THE MEDIA ISSUES: ISSUE 7, VOLUME 14
HATERS
by Malik Isasis























Have you heard? Bush and his playmates want to play in Iran’s sand box. It is predicted that Israel and the United States will be warring with Iran before the next election. This news story is being buried under the wall-to-wall coverage of nonsense. Grown folks acting childishly, is what I originally wanted to call this entry, but Haters, seem more appropriate. The media alone has dusted up Reverend Jeremiah Wright again, and again has shown that they will go to any lengths to justify making Wright, the sun of Obama’s solar system, while Bush goes off and happily starts another war.

You tell me who has done more damage to this country, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, or Scooter Libby? Reverend Wright or former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales? Reverend Wright or Michael Brown? Reverend Wright or George Bush?

The corporate media praised George Bush for standing by Scooter Libby, even as he pardon him for outing a C.I.A agent; The corporate media blew kisses when Bush stood by the Architect of Abu Ghraib and mastermind of water boarding, Alberto Gonzales; Michael Brown (Federal Emergence Management Agency, or FEMA) of Hurricane Katrina was not only responsible for the response after the hurricane, but after he resigned due to the historical failure, he was hired back on as a consultant. The corporate media praises Bush for standing by his friends. Bush blows kisses and the corporate media winks and air-grabs them.

I would argue that Bush and his playmates have done much more harm to the American people, than say, a preacher from Chicago preaching against war and hatred. Here’s a FULLER context of Reverend Wright’s speech:



Remember, the media tried discrediting Martin Luther King when he spoke truth to power. Here we go again, with a very unimaginative, but very effective media psy-ops, to discredit just another angry black man in a long list of black social activists.

Black folks’ anger about their condition has to be pre-approved by the white corporate infrastructure. The continuing legacy of white supremacy is the belief that black folks, as well as others of color are white man’s burden. This Eurocentric view drives those who have bought into white supremacy to believe that white people consequently have an obligation to breakdown other cultures making them completely docile, thus, easier to rule over.

Barack Obama has kissed the brass ring of white supremacy by giving into an interview with Fox News. He has also become the angry black man the corporate press wanted him to be over Reverend Wright. Now they can later use it against him by saying, “Is Obama too angry?” Obama has now distanced himself from Wright, just as the corporate media wanted. This idea of wanting Obama to disown his former pastor to which he referred to as family, is akin to the American and European slaveholders and traders maintaining the broken spirit of stolen Africans, by separating him and her from their family groups, to avert an uprising.

What will the corporate media want next from Obama?

The corporate media has sanctioned Obama for NOT throwing his former pastor under the bus the first time, and embracing him as family. The price: nearly two months of a non-stop thirty second excerpt, looping over and over, and over of Reverend Wright’s fiery delivery of “…God damn America…” and an over appraisal of Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the nomination.

The media reports on Reverend Jeremiah Wright with their foot on the scale, and pretend that it is Obama’s problem. Well, it appears he's gotten the message.

But when will Democrats learn? They seem to be dense when it comes to dealing with neocons, the corporate press and Republicans. The Democrats try inoculating themselves from Republican criticism and curry favor with their critics by apologizing when asked, or disassociating themselves from their base. Have you ever seen a Republican disassociate himself from the Republican base? What Democrats fail to understand is that the Republican Party hates the Democratic Party and wants to destroy them. The more you give, the more they will take.

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THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 7, ISSUE 13
THE MEDIA INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
by Malik Isasis














President Dwight Eisenhower upon his last address to the country in 1961, coined the term, Military Industrial Complex, referring to the industries that begun dedicating themselves to full-time armament production. President Eisenhower, a military general, feared that those companies would create a perpetual need for their products by influencing the political process. Listen to Eisenhower’s speech:


If there is such a thing, Eisenhower was more than correct. The influence of the Military Industrial Complex has compromised our democracