog research group that looks for bias and censorship in mainstream media concerning key issues. This year's show, celebrating the newly released Censored 2008 and the top 25 stories of the past year, led by sociologist Dr. Peter Phillips, has yet another series of timely, serious, and important stories that most in the American public have never heard about, and if they have, they haven't heard all there is to be known about the stories. This year's conference presenters include Thom Hartmann, Frank Morales, Jeremy Scahill, Odette Wilkens, Robert Parry, Fariba Nawa, and many more (even yours truly, moderating a panel on "Terrorism and New Legal Realities").

Hope to see you all there, or to feel you there in spirit, to fight for press freedom and open government while defeating the scourge of corporatist propaganda that fills the nations airwaves and publications.

"No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will." Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Washington, September 9, 1792

Vox Populi

Howling at Windmills: Ginsberg, Censorship, and Overcoming the Cowardice of the Now

2007-10-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

More from Myth America...

Allen Ginsberg's Howl

So why are we as a culture still debating censorship and indecency about a fifty year old poem that merely stated the obvious and was declared by the courts as not obscene?

It's another trip down memory hole lane. Propaganda comes in many forms. The best form is omission. Forbid certain works, forbid certain ideas, and in turn, legitmize dissent by reframing it. And marginalize it simultaneously. Otherwise, it's seek and destroy. Why is Howl so radical today? We live in a media saturated landscape that celebrates its own profiteering from sexism, heterosexism, violence, imperialism, greed, and narcisism. Telling the truth in times of universal deceit can (apparently) be a revolutionary act (as Orwell once stated). We're decades on, and this poem is still too relevant as cultural critique.

Ginsberg doesn't just leave it to Beaver? You mean there was a life outside the bourgeois establisment? Shocking! Real? Visceral? Couldn't be! That's why fifty years later it still can't be heard openly without fear. Perhaps a bit too close to the bone for too many. Try the links and see for yourself...what are we ready for? Why the FCC threat to cultural expression but not corporatist conglomeration and media ownership? It's too obvious...just listen at the first link above.

"America I've given you all and now I'm nothing."

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flatsfloating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- ment roofsilluminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among thescholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn- ing their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall..."

Terror, indeed. As today, we're listening to a War on Terror through walls of media manipulation and the best minds of this generation are being destroyed by the cult of celebrity, celebration of mediocrity, and the angry, fruitless search of an endless fix for anything real.

Myth America: The War, 9/11, and the Propaganda of Historical Grand Narratives

2007-10-01T21:26:00.001-07:00

Historical documentarian Ken Burns PBS show, The War, is a wonder of myth making, certainly from the start, which is a good place to start. See a few notes below on the perpetuation of war myths and the questionable timing of dragging out the “Good War “ for the present “terror” war's failures, and more failures, and even from a different view, failures still. Perhaps all wars are failures to another extent. Former British parliament member and longtime activist, Tony Benn, once said it best, "All war represents a failure of diplomacy." And certainly a failure of hope, decency, and the imagination. Not for Burns. He specializes in the Good War. It's his bag. And he's a liberal. Moving on...

In terms of the film documentary medium as grand narrative historiography (it's on the TV, it must be true, and on PBS no less)...Journalists Christopher Hayes and Sean Gonsalves have challenged Burns on perpetuation of myths and falsehoods to a degree...

Hayes

Gonsalves

More on the WWII myths

Very worthwhile points to consider in light of the present. However, there still stands a big elephant in the historical room. No talk of the Pearl Harbor myth...and Sean Gonsalves did not return either of my letters of inquiry...that's even too close to the bone for him, I guess...he'll go so far demythologizing, then stop. I'm not sure how that's possible.

Why is Pearl Harbor important? Because it’s a myth...the myth of America, defender of truth, democracy, justice, a nation that only enters war if attacked/provoked, exceptional and triumphant in all things, living manifest destiny. America believes its own exceptionalist mythology. After 9/11, the links to Pearl Harbor were ubiquitous. A powerful myth, indeed. But...Irony Alert- Pearl Harbor was known about and allowed to happen to get into war with Germany (in addition obviously to Japan). But, yes, you read that correctly. And Germany had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. And Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Connecting any dots yet? Why is Osama not on the FBI's Most Wanted List for 9/11? They said they don't have hard evidence to convict him and the early videos of "confessions" have been exposed as frauds...which is obvious since the FBI won't use them as evidence!

At any rate, to stay on point here...

Links of interest...not always a big fan of Lew Rockwell, but this is a good book review on some of the aforementioned myths on his libertarian site...

Libertarian critique of WWII myths

And this well-documented page on the Pearl Harbor, Mother of all Conspiracies...there's that word!

MoC

That word "conspiracies," of course.

Conspiracy Reality

For more on understanding the power of rhetoric see JFK & Gangster Government-- Michael Parenti's classic speech on a democratic people's need to confront "conspiracies” here...

Parenti on Conspiracy Culture

Also, there's historian and author Bob Stinnett's interview on his work Day of Deceit. Stinnett's FOIA request uncovered myths of the Pearl Harbor sneak attack while at the Independent Institute. Stinnett wasn't the first to do so. The Army actually concluded much the same in 1944. So, why do Hayes and Gonsalves not include this research, if even historiographically, if even to suggest the idea that the historical myths of exceptionalism and Pearl Harbor are not in synch with all of the facts? Isn't that what journalists are supposed to do?

These people don't even look at the Old Pearl Harbor, let alone the possibility of a New Pearl Harbor in 9/11, like the Project For the New American Century pined for in 2000- with their Rebuilding America's Defenses document. I'm not talking about "conspiracies" or conclusions here, but rather how sloppy, or intentionally selective research, furthers myths and falsehoods about the past, thus enabling them into the present. These WWII myth makers and myth breakers do not look at the generationally defining historical event that got America into The War- Pearl Harbor- like many in the present don't look at how we got into the current two illegal wars- 9/11. We owe it to ourselves to do better and face the possibility of continued deception perpetrated against the public. We need more transparency and more daring journalists. Those that call for such things and real investigations about 9/11 are not all just “conspiracists” but seekers of knowledge and explanation unattached to outcomes. To ask is not to conclude prematurely or posit alternative, unproven notions into some Lacanian hole at Ground Zero. Those that hurl unsound theories without evidence are merely repeating the same patterns of obfuscation laid out by the government itself. Further, to notice inconvenient facts, propagandistic trends, and patterns of official lies is not to create them. Shooting the messenger doesn't refute the potential efficacy of the message that questions the grand narrative. Conspiracy doesn't only exist in the mind of the paranoid. We should recall...

"Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts" author, William S. Burroughs

Our resident journalists have also studiously ignored Prof. David Ray Griffin's connection with The New Pearl Harbor and it's roots as propagandistic terminology outlined in the architects of the terror war, aka (and as mentioned above), the PNAC and their year 2000 "Rebuilding America's Defenses" publication about post cold war global strategies. Again, more dots, but little connecting...this at least deserves some public hearing and debate one would hope.

In temporary conclusion-- A Memo to PBS...their Kenny boy pans and Burns history along with the present by peddling the old myths of "The Good War." Burns show isn't a total wash, but it does little to challenge the narrative of exceptionalism and jingoism. Truth is, war is the ultimate human failure. We need to remember that while we look at this so-called war on terror in the present and how we got here. 9/11 is a good place to start.

Party Like It's 1984

2007-09-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

George Orwell wrote:

"WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

Memo to the Bush administration-- "1984" was a dystopic novel- a warning. It was not supposed to be a user's manual.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows"

Well...

Remember Prince? Party like it's 1999? Well, big brother wants to party like it's 1984...so does Anais Mitchell.

Anais is on Ani Difranco's Righteous Babe Records label out of Buffalo, NY. We saw them a few months back in SF. Great show until lil Molly called and we had to run home ;)

Ani's new Canon is a retrospective treat. So is this one...Cheers.

Anais Mitchell-- Listen

1984

down at headquarters, there’s a big database
with black and white photos of the side of your beautiful face
and your library record, and all your test scores
and an invitation to party like it’s 1984

baby, don’t look so nervous, they just want the facts
and it’s all written out in the usa patriot act
cause we don’t take no chances in a nation at war
so tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1984

oh, honey, what did i tell you about the house being bugged?
they can hear us making breakfast, they can hear us making love
but excuse me a minute- big brother’s at the door
and he’s ready to party like it’s 1984

you know you’re my one and only; you always have been
sure is gonna be lonely after i turn you in
so i’ll wait till tomorrow to file my report
and tonight we can party like it’s 1984

And Ani's poem about 9/11... Self Evident

So much to consider in our present state of affairs...these are significant reminders and celebrations of possibility through the lyricism of music...

Silence is the death of liberty.

We should consider some of the evidence of demonstrable democratic decay around us and spring to action before it's too late...

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

9/11 Six Years Later

2007-09-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

Six years on...SF Bay Area event demands a real independent investigation for the crime of the century.

Got Truth?

Shine some light on the issues for a broader spectrum of ideas...

911 Research

Environmental Fallout

There are many unanswered questions about 9/11 as was pointed out by Project Censored a couple years back.

And recall that 9/11 is what launched the so-called "War on Terror." How's that going over in Iraq? And Iraq had what do do with 9/11? Hmmm. Nothing.

But public opinion has been consistently manipulated to connect the two. See Retropoll's work here and here.

See the link below for the critical thinking resources that challenge the official narrative of 9/11. Absent the ususal ad hominems, red herrings, straw persons, false dilemmas, appeals to emotion, and other fallacious attacks, the following alternatives may hold up better than you think.

Think for yourself and be as critical of the official views as you are of the alternatives. Also, recall my past interviews with the We the People Radio Network in previous entries (August 13th and September 4th of this year) for more history of false flags and propaganda in U.S. history. The common response to 9/11 discussions about U.S. Government complicity is usually a dismissive, "They would never do that kind of thing." But "they" have before. So we should consider what happens to us now in light of any possibility based upon reason and where the facts lead us, not blind obedience, jingoistic patriotism, or lemming-like follies.

In fact, many in the progressive community are among the loudest of the dismissive voices. However, it is interesting to note that these are the same people that say, and often prove, that the Bush administration has stolen elections (Greg Palast), lied about WMD's and security threats (Terry Allen), started illegal wars of aggression (Alexander Cockburn), chose countries to invade on the basis of their resources (James Ridgeway), used tragedy and hysteria to further their ends with relentless propaganda (Norman Soloman), suspended constitutional rights (Matthew Rothchild), and so on.

Yet on 9/11, the administration and government as a whole are to be trusted and believed as these same progressives suspend their judgement for that one issue and claim these "independent investigations" are fool proof. Even the commissions themselves, like FEMA and NIST, have stated their studies were inconclusive or yielded improbable results. NIST will not engage in public debate as they stated there would be no winning such things. These progressives also will not engage in public debate over the official dubious findings on 9/11 issues. These otherwise skeptical progressives say on 9/11, the administration and the governement at large are somehow credible, even though they are not at all credible in their behavior patterns on almost every other front.

Seems a bit peculiar to the thinking mind. That's some fine fantasy and wishful thinking at work. If 9/11 alternative thoeries are so ridiculous, why not have a debate and prove once and for all how silly anyone that challenges the offical view really is? The reality is we need more debate and open discussion on this critical issue, not more dismissiveness, avoidance, and ignorance. We need to choose truth as a process of being detatched from outcomes and find where the facts lead, regardless of what they end up telling us. We owe it to ourselves and our future as a nation so we can be prepared to answer to history for our complicit silence.

Manifest Tyranny: 9/11 Propaganda, Grand Historical Narrative, and Teaching Critical Thinking in Post Sinclair Lewis' America

2007-09-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

PSA for my recent happenings...

"When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag carrying a cross." Sinclair Lewis, 1935

Welcome to a discussion on the state of American fascism and 9/11. Our working title...

"Manifest Tyranny: Propaganda, Grand Historical Narrative, Critical Thinking, and Teaching 9/11 in post Sinclair Lewis' America"

This is just a note that I'm on internet radio again-- this time with Dr. Kevin Barrett, the Islam scholar at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Barrett is the editor of the second volume of the 9/11 scholars work. We're on the We the People Radio Network out of Austin, TX, Tuesday, 9/4 at 7pm Pacific time (show will be archived). This is a continuation of the discussion I had with activist, congressional candidate, Carol Brouilett's show on August 13th, on the We the People Radio Network.

Topics include-- 9/11 and Critical Thinking Courses in Higher Education; 9/11 and Academic Freedom; Propaganda and the Road to 9/11; Manifest Tyranny: Grand Narratives of U.S National Mythology, Interfaith Alliance, and Historical Truths; plus more on American fascism! See....

Dr. Barrett's site.

The show.

And pomo fun-- Grand Narrative Wiki background...just for splashing around.

For more resources and ideas, please see...

Historical Views

American Conservative

Chris Hedges

Populist Response

Reclaiming Issues

And the necessary embrace of Conspiracy.

While I may not agree with all the guests that have been on Dr. Barrett's show, nor all of his views, it is still a splendid chance to respectfully talk about important issues in an open forum that celebrates freedom of speech and inquiry. Dr. Barrett has kindly invited me on his program with Dr. Paul Rea and we look forward to a lively discussion. We thank Dr. Barrett for the courage to continue with these dialogues despite the pressures he has witnessed. I hope you can join us...or check the archive.

Extended fyi-- Also, those of you in the SF Bay area, hope you can join us at the Grand Lake Theater for the 9/11 film festival and "Blueprint for Truth" with architect Richard Gage as I'll be speaking after "Hijacking Catastrophe" on Monday the 10th in the afternoon. Peter Dale Scott wil be at the Black Ok Book in Berkeley the eve of 9/11 talking about his new work on the road to 9/11. And, I'll be at the Fremont library on 9/22 in the afternoon as we discuss media critic Norman Soloman's "War Made Easy" and how the Left has ignored, denied, or refused to address 9/11 truth issues.

For Dr. Barrett's show, a quick bio on myself and Dr. Paul Rea.

Mickey S. Huff holds a graduate degree in history, is a musician/composer, and a long time civic activist. He is currently adjunct faculty in history and critical thinking at Berkeley City College, Chabot College, and Diablo Valley College where he has taught over 100 courses in the past 6 years. He was co-director of the alternative polling group Retropoll (http://www.retropoll.org/) and is a Community Evaluator for Project Censored at Sonoma State University (www.projectcensored.org). He has been teaching the course "America, 9/11, and the War on Terror: Foreign/Domestic Policy, Media, and Propaganda" as part of critical thinking in history classes for the past 4 years as well as "History of U.S. Media" and other U.S. History courses.

Most recently, he has organized and participated at a number of conferences on 9/11 issues including "Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Misinformation" at Berkeley City College, where he gave a lecture entitled "Weaponization of Information: A Brief History of American Propaganda in Foreign Policy;" "Lifting the Fog: The Scientific Method applied to the World Trade Center Disaster" at UC Berkeley; the Project Censored Annual Media Accountability Conference on "Suppression of Information and Post-9/11 Invasions;" the ACME Coalition Conference, Champlain College in Burlington, VT, "Facing the Media Crisis: Media Education for Reform, Justice, and Democracy" on "9/11 and Media Literacy in Critical Thinking Courses;" and at St. Mary's College public lecture series on "9/11, Propaganda, and the Culture of Fear." He also was on the National Committee for the Shopping Boycott for Impeachment at www.wearenotbuyingit.org/.

Mickey is currently planning a 9/11 lecture and debate series as part of his course at Berkeley City College this fall as well as working on an article on 9/11, collective memory, and the propaganda of grand historical narrative. He is also participating in a number of conferences and public speaking events through the end of the year, including a national conference on the crisis of contemporary journalism at the Univerisity of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr. Paul W. Rea, long a professor of humanities and teacher of writing, is now a full-time 9/11 researcher and writer. Paul has participated in events such as Lifting the Fog Conference held in Berkeley. His first short book, Still Seeking the Truth about 9/11, became a well-received textbook and effective fund raiser for the movement. His next book, Fingerprints All Over The Crime, will provide a comprehensive overview of current research on 9/11. Another readable popularization, this new book is due in early 2008.

Vox Populi!

9/11 and the Weaponization of Information in U.S. History

2007-08-09T17:28:00.001-07:00

"History, Whose-story? Collapsing Empire Show with Historians Mickey S. Huff and Carolyn Baker"

Recently, Carol Brouillet invited me to be guest on her internet radio show with historian Carolyn Baker. The show aired August 13th and is now archived here. The topic-- on 9/11 and the weaponization of information in U.S. history as well as collapsing empire in the second hour. The first hour, I talk about collective memory and the propaganda of grand historical narrative as seen through the lens of 9/11 (actually more on a romp down memory hole lane in terms of understanding America's grand narrative of exceptionalism and triumphalism and where it has gotten us). Hard to wrap up a couple centuries of empire construction and peril in an hour...but we tried!

Here is Carol's blog for the show on the We the People Radio Network.

Vox Populi

New Class on 9/11 at Berkeley City College Fall 2007!

2007-08-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Come see this great 9/11 course and speaker series at Berkeley City College this Fall!

History 47- Critical Thinking in History, Instructor Mickey S. Huff
Tue/Thur 2:30-4pm, 3 units, CSU tranfer, section V0726

Topic: America, 9/11, and the War on Terror: Foreign/Domestic Policy, Media, and Propaganda

Come discuss and debate the recent past in America by viewing one of the most tumultuous events of our times...September 11th, 2001!

*Learn logical argumentation and writing skills while avoiding common fallacies
*Consider bias and objectivity in formation of opinion
*Discern fact from fiction in research and analysis
*Understand possible connections between past and present
*Examine the role of current news media as the rough draft of history
*Think about the shaping of public opinion and the democratic process
*Deconstruct the historically defining events of September 11th, 2001
*Ask critical questions and realize that there may not always be one answer to these:

-Why does history matter and how did we get to this point in time?
-How will 9/11 be seen historical terms?
-What actually happened on that fateful day?
-What are the official views and the alternatives that challenge?
-Why do the government studies all contradict themselves?
-What are the unanswered questions and where are the answers?
-What are “conspiracy theories” and why should we care about some of them?
-What are the views of Arab Americans on the War on Terror”
-How does the rest of the world view America post 9/11?
-How has 9/11 been used as a pretext and propaganda tool by government?
-How has 9/11 affected the rule of law internationally and domestically?
-What is the grand narrative of 9/11 and why should we challenge it?
-Does history repeat itself...or does it just rhyme?

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, 1984. And Orwell today? Rolling in his grave.

Be an active agent in the making of history by being aware in the present. Knowledge is power! Shape your own future! Come think for yourselves, otherwise, someone else will gladly do it for you! Class begins August 23rd. Enroll today!

Contact: mythinfo@mac.com

Let the Good Times Roll...Got Fun?

2007-08-02T22:30:00.001-07:00

Let's see here...

Got support for the troops? The VA?

Uh-uh.

The Bush administration has failed us here. And abroad.

Got a government that promotes the general welfare of the people it's liberating? Or occupying? The answer is simple.

Just look at the centerpiece of the Bush Doctrine in Iraq. And look at the vultures now there. This is hardy liberating for Iraqis, or everyday Americans. VP Cheney seems to be doing ok, though. Really. This comedic interlude can reaffirm such.

And still we need more money to kill more Iraqis that we are liberating (occupying?) that posed no threat to our existence and had nothing to do with 9/11?

By the way...ponder whether we've...

Got rights?

Got fascism?

Are you sure?

Historical suggestions?

Got a bridge to hope...maybe one right here in Amerca, maybe in Minnesota, and one we can afford?

Hope Springs Eternal...Just kidding...hmmm.

An Administration on the Wrong Track...Again

2007-07-16T23:44:00.001-07:00

Wonder how far off we may be? The latest from Tom Engelhardt is a frightful reminder.

Wrong again.

Great piece with links galore at Truthdig. Ever wonder how we got here? Well, Norm Soloman's latest book-turned film War Made Easy is a great introduction. My, how the presidents and pundits are spinning us to death...

See the preview here.

Then spread the word. It's something anyone can do.

Or, you can open up a can of history and smell the freedumb.

Seems hyperbolic, but, it's worth a thought or two while we treadmill into doomsday at the behest of the deceivers.

Bush, Iraq, and the Vision Thing...

2007-07-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

Vision Thing

In a recent piece from Think Progress, "The Ever Changing Definition of ‘Mission’ In Iraq," we are reminded of just how unfocused the Bush administration has been on its Iraq policy. Flip flop. The mission is x. No, y. No, wait, z! We know what we are doing! Stay the coure...I mean stay the many different courses as they shift along! Mission Accomplished! No Vision Thing to see here. Poppy knew best! These aren't the excuses for the war you are looking for. Move along...See the links above and the Think Progress piece reprinted below. You almost have to read it over and over to believe it. Good luck.

For more flagrant flip flopping and failures, see the April 9, 2007 post on this blog. Now to the most recent episode of the Tragic Kingdom, where his majesty has taken yet another Emperor's Clothing Optional day in the public eye...no, it's not funny, but humor helps ease the pain.

In June 2005, ThinkProgress noted the Bush was constantly revising the definition of our “mission” in Iraq.

Reporting on his escalation strategy this week, President Bush claimed “satisfactory” progress in many areas of the “new mission” in Iraq. Bush has changed the definition of our “mission” in Iraq so many times, he has made it impossible for the American public, U.S. forces, and the Iraqi population to have any confidence that the mission will be ever completed.

THE PRE-WAR MISSION WAS TO RID IRAQ OF WMD

Bush: “Our mission is clear in Iraq. Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament.” [3/6/03]

AFTER THE WAR BEGAN, THE MISSION EXPANDED

Bush: “Our cause is just, the security of the nations we serve and the peace of the world. And our mission is clear, to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.” [3/22/03]

Bush: “Our forces have been given a clear mission: to end a regime that threatened its neighbors and the world with weapons of mass destruction and to free a people that had suffered far too long.” [4/14/03]

THEN THE MISSION WAS COMPLETE

Bush: “On Thursday, I visited the USS Abraham Lincoln, now headed home after the longest carrier deployment in recent history. I delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: Their mission is complete, and major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” [5/3/03]

BUT THEN IT CONTINUED AGAIN

Bush: “The United States and our allies will complete our mission in Iraq.” [7/30/03]

THEN THE MISSION WAS TO DEVELOP A FREE IRAQ

Bush: “That has been our mission all along, to develop the conditions such that a free Iraq will emerge, run by the Iraqi citizens.” [11/4/03]

Bush: “We will see that Iraq is free and self-governing and democratic. We will accomplish our mission.” [5/4/04]

AND TO TRAIN THE IRAQI TROOPS

Bush: “And our mission is clear there, as well, and that is to train the Iraqis so they can do the fighting; make sure they can stand up to defend their freedoms, which they want to do.” [6/2/05]

Bush: “We’re making progress toward the goal, which is, on the one hand, a political process moving forward in Iraq, and on the other hand, the Iraqis capable of defending themselves. And we will — we will complete this mission for the sake of world peace.” [6/20/05]

THEN IT SHIFTED TO ADVANCING DEMOCRACY

Bush: “We will stay as long as necessary to complete the mission. … Advancing the ideal of democracy and self-government is the mission that created our nation — and now it is the calling of a new generation of Americans.” [11/30/05]

AND PROTECTING AMERICA FROM TERRORISTS

Bush: “In the coming days, there will be considerable reflection on the removal of Saddam Hussein from power and our remaining mission in Iraq…By helping the Iraqi people build a free and representative government, we will deny the terrorists a safe haven to plan attacks against America.” [3/11/06]

Bush: “We will finish the mission. By defeating the terrorists in Iraq, we will bring greater security to our own country. And when victory is achieved, our troops will return home with the honor they have earned.” [3/18/06]

THEN THE MISSION WAS PROVIDING SECURITY FOR THE IRAQI POPULATION

Bush: “In fact, we have a new strategy with a new mission: helping secure the population, especially in Baghdad. Our plan puts Iraqis in the lead.” [1/13/07]

Bush: “[I]t’s the combination of providing security in neighborhoods through these joint security stations, and training that is the current mission we’re going through, with a heavy emphasis on security in Baghdad.” [4/10/07]

AND NOW?

Bush: “It’s a new mission. And David Petraeus is in Iraq carrying it out. Its goal is to help the Iraqis make progress toward reconciliation — to build a free nation that respects the rights of its people, upholds the rule of law, and is an ally against the extremists in this war.” [6/28/07]

(Posted by Jordan Grossman)

The Fib Factory churns on.

And now...

Yes, and now? Now what? Bush wants to "to build a free nation that respects the rights of its people, upholds the rule of law, and is an ally against the extremists in this war." Maybe he should trying applying those principles right here at home. He can start by resigning immediately and taking his obsequious, corporatist lackeys with him. Then America can begin to pick up the pieces (Iraq, too) and begin to make some sense again.

It's not too late to let the system work. We could always use Bastille Day as an example. Or, we could, as stated, use the system rather than have it use us. Impeachment, rather than being off the table as Democrats have stated, should be the centerpiece of the table. We should all commence chowing down.

Thoughts for July 4th...

2007-07-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

Once Upon America

What is Patriotism?

Liberties Lost

What should we be celebrating and thinking about for American Independence Day? Cheap beer, fizzy sugar water, bad food, and illegal explosives? Scooter Libby's get our of jail free card for the Fourth? Or, maybe some other things, like taking back from corporatists and tyrants the reigns of government as our founders suggested? We as a nation should declare our own independence from the wreckless overlords of the ruling class and landed gentry of our day and reclaim the spirit of liberty for all people. Here are some ideas on patriotism, nationalism, and the importance of dissent and free speech in a democratic society:

THOMAS JEFFERSON:
"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

EDWARD R. MURROW:
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING:
“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”

MARK TWAIN:
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

EMMA GOLDMAN:
"Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit."

H. L. MENCKEN:
"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair."

SINCLAIR LEWIS:
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."

THEODORE ROOSEVELT:
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS:
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."

SAMUEL JOHNSON:
"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

Remember, democracy is not a spectator sport!

Reminders for July 4th

2007-07-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” Mark Twain

What are we celebrating on July 4th? And what should we be thinking about...a major historian speaks out.

Put Away the Flags
By Howard Zinn

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.”

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.”

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to
war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino people.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best-selling “A People’s History of the United States” (Perennial Classics, 2003, latest edition). This piece was distributed by the Progressive Media Project.

W: "Don't Sell This on Ebay"

2007-06-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

This is amazing. Even for Bush, the compassionate conservative.

So, W meets mom's of the fallen in his illegal, ill-planned war, gives them the Presidential Coin, then says, "Don't sell this on E bay." No kidding. For Memorial Day. To mom's of dead-kid soldiers. Really.

Is there anyone left that could possibly support this horrible, idiotic, shell of a man? Who among us in this country could say this is leadership? Who is that 25% or so after all this?

And while I don't often count myself among smug liberals that laugh at Bush's verbal gaffes (as it ignores how much direction he actually has- Mark Crispin Miller has a book on this, "The Bush Dsylexicon"), it's worth remembering that the W of above is the one below...

He said these things.

And even conservative pundits have noticed some of this national discussion, pondering the American Idiot, Boy King, as Bush critics have dubbed him. Yes, he said these, too.

We're in good hands...

We're Number One!

2007-05-30T23:16:00.001-07:00

With braggadocious swagger we stray...off the beaten path.

A Nation of Firsts.

But 96th on the Global Peace Index.

Hmmmmm...

We ought to recall...

Eisenhower's warnings.

New Deal Militarism.

AKA...Military Keynesianism.

What is the cost of our current endeavors abroad?

We should pay more than tax and blood...we should all pay attention!

A Nation of Firsts

2007-05-28T00:48:00.001-07:00

Prelude to the next entry...

We're Number One!

We're Number One!

And, later reported, we're Up in arms!

More vernacular views are important when countering the corporatist propaganda. The U.S is first in warfare inception, weapons supplying, and corporate welfare the world over.

Something to ponder...

Go Back To Sleep

2007-05-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

Art often helps illuminate the soul...in foreign policy as well as other matters...and on we go.

Counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums...go back to sleep.

No...

Just Imagine.

MSM spin already vague poll- negatively attack 9/11 "conspiracy"

2007-05-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

MSM spin already vague poll and negatively attack 9/11 "conspiracy theorists" and any Dems that may be sympathetic...no facts or specifics required, only vague questions, red herrings, and straw persons need apply. MIHOPS almost too looney to mention... Mainstream media (the corporate/right media) have used a recent poll on Dems and spun it to negatively charge Dems as being 9/11 conspiracy theorists...interesting piece at Media Matters below. Repeated tactic- Smear Dems by claiming they are 9/11 nuts. The layers of rubbish keep piling upon us all. Where to even begin...

Perhaps here...

Lesson- Dems are nuts for thinking Bushies are LIHOPS...something that anyone that has read even govt. docs and the public testimony not in the 9/11 report already knows (further, and at any conservative rate, the administration at least utterly failed preventing it from happening in any traditional or conventional sense and therefore should have been routed out of offices they stole in any real democratic society- see Cold War partisanship dynamics as a model). BUT, regardless of that aside, the MM linked piece reveals many things about conservative AND liberal assumptions about 9/11 issues and interpretations. The term "flawed" is interesting in the MM title (a liberal to progressive leaning media watchdog). "Conservative" media they say. What does that say of the "liberal" and "left" press that are not much different on 9/11? Facts don't seem to matter to any of the aforementioned.

Two lowlights of comedy: 1) O'Really says 22% of Americans believe the "madness" that W knew in advance. That's only 2pts. less than the no. that now support W (Nixon was at 23% when he bailed). Madness abounds apparently. 2) And here's Limbaugh, "The Democrat Party is not mainstream. It is literally a bunch of deranged, delusional radicals." Dems may be deranged given how they can't seem prosecute the Bushies for obvious crimes from the U.S. attorney scandal and wiretapping to no WMD's, no Mission Accomplished, and no Katrina fix (no time to go into the dozens of others problems here). However, Dems are certainly not radical as evidenced by their mostly tepid behavior even after becoming the majority "opposition" party in congress.

Thought this may generate some interesting discussion (much more could be extrapolated)...thanks again to all of you that came to, participated in, or otherwise supported the 4/21 "Deconstructing Deceit" show in Berkeley.

P.S. Maybe another thread...Another recent MM piece deals with Giuliani and 9/11 first responder issues in media...again, possibly of interest.

Here

A great site for more on 9/11 environmental issues that many of you probably already know here

Farewell, Falwell...

2007-05-15T23:37:00.001-07:00

Farewell, Fallwell...

It's always a tragedy in the human experience when one passes on to where ever one goes when one dies. We often look back upon people's lives and see what we have learned from someone, what they contributed to society over a lifetime. We tend to focus on the positive. But, it's also good to look at how one's words and deeds impacted others, not only for better, but also sometimes for worse. In terms of a greater sense of humanity and toleration for all our different ways of living in concert with each other on Earth (shall we say, more Jesus-like?), some folks are just more divisive and hurtful in sheer societal terms. Let's remember who the Fundamentalist, Christian, Televangelical, Moral Majority rockstar Jerry Falwell really was over the past several decades by examining some of his own thoughts and words. May we learn to transcend such divisive, disdainful discourse.

About the 9/11 attacks...“I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians, who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them who try to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”

About thinking critically- “Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions”

About gays and sexual preference- “AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”

About his peers- “Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan in America”

About public education- “Textbooks are Soviet propaganda” and "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"

About civil liberties protections for all Americans- “The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews”

About Jesus and Bin Laden- "I had a student ask me, 'Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?' Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed."

About women and equality- "It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening."

About the ERA and women again- "I listen to feminists and all these radical gals...These women just need a man in the house. That’s all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they’re mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They’re sexist. They hate men; that’s their problem."

About theocracy and his own distorted history of founding motives- "There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

About the Jews- "The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior."

About Islam- “I think Muhammad was a terrorist. I read enough by both Muslims and non-Muslims, [to decide] that he was a violent man, a man of war.”

About grown men and prostitutes- "Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them."

About the good fight against Satan and Liberals- "We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism ... we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today ... our battle is with Satan himself."

About loving thy neighbor- “...You’ve got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops and I am for the President—chase them all over the world, if it takes ten years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord.”

Farewell, Falwell. Any society that cherishes human compassion and decency, empathy and nonviolence, and freedom of thought and religion in any true sense will hardly miss ya.

Amen.

Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Misinformation

2007-04-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday, April 21st, 1:00 to 5:00 PM
"Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Misinformation"

Berkeley City College
2050 Center St., Berkeley, CA

An afternoon colloquium on recent historical public perception management, information control, and propaganda surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. The two sessions will focus on media coverage and misinformation around 9/11 issues with examples of case studies concerning the destruction of the WTC towers and Building 7. See link here for more info or here for a poster of the event.

Proceedings:

Session One - History and Context: A conversation between BCC history instructor Mickey S. Huff, MA, and KPFA's Guns and Butter host Bonnie Faulkner on the weaponization of information in U.S. history and media misinformation and alternative coverage on 9/11 issues;

Session Two - Case Studies and Misinformation: Architect Richard Gage, AIA, and research scientist Jim Hoffman, MFA, will focus on the role of media perception management and misinformation in cementing the official narrative of the 9/11 attack underlying the War on Terror -- particularly regarding the destruction of three WTC skyscrapers. Gage will present factual evidence challenging media and government reports on the "collapse" of the buildings while Hoffman will analyze various official accounts of misinformation and perception management.

Q&A will follow each session. Critical thinking is highly encouraged.

The event is part of the History of U.S. Media class for BCC's Global Studies Program and is sponsored by Project Censored, KPFA's Guns and Butter, SF911Truth, Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, and Scholars for 911 Truth and Justice. The event is free and open to the public and is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: mythinfo@mac.com

Participants:
Bonnie Faulkner, producer and host of Guns & Butter, a one-hour public affairs program that is broadcast every Wednesday from1:00pm to 2:00pm on Pacifica's KPFA Radio in Berkeley, 94.1FM. The program regularly analyzes the events of September 11th, 2001 as a pretext for permanent war, including the phony war on terror, and the rationale for the emergence of a militarized police state. Guns & Butter regularly covers in-depth analysis of geopolitics, capitalism, war and state sponsored terror, in addition to programming on other subjects including Africa, China, genetic engineering, etc. Prior to joining KPFA, she was a co-producer of Project Censored's monthly public affairs radio documentary, "For The Record." (www.gunsandbutter.net)

Richard Gage, AIA, has been an architect for 20 years and has designed numerous fire-protected steel-framed buildings. He is employed with a San Francisco Bay Area architecture firm currently performing Construction Administration for a new local $120M High School campus. He became interested in the 9/11 WTC high-rise “Collapses” after hearing the startling conclusions of a reluctant 9/11 researcher, David Ray Griffin, on KPFA radio in May of 2006 which changed his life radically and launched his own unyielding quest for 9/11 Truth, and inspired him to found the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (www.ae911truth.org).

Jim Hoffman, MFA, has been researching the September 11, 2001 attack since the spring of 2003, when he began creating the now-acclaimed 9-11 Research website. On September 11, 2003, Hoffman gave the first in a series of talks, The Twin Towers' Demolition, exposing the fraudulence of the official collapse investigations and providing direct evidence of demolition. A software developer by profession, Hoffman performed pioneering work in mathematical visualization and has co-authored articles in Science and Macromolecules for work in polymer science. (http://911research.wtc7.net/)

Mickey S. Huff, MA, is adjunct faculty in history and critical thinking at Berkeley City College, Chabot College, and Diablo Valley College. He is co-director of the alternative polling group Retropoll (www.retropoll.org) and a Community Evaluator for Project Censored. He has been teaching the course “America, 9/11, and the War on Terror: Foreign/Domestic Policy, Media, and Propaganda” as part of critical thinking in history classes for the past 4 years as well as “History of U.S. Media.” Most recently, he has participated at a number of conferences on 9/11 issues including "Lifting the Fog: The Scientific Method applied to the World Trade Center Disaster;" Project Censored Annual Media Accountability Conference on “Suppression of Information and Post-9/11 Invasions;” ACME Coalition Conference, Champlain College in Burlington, VT, "Facing the Media Crisis: Media Education for Reform, Justice, and Democracy;" and at St. Mary's College public lecture series

Retropoll Begins New Poll

2007-04-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

Impeachment and Retro Poll
Retropoll

Retro Poll exposes how the misrepresentation of public opinion works; and how that misrepresentation undermines US democracy.

Long before John Zogby asked the question, Retro Poll asked a national random sample in November, 2003 whether President Bush’s misleading the public and Congress in order to take the country into war was grounds for impeachment. Retro Poll asked this question again in April, 2004. In the first cases 40% said yes. In the second 39%.

Long before PIPA (University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes) compared peoples knowledge of whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, worked with Al Qaeda and was associated with the 9/11 attack and then compared their knowledge with their willingness to go to war against Iraq, Retro Poll had already done exactly that. In October 2002 before the U.S.invasion, we asked these necessary factual and opinion questions on this topic and reported that 2/3 of misinformed people would support an attack while 80% of the well informed people opposed going to war. In so doing, Retro Poll--for the first time--revealed how corporate media’s “spin”—not beliefs or ideology—was the more strongly related to the molding of USpublic opinion. And there is a lot more.

If you’ve never heard of us, go to www.retropoll.org and learn exactly how the corporate media use public opinion polling to distort the public’s views about most everything. If you come away still believing that most people are “conservative” or “moderate” or “apathetic,” you may need more work on your critical thinking skills. Before you ever again think of saying that the average American doesn’t care about war, peace, justice, look at Retro Poll. We may help you understand a different truth and beyond that, how the cultural distortion is effected.

Please join our e-mail list at Retropoll. And if you want to be a volunteer pollster between April 20-29, e mail mythinfo@mac.com

Iraq and a Hard Place: Lies and Impeachment

2007-04-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

For those with short memories, it is good to go back in the recent past and reexamine how we came about our present state of affairs. One case in point, a pivotal issue in global terms, is the U.S. occupation of Iraq. We were told by the Vice President we'd be greeted as liberators. A new book by Iraqi government insider, Ali Allawi, decires U.S. bungling of his country and exposes the Bush policy folly there. But, it's not just the bungling that's at issue here, it's the lies that brought us.

Of course, there are many cases for impeachment that could be brought by a tepid congress. Iraq is only one of many
reasons for impeachment. For an expanded list of 25 reasons for impeaching Bush, please consider these issues.

As part of the National Boycott to Impeach Committeee, let me share with you an abbreviated list of the Bush administration's OFFICIAL LIES...and this is just about Iraq. For more details on how to join this week long shopping boycott for impeachment between April 15th and the 22nd, please support the We Are Not Buying It campaign and do what you can before it's too late!

And now, our leaders...trust them.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

- Dick Cheney, August 26 2002

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

- George W. Bush, September 12 2002

"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."

- Ari Fleischer, December 2 2002

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

- Ari Fleischer, January 9 2003

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

- George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28 2003

"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."

- Colin Powell, February 5 2003

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons."

- George Bush, February 8 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

- George Bush, March 17 2003

"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes."

- Ari Fleischer, March 21 2003

"There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them."

- Gen. Tommy Franks, March 22 2003

"We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

- Donald Rumsfeld, March 30 2003.

"Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

- Bush in October 2002.

"Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."

- Bush in January 2003 State of the Union address.

"Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."

- Bush in February 2003.

"… sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network."

Powell in his U.N. speech prior to the Iraq War.

"We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda."

Bush in May 2003.

Stated that the Iraqis were "providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization."

- Cheney in September 2003.

"Saddam had an established relationship with Al Qaeda, providing training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional weapons."

- Cheney in October 2003.

Cheney said Saddam "had long established ties with Al Qaeda."

- June 14, 2004.

Bush said, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

- June 17, 2004

Spies R U.S.

2007-03-09T20:05:00.001-08:00

For years now Bu$hCo. have told the American public to "trust" them--from the election of 2000 and 9/11 to the War on Terror in its entirety. And they've mislead, disinformed, and lied almost every time. Remember the wire tap scandals of the past year plus? Well check out this...

More fun with spies r u.s. All the more reason to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act and begin hearings for impeachment. That's what the Constitution says.

And if lies and spies are not enough, hypocrisy is always a fine topper. Check out live on the backburner stage, Newt In-Congress and the Impeachments...

As if what we already knew wasn't enough.

More soon...

2007-03-08T10:41:00.001-08:00

Busy as bees...back soon for more fun with Mythinfo!

Just need a little Feith for the Surge

2007-02-13T23:32:00.000-08:00

Wow...a big break in posts, but so much has been going on, it's rough to know where to even begin...what would Molly say?

Iraq war architect, neocon, (and, according to General Tommy Franks, "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the Earth,")Doug Feith had a stellar weekend for being so, well, dumb. Even Fox News, a friendly camp, couldn't believe his capacity to deny reality about the mess in Iraq and pre-war intel gaffes. But, from Iraq to maybe Iran, we should have Feith in the surge? Not. Newsflash. The Feithfool need some time for reflection.

What a past couple of weeks! From the lies of Doug Feith to the current leaked GOP memo about how to continue distortion about Iraq and America's "enemies" abroad...so the GOP will solve Iraq's troubles by changing the subject. Red Herring anyone? My critical thinking students should be salivating over these free examples of logical fallacies in the public arena...meaning those cited specifically above ;)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. the MSM yawns over Feith and fawns over Anna Nicole Smith. When will we care about government lies that aren't about oral sex or blonde bombshells (from Clinton back to JFK, both Dems, hmmmm)?

But wait. Maybe we should broaden the picture? Just what does democracy mean anyway? Maybe this...

And...Historically, where are our purportedly "American" values of human rights and personal liberty? How about plain old dignity or integrity? Hmmm...

Just some things to consider...

R.I.P. Molly Ivins...

2007-01-31T20:26:00.000-08:00

Molly Ivins died today. A terirble loss for American journalism and for anyone who longs for a just society run by competant, caring individuals (rather than what we usually get).

So many of her pieces said so much so concisely it's difficult to imagine how to begin to fill her big, Texas-sized, muckraking shoes.

Good bye, M.I. You will be sorely missed.

Molly Ivins, In Her Own Words.

Molly's Self-description

“I don’t have an agenda, I don’t have a program. I’m not a communist or a socialist. I guess I’m a left-libertarian and a populist, and I believe in the Bill of Rights the way some folks believe in the Bible.”

Her Final column: Iraq

“Every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them, and that’s why we’re trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets. Bang pots and pans. Demand, ‘Stop it, now!’ ”

Well Wishes for Molly Ivins

2007-01-30T16:27:00.000-08:00

Long beloved independent, muckraking, Texas journalist Molly Ivins is currently battling cancer. She has been one of few consistently truthful and powerful commentators on Shrub (as she coined him) since his days as TX governor. Molly's unique, vernacular, tell-it-how-she-sees-it approach is one we could use more of...for more information, see the following links.

Texas Observer

Harvey Wasserman's piece

See some of Molly's columns here and here.

Defend a Free Press

2007-01-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

Since the Bush regime arrived on the scene, and more so after 9/11, Americans have been treated to unprecedented amounts of government and private sector propaganda. From framing 9/11 as an "opportunity" to the bogus connections betwwen Osama and Saddam; from Armstrong Williams and No Child Left Behind to Judy Miller and WMD's, we've all been treated to one lie and half truth after another. Now the Bushies are continuing their assault on the constitution with further attacks on journalsits to create a chilling effect concerning the first amendment- this time with Sarah Olson.

There is a great piece below by PR Watch's John Stauber that really sums up how big of a problem this is for our democratic institutions, especially a now defunct people's press and a virtually totally corporate controlled media. The watchdogs of power are in the lap of power and licking themselves all the way.

See Stauber's piece here. And, read Phil Donahue's urge for supporting Olson and free press rights here.

UPDATE 1/30/07

Two charges dropped against Watada- Olson seems to be spared (for the moment).

A History of Media in the United States

2007-01-26T22:57:00.000-08:00

A new class at Berkeley City College, Spring 2007!

Welcome Spring semester, 2007, Berkeley students! There are many links on the blog that may (or may not) prove useful to you! Feel free to browse around and I'll make mention or send e mails when there may be posts/issues of particular interest for class. There's much to cover on selected topics...and away we go!

Books can be had from Revolution Books on Channing and Telegraph. Course texts include:

1) McChesney, Robert. The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century
2) Phillips, Peter. Censored 2007: The Top 25 Censored Stories
3) Snow, Nancy. Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech, and Opinion Control Since 9-11

Here are some links to course author sites:

Free Press Media Reform

Speaking Truth to Power

Project Censored

Snow Machine

Some sites of interest I am involved with include those from my 1/7/07 post on this site. Also, of course, several links to the right of the page...more to come (and all included in class handouts which include links from far left to right on media issues and commentators). Remember, we'll be meeting 1/27, 2/24, 3/10, 3/24, 4/21, and 5/5. Looking forward!

I'd like to digress for a moment. Below are some additional links from a wide variety of angles on media and history- history of media, history and media, and media technology and its impact upon politics, culture, and society. Even though the course, History 46E, focuses on media and its relation to democratic institutions and the public from past to present, there are interesting approaches to using new media to better understand and teach about the past and forge into the future as well. Our interests for the course are different than the links below pursue, as we'll use more of a sociological history of media and its impact on self governance and the importance of a free press in democratic culture. However, here are some interesting examples we won't have much time to deal with that pertain more to media technology and its historical development...just fun fast food for thought. So, the course is NOT about a history of media technology...just a clarification. Still, these may be of interest to some.

Media History

The International Association for Media and History

History of Media Technology

Media Initiatives in History

Epic film

Media History Journal

Of course, there are many other links in the syllabus we WILL be using...Here's to a great term! Check again for updates! And more tangents...

Cheers!

MSH

Where's this Speech Today?

2007-01-22T20:39:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King was a man of many interests. He understood the interlocking and interrelated nature of the struggles against injustice. While most know him from the struggle for civil rights and equality, many do not know or forget his staunch opposition to wars of imperialist aggression, in particular, to wars against the third world and people of color, fought by disproportionate numbers of the poor and people of color in the United States.

Indeed, who among our political circles today would give this speech? Obama? Hillary? Richardson? Biden? Unlikely. Where is the oppositional leadership today? Selling out to new corporate lobbyists maybe.

MLK text

MLK speech

Welcome Molly Luna!

2007-01-18T00:34:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, January 14th, my wife and I had our first child, our daughter, Molly Luna! See details!

Life on the Plantation...

2007-01-18T00:21:00.000-08:00

Bill Moyers' address to the Media Reform Conference in Memphis can't be missed...

"Worrying about the loss of real news is not a romantic cliché of journalism. It has been verified by history: from the days of royal absolutism to the present, the control of information and knowledge had been the first line of defense for failed regimes facing democratic unrest." BM

Fight on at Reality Checker!

More to come...Media Reform is the central issue at hand on all topical fronts.

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of
speech.” Benjamin Franklin

“Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe.” Abraham Lincoln

“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth” -- Siddhartha

The Forgotten War at Home...

2007-01-13T16:54:00.000-08:00

With all the hub bub about staying the course, surge in troops, and we must perservere rhetoric abounding in Washington (and echoed throughout corporate media), it's easy to be distracted from the war at home. What is happening here, in America, to Americans? What is the true cost of war? But this isn't just about corporate oligarchies and transnationals, per se. It's about their control of information, too!

Here's some wisdom to ponder...

Published on Saturday, January 13, 2007
The Boiling, Surging, Churning and Corporatizing Economy of the United States
by Ralph Nader

The boiling, surging, churning and corporatizing economy of the United States is racing far ahead of its being understood by political economists, economists, politicians and the polis itself. Tidbits from the past week add up to this view, to wit:

--The giant, shut-down Bethlehem steel plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania will soon become a $600 million casino and hotel complex. With tens of millions of Americans lacking the adequate necessities of food, fuel, shelter, health care and a sustaining job, this project is part of a 25 year trend by the economy, moving away from necessities and over to wants and whims. Among the fastest growing businesses for three decades in America are theme parks, gambling casinos and prisons.

--Our Constitution launched "we the people" to "establish justice, .promote the general welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves." We're losing ground year after year on all three accounts. Yet to what does Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. devote his /entire/ annual report on the federal judiciary this January 1, 2007? He called for a pay raise for judges, calling the current pay ranging from $165,200 to $212,000 (with a great retirement plan) a "constitutional crisis."

--General Motor has introduced yet another prototype electric car-called the Chevrolet Volt-to distract attention from its ongoing engine stagnation and provide a little cover for its gas guzzling muscle cars displayed at the Detroit Auto Show. This procrastinatory tactic by GM has been going on since the 1939 New York World's Fair to keep people looking far into the amorphous future so as to not focus on the dismal today year after year while gasoline prices sky rocket and oil imports swell. We're still waiting for some of GM's engineering prototypes from 1939 to hit the road in the 21^st century.

--Just as there are stirrings behind more shareholder rights over the companies they own and more disclosure by management of large corporations relating to executive pay and accounting information, the rapid rise of huge pools of capital controlled by private equity firms and Hedge Funds are buying larger and larger public companies and taking them out of the regulatory arenas into secrecy.

Corporate morphing to escape public accountability has been going on for a long time. Note the coal corporations digging deep under residential streets in Pennsylvania and other neighboring states decades ago. As the homes began to cave in (this is called 'subsidence'), the coal companies disappeared by collapsing themselves only to be succeeded by their next of (corporate) kin.

Today, this corporate morphing is far more ranging and far larger in the economy, drawing trillions of dollars from pension funds and institutional investor firms which themselves are largely closed off from workers and small investors whose money they shuffle around. Corporate attorneys are super-experts in arranging ways for corporate capital to escape not just the tax laws of the U.S. but also the public regulatory frameworks of the Securities and Exchange Commission and other public "law and order" entities.

Independent and academic corporate analysts have barely begun to figure out the consequences of this seismic shift of capital structures.

--"Private Firms Lure C.E.O.'s With Top Pay" was the headline in the January 8^th edition of /The New York Times/. The subtitle was astonishingly worded as "Less Lavish Packages at Public Companies." The reporters go on to say, in essence, if you think that Home Depot's departed C.E.O., Robert L. Nardelli's $200 million plus take home pay package was a lot, you haven't seen what's happening behind the curtains at the large private equity firms buying up ever bigger public companies. "Public company chieftains are deciding that they no longer want to be judged by their shareholders and regulators, and are going to work for businesses owned by private equity," write the authors.

One such migrant executive, Henry Silverman, went from big riches running the conglomerate Cendant, to making $135 million just from selling one piece of Cendant, Realogy, to a private equity firm. "There is no reason to be a public company anymore," said this happy corporate prophet.

Now go to the other side of the tracks. In the last quarter century the value of the U.S. corporations has risen 12-fold, according to /The Wall Street Journal. /C.E.O. pay has skyrocketed similarly. But workers today, on average, are still making less, in inflation adjusted dollars, than workers made in 1973-the high point of worker wages!

Citing data from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, /New York// Times'/ columnist, Bob Herbert, reports that between 2000 and 2006 the combined real annual earnings of 93 million American workers rose by $15.4 billion. That rise is "less than half of the combined bonuses awarded by the five Wall Street firms for just one year."

Class warfare in reverse is what's going on. The super rich and their corporations against the workers, redistributing the workers' wealth into their own pockets and coffers. Mr. Herbert frequently frets about no one in the political parties saying or doing anything about this state of despair. He defines "political parties" as the two major Parties, though knowing full well that there are smaller parties and independent candidates who have campaigned across the country trumpeting the need for economic justice in very specific terms.

So long as most progressive writers ignore these people in the electoral arenas who are laboring to break down the barriers that keep these issues of economic justice over corporate power abuses from moving into elections and government, they will be bellowing in the wind.

Social justice movements in the United States have come from small starts that are duly recognized.

--So, where are the corporate media and "liberal" elite? Where is the free press protected by the first amendment? Where are the muckrakers of days of old? In Memphis! Free Press lives on! We must do what we can to support it.

Without knowledge among the general populace there is little power to the people. Without intelligent action, there is no road to a better world. If information is the life's blood of a democracy, then the U.S. is badly in need of a transfusion.

Happy New Year Again!

2007-01-07T17:56:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder of some great sites to visit! More soon...

Retropoll

Whose News

Lifting The Fog

9/11 Scholars for Truth and Justice

Old Crit Think Blog

More upcoming on the importance of a free press...here are some interesting quotes on just that!

Retropoll Launches New Blog!

2007-01-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

Check details for the alternative polling group Retropoll.

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

Thomas Paine

Let's get busy!

Happy New Year! You've Got Mail and the Leader Wants to Read It!

2007-01-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

"A time comes when silence is betrayal." - Rev. Martin Luther King

We must be slient as a people no more.

Just in time to ring in the new year, Bush, in yet another signing statement (close to 800 now), claimed the right to snoop though our mail without a warrant. All in the name of liberty. All in the name of security. Feel safe yet?

Just like with phone tapping, data mining/trolling, no fly lists, suspension of Habeas Corpus, and the like, Bush claims he is above the law, that's what a signing statement is. It states how the president will execute a particular law through his own interpretation, not the courts' or congress. He's the decider. He makes decisions with war on his mind. But why does it seem like he is at war with his own country and the constitution ("It's just a god-damned piece of paper" W once blurted). See here, too. Welcome to the fourth reich... Let's take a peek behind the curtain, shall we? We may not like what we see.

Like it or not, and the ridiculous of historical analogies aside (i.e. Bush is not Hitler and we are not Nazis), it is difficult not to notice how much we are sharing in terms of political dynamics with faultering Weimar Germany through the 1930's (read Milton Meyer's "They Thought They Were Free," William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," maybe Friendly Fascism by Bertram Gross, or even Sinclair Lewis "It Can't Happen Here"). Fascism is a movement and force of government that comes from a democratic structure and mutates into, well, something like this and this. The three part series from Heather Wokucsh, just prior, is quite instructive with all its links, though it is difficult to have a reasonable discussion due to possible red herrings, hysteria, and paranoia. However, if the fish fits...endless wars, spiraling debt, curtailment of rights...

"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it." - Alexis de Tocqueville

Remember that Benito Musolini once stated, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Corporatism. We should really ponder what that means today in America. We should look at the military industrial complex and it's impact on American democracy. We should notice the effects. They are not hard to measure.

Let's hope for a better world in '007. Not off to such a great start in the Old American Century. Checks (and Balances) are in the mail...

Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism (with a segue on media)

2006-12-26T16:38:00.000-08:00

Watch Howard Zinn's recent lecture on the importance of History given in Madison, WI here. A great speech by a great scholar of our times. We should learn the lessons of history.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." - Karl Marx

Where does that put us?

Professor Zinn reminds us of the importance of the past and how it informs both thought and action in the present. We should also note that other than educational institutions, Media play a crucial role in shaping much of the American public mind. An overwhelming majority of Americans get their information about the world from television media (which is dominated by advertisers and corporate interests). So...what kind of information is it?

Soon, there will be a few entries on media here in preparation for teaching History of U.S. Media at Berkeley City College next semester. As an historian, it is important to realize the significance of media and information control in democratic societies. Media, and mass media in particular, don't just shape the present, they interpret the past and forge the future. Media, therefore, often construct the first draft of history. We should pay attention to what media institutions say say about key issues of the day; what media reporters omit, distort, deny; and where that path leads. George Orwell once wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past." That Who is our Wizard of Media Oz. Pull back the curtains! What do we find?

Why when we hear things on the "news" do many of us say, "no, that couldn't be...our government would never do that?" We are conditioned to trust the experts. But remember, "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." Telling the truth today about 9/11, the Iraq War, or the spiraling debt crisis and a shrinking middle class is often met with admonition and calls of unAmericansim. Such denial is not healthy. That's why we need a protected free press, now more than ever. We need to let loose the sycophantic lapdogs of corporate media and reclaim the reigns of democracy at the hands of the people with a people's journalism, a public media, and let the truth ring. Even some of our elitist founders and famous politicos agreed...as Zinn would note--

"No people can be both ignorant and free."
--Thomas Jefferson

"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
--James Madison

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood
in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
-- John F. Kennedy

Zinn's favorite I.F. Stone quote is a good reminder as well: all government's lie. And often, the media help.

Better yet, riffing on that point more personally...as philospher Bertrand Russell once said, "Never lie to yourself." That's the root of it all. When we accept this, lying becomes intolerable in all forms, especially institutionally and societally.

But, Rabindranath Tagore put it best..."Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend." Arthur Schopenhauer once put it this way, "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Or, as Peter Phillips of Project Censored likes to say, "First they ignore you, then they attack you, then you win." Media moguls beware! Citizen democracy is on the ascent. Media literacy and knowledge of the past are the path to action. See more links to the right with ACME, FAIR, Media Matters, Project Censored, Retropoll, and...

More to come...more ponder. The revolution will not be televised.

Impeachment Bill Introduced...at last!

2006-12-08T17:34:00.000-08:00

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - George Orwell

Like that it's time for...the I word. Impeachment. The F word. Fascism.

The time is nigh for telling the current leaderscript the are Guilty of high crimes and...well, higher ones! It is now time to go! Forget the Clinton BJ. War crimes and unconstitutional acts are another matter.

So, at long last, a true patriot and follower of the constitution is here.

McKinney introduces impeachment bill...wonder if anyone will notice? Symbolic, but necessary given the criminal record of BushCo.

See the text here.

More on the recent developments and background can be found here.

Three cheers for the rule of law...now watch a Democratic congress do nothing. Recent developments...Maybe they should take former Nixon counsel John Dean's advice. That would be a good start. Pelosi should be reminded of how democracy works.

Buy Nothing Day!

2006-11-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

Escape Black Friday! Buy Nothing Day is here!

Forget crass PR stunts that reinforce the critical ideal of consumption in post-industrial, neoliberal societies!

Think! Resist! Don't just shop like automatonic lemmings rushing off the cliffs of the next fashionable trends brought to you by another capitalistically co-opted bank holiday! Don't be a slave to your manufactued desires! Remember Aldous Huxley! Remember Neil Postman!

Come, shoppers of the world...you have nothing to lose but your high interest credit card debts (and invisible chains)! Chop chop, not shop shop!

Tis the season for reason...Give it a try...Check out Adbusters for more or Naomi Klein's No Logo site on standing up to the brand bullies!

Let's go! Say Know to the Brave New World Disorder...

The Fog has been Lifted...

2006-11-17T09:01:00.000-08:00

"To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains." - Mary Pettibone Poole

Well, at least it was a start...and only the third science based conference on 9/11 in five years.

The Lifting the Fog conference at UC Berkeley on Novemeber 11th was quite a success! We had a packed house most of the day. Thanks to all that attended and made the event possible!

You can find full audio/video of the event here.

Cheers to all those that think science and the facts still matter, especially about 9/11.

More to come...polished DVD's of the event will be available within a couple months. Stay tuned...

Lifting the Fog

2006-11-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

The Scientific Method Applied to the World Trade Center Disaster

Welcome! The Lifting the Fog conference is here!

Summary
WHAT: An academic conferece, open to the public, using principles of scientific inquiry to examine the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 and the environmental fallout at Ground Zero

WHEN: November 11, 2006; 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM (Four sessions, free and open to the public!)

WHERE: Chan Shun Auditorium, Valley Life Science Building, University of California at Berkeley

The past year has seen a rapid expansion of interest in alternatives to the official story of the 9/11 attack in both popular culture and professional and academic circles. Unfortunately, media coverage of this phenomenon has highlighted speculative claims, focused on personalities, and has generally attempted to discredit challenges to the Official Story.

The Lifting the Fog Conference will provide a focused, principled, and rigorous examination of the many unanswered questions surrounding the destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers. Using the extensive bodies of surviving evidence that document these events, Conference presenters will apply the time-tested scientific method to evaluate the evidence and theories of the destruction of the buildings.

In addition to tackling the controversial questions of what brought the skyscrapers down, the Conference will provide a session devoted to the developing story of the public health catastrophe of exposures to the Ground Zero environment. The fact that the EPA allowed politics to eclipse science in their issuance of false assurances that the air was safe to breathe is a sobering example of the fallacy of trusting official conclusions regarding highly charged political events being used to justify wars.

The Conference format will feature presenters who are well qualified in pertinent scientific and engineering issues, making visually enhanced presentations of about 60-70 minutes. Each presentation will be followed by a moderated session inviting audience participation.

Materials available inside the conference will be limited to books, articles, pamplets, and multimedia recordings such as DVDs and CDs which feature conference participants and are approved by the Steering Committee.

What a Program!

SESSION 1 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ground Zero Exposures and Health Impacts
What were the conditions in and around Ground Zero following the attack, and how did officials respond?

Presenters: Nate Mudd, Jenna Orkin, Janette MacKinlay
Respondent: Mickey S. Huff

SESSION 2 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Analysis of the World Trade Center Destruction
What can be learned from analysis of the physical features of the total destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7? Are there natural processes that could explain these features?

Presenters: Steven Jones
Respondent: TBA

SESSION 3 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Critique of Official Collapse Theories of the Twin Towers
What are the official collapse theories? Can they account for the total collapses and for specific features documented by physical evidence? How scientific were the investigations that produced these theories?

Presenters: Jim Hoffman, Kevin Ryan (video excerpts only)
Respondent: TBA

SESSION 4 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Highlights and Panel Discussion:
What conclusions can be made about the destruction of the World Trade Center using science, and what are the implications?

Presenters: Steven Jones, Jim Hoffman, Paul Rea, Jenna Orkin, Janette MaKinlay
Respondent: Peter Phillips

Come one come all! Fun for the whole family! Not to be missed! Check the website for details.

For more information on the topic:

**See more 9/11 research from Jim Hoffman and others here.

**See articles pertaining to the science presented at the conference from Steven Jones here.

**See Jenna Orkin's work here.

**And, see Peter Phillips' piece on the Global Dominance Group here.

Hope to see you there!

We've Never Been Stay the Course...Dunk Away!

2006-10-29T10:13:00.000-08:00

"Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - George Orwell

Welcome back to never never land. Just when one thought incredulity of Bush commentary could rise no higher, we have this gem. Last week, in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulus, Bush said that his administration has never been "stay the course" on Iraq. This after the past few years of saying nothing but "stay the course." See here.

But here are some lowlights...

Bush: ‘We’ve Never Been Stay The Course’

During an interview today on ABC’s This Week, President Bush tried to distance himself from what has been his core strategy in Iraq for the last three years. George Stephanopoulos asked about James Baker’s plan to develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’”

Bush responded, ‘We’ve never been stay the course, George!’

Bush is wrong:

BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]

BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]

BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]

BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]

BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]

BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]

STEPHANOPOULOS: James Baker says that he’s looking for something between “cut and run” and “stay the course.”

BUSH: Well, hey, listen, we’ve never been “stay the course,” George. We have been — we will complete the mission, we will do our job, and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting to tactics. Constantly.

Let's see that again to belive it.

If that utter revisionism isn't enough, check out the recent amazing semantic juggling by the VP in charge, Cheney. Dick talks about the "no-brainer" (using water or a dunk in extracting info from detainees). Good thing for him that Bush passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Enter damage control. Squealer, aka Tony Snow(job), blows the spin, claiming nothing of the sort happened...nothing to see here...move along. Just when one thought things couldn't get stranger, the Orwellian Minitrue spew just keeps on coming!

See here or here or here or here! No biggie, right? Torture. It's the new Habeas Corpus. Or, better yet, as the LA Times Howard Rodman recently put it, McCarthyism without due process.

Just wave a magic wand and the past is not just forgotten, it's changed to match present agendas. Opportunistic flip flopping galore. Let the sheeple beware.

Nevermind the old Clintonian debates over what the meaning of "is" is. We've yet again surprisingly reached new ground in absurdity and outright lies. Who will notice? Stay tuned November 7. But, don't hold your breath. Many Dems have been marching to the same draconian beat of that same imperial drummer and many in the public simply continue to fiddle while the rest of the world burns.

Hard to say it better than this...

2006-10-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

Pat Tillman gave up his NFL career to fight the so-called war on terror. He was killed in Afghanistan and was given hero status. The Bush administration lied about the nature of his death to his family and the public while they used him as a poster boy of courage, especially to recruit more young people to die in far away lands for ill defined and often factless purposes. However, Pat was killed by his own troops with "friendly fire." Would it be we all had such friends...and the lies and charades of our government and it's illegal war go on. In fact, there is some evidence of dissent in the ranks which cloud circumstances of Pat's death even more (especially since he grew to oppose the war!). The Tillman family has expressed their feelings of betrayal in public many times. Most in media have unfortunately yawned, as in virually all the cases of recent government scandal and deception.

Here is what Pat's brother, Kevin, who served with him, had to say about Pat on the occasion of his would-be upcoming birthday and on what is happening to the country they both served.

Hard to put it better than Kevin. Abroad we have endless wars against invisible enemies while mounting massive civillian casualties, and at home lies and deceit to justify the disintigration of our entire legal culture and tradition. As the Marine Major General Smedley Butler stated in the 1935 classic, War is a Racket. Just look at how much our country is sliding backwards...Kevin has noticed. Have we?

Historian Howard Zinn reminds us why war fails and states in "Just War,"

"Perhaps it will take a combination of factors to end war. It will become intolerable for the people and impractical for the Establishment. And the crucial factor making it impractical will be, as it was for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the United States in Vietnam, that the citizens of the war-making nations will no longer tolerate the deaths of their offspring and the theft of their national wealth. There is still time to make this twenty-first century different from the last century. But we must all play a part."

Let's get busy...

More to Come...Hopefully not all bad...

2006-10-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

Just back from all the travels, grading, and the busy busy...plus the upcoming big show.

Soon to come...9/11, Dogmatic Purity, and False Populism; 9/11 and collective memory; and a public lecture on 9/11, Propaganda, and the Culture of Fear here.

Meahwhile...Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. So sad. And don't forget...Torture is wrong. America shrugs...and then this...

What of charges of possible genocide? The Bush administration denied accounts while offering no explanation. The media have yawned. The new Military Commission Act covered everyone's asses, just like Alberto Gonzales said it would.

Even conservative estimates are double the Bush administration figures, which don't cite any sources. No accountability. No transparancy. No democracy. October surprises galore.

It is very difficult to call any of this "progress." Though the folks at Faux Knews (aka, Fox) sit and spin with all their might...

History could teach us a thing or two...

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)

2006-09-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

Remember Amerika's Metamorphosizing Values? Recent developments...

Unbelievable.

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006) It's only been 791 years, but WE know best. Time to go.

Molly Ivins was right. Say it again. Habeas Corpus, R.I.P.

Who in the hell are we? OR at least, who the hell are these people in congress? Retroactive immunity for torture and no rights of the accused...

Backwards, before the New Deal, beyond the Robber Barons, and onto 1214...back we go to the fall of Rome.

What a disgrace.

And now...beat this!!! As if that wasn't bad enough...get a load of this...

Spy time, too.

Geneva conventions, anyone? WTF?
History and this issue?
Ah, like, the Magna Carta?

Everything that has happened since the fraudulent 2000 election and the "cataclysmic event" of 9/11/01 has paved this road to nowhere. We are there.

Remember the PNAC? New Pearl Harbor?

Follow the black gold road. And now we are in serious, serious trouble.

Are we on the slippery slope? Remember Pastor Martin Niemoeller, Nazi Germany?

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

So will this be many of US?

We must not let it be so.

Update: Stay tuned as there's more to come!

2006-09-25T09:22:00.000-07:00

A brief overview of what's to come shortly on 9/11 academic freedom, 9/11 collective memory, 9/11 physics, torture and the new "compromise," ongoing spying, media monopoly and official narrative propaganda in the US, the public opinion polling fraud, vote theft, and a great deal more!

Still working on the latest Retropoll, the upcoming ACME Coalition media conference in Burlington, VT, and the November 9/11 science conference in Berkeley, CA! Then there's teaching seven sections at three colleges, so, much is afoot!

Meanwhile, a fun link to a moderate voice blogger which has very interesting sections in the margins to right/left/center blogs. A place to hunt and peck.

And, of course, a link to weekly comics. Ah, a pattern of presentation emerges--we start our tantalizing yet bleak, cut to sponsors, sports, banter, weather, bobbing heads, chit chat, local updates, human interest story, end it lightly, cut and that's a wrap! It's just like the evening news!

Hoping for more updates this week.

Til soon...

Amerika's Metamorphosizing Values

2006-09-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

"As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities." - Voltaire

Since the advent of the absurdly titled Global War on Terror, many dystopic literary works have been applied to current life in America under George W. Bush. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley come to mind quickly for 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World. But another series of literary allusions include Franz Kafka. From his last unfinished work Amerika to earlier The Trial and, of course, Metamorphosis, Kafka explores a wide variety of the absurd in life, and indeed, in becoming victims of our own society's institutions, and in other instances, becoming that which we loathe. In fact, a blending of the aforementioned works has also been in vogue these past few strange years of tortured definitions and administration equivocation. While we argue at home about the potential efficacy of our illegalities under international law, torture in Iraq is said to be worse than under Saddam.

What is happening to our purported values of freedom, liberty, privacy, and due process? What about the Universal Declaration of Rights to which we profess to adhere? How does torture and violation of privacy fit in according to Bush (or Kafka)?

Again, reenter the current American crisis over the alleged quaintness of the Geneva conventions and stated outdatedness of the FISA law. Both of these provide ample ground for such dystopic literary allusion. While "debate" twists through congress on due process, culpability issues, prosecutorial protections, and invasive permissiveness of permissive invasiveness (try that one on, Rummy), our discourse has become quite debased. Our values are under attack, not from abroad, but from within.

To torture or not to torture? How can this be the question? To spy or not to spy? How can this be the question? In the post 9/11 Amerika, it seems most of all that our professed values have been the main victims of our actual policies. If this is so, then we will be next. Our American way of life will follow, like lemmings we go further and further off the cliff of reason.

We need to take notice. We need to act. We need to say no to torture and warrantless spying. We need to define who we are as a people. We cannot allow ourselves to languish in an Orwellian Kafkaesque hell. We are not a country merely of government elites. We the people should decide the laws and policies. We should seek universal applications of justice and ought follow the rule of law, not change it to save renegade officials or justify inhumane and undemocratic acts. It's the only American thing to do. But...

The most recent developments concerning "compromises" are here.

Wishful Thinking Continues

2006-09-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

Just this past week, VP Dick Cheney told Tim Russert that if the administration had to do it all over again, they'd still have invaded Iraq. This after yet another report, this from the Republican controlled Senate, linked previously, indicating there were, in fact, no WMD's. Yet another study showed the Bush rationale for war was flat out wrong. But...

Dick said, no worries. We'd have done it anyway. This is what Paul Wolfowitz said just after the invasion, but most didn't pay much attention when he said it was just an excuse to garner public support for the war. Now almost everyone has said it, no WMD's, from the UN to a Republican congress. But Dick says there were WMD's, even reconstituted nuclear weapons. Dick, W, Rummy and Paul and General Myers even said we'd be greeted as liberators. Paul has moved on to the World Bank (cushy gig for time well served). Rummy has flip flopped more than an opportunistic candidate Kerry in an election year on Iraq. But not Dick. True lies to the end. Can't be confused by the facts it seems.

Again, some lowlights from USA Today April 1, 2003:

Changing rhetoric of war

* Feb. 7, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

* March 4, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a breakfast with reporters: "What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. . . . Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the '90s," when its forces were routed from Kuwait.

* March 11, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."

* March 16, Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle" and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside."

The war begins

* March 20, President Bush, in an Oval Office speech to the nation: "A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict."

* March 21, Rumsfeld, at a Pentagon news briefing: "The confusion of Iraqi officials is growing. Their ability to see what is happening on the battlefield, to communicate with their forces and to control their country is slipping away. . . . The regime is starting to lose control of their country."

* March 27, Bush, at a news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, when asked how long the war would take: "However long it takes. That's the answer to your question and that's what you've got to know. It isn't a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory."

* March 30, Myers, on Meet the Press: "Nobody should have any illusions that this is going to be a quick and easy victory. This is going to be a tough war, a tough slog yet, and no responsible official I know has ever said anything different once this war has started."

* March 30, Rumsfeld, on Fox News Sunday, when asked whether Iraqis would "celebrate in the streets" when victory is won: "We'll see."

We'll see. Or we'll see what we want to see. So, over three years later, why are these folks not held accountable for their colossal bungling?

Not only was the WMD business and all the pre-war wishful thinking about cakewalk nonsense, so too were the incessant remarks drawing links between Iraq and 9/11, which never existed (someone, quickly, tell Dick). There are, however, other links found between Iraq and 9/11 that prove to be interesting. Not what the administration has in mind probably.

Meanwhile, while we drone on and politicize one tragedy after another, here and abroad, and proselytize the masses from on high endlessly, Iraqis die to the tune of a new 9/11 every couple months.

A great new study/book just released from the PR Watch folks has more on all this. It's follow up to their Weapons of Mass Deception work. Really a must read, both books, for getting a grip on the propaganda war waged on the public here at home.

We should try to pay attention to facts. They do, after all, matter. We might even learn something. As the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore once said, "Truth comes as a conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as a friend." We really should try to make up with our old friend, the truth. Lives depend on it, on all sides of the aisle.

Remembering September the 11th

2006-09-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

In the recent past, we as a culture have often been told to remember 9/11, espeically on the run up to the fifth anniversary. But, what should we remember? Which memories do we honor? Omit? Deify? Distort? Attack? What are the facts, five years later? The previous post is but an introduction.

More on collective memory and 9/11 to come...some thoughts.

Meanwhile, an older piece on collective memory. The politics of how we remember and honor or commemorate our collective tragedies. Here's a thesis on a previous generations homeland insecurity, the Kent State shootings, May 4th, 1970. How were the memories of May Fourth used to provide meaning to the actual historical event? And in those memories told, who benefitted? Who paid? What of community, official, and vernacular views?

Thesis

On this anniversary, how do we remember 9/11? And how do we use what we know? What context are we allowing history to provide, and what are we denying it to manifest? In other words, we remember, for better or worse. And moreover, how do we speak about 9/11 and the so-called war on terror? What are we framing with metaphors of war? A recent George Lakoff piece addresses this in more detail. Dropping the war metaphor and reclaiming vernacular views. High time. We need to move to a more democratically interactive historical construction if we are to truly be a free society.

Stayed tuned...if you want.

Osama who? Greg Palast Smoked Out and Charged!

2006-09-11T23:06:00.000-07:00

Five years on and no Osama. We're not really even looking. But, that was the first priority after 9/11, remember? Or no? Further, no successful prosecutions for Terrorism. It's amazing. But we still have plenty of resources to go after others...

Palast Charged

We've long abandoned the search for Osama. The Taliban is on the rise. Falluja isn't secured, nor much outside Baghdad, and even within, things are ugly. We've stopped counting BOTH U.S. and Iraq deaths in Iraq unless they are a direct result of a deliberate attack, not collateral damage. It's been shown over and over there were no connections between Osama and Saddam. It's been shown there were no WMD's. Further, we jumped from $28 million spent on government PR under Clinton's last years to over $1 billion with Bush in the past few years. What is it we need convincing that costs that much? We've taken the world's sympathy at 9/11 and turned it to antipathy in five years flat, actually a few years less. We have more impoverished and uninsured and imprisoned than ever before. Our planet is changing and the climate growing worse. We have the highest infant mortality rate of all industrialized countries, and the highest incarceration rates. And we're worried about a guy filming Exxon pollute the air? Or a guy in an Oakland, CA gym talk about his dislike of the current war? Or a college student with posters on her wall critical of Bush as TX governor? Why? We're worried about this, the New McCarthyism, too?. A very partial, yet long and interesting list for our free society...Especially that no fly list! CAPPSII? Total Information Awareness? I mean Terrorist Information Awareness?

More to come on domestic impacts of the so-called war on terror.

Given even the few examples here, and the many more chronicled and available in a variety of media (links to right), it may be past time to reassess our priorities.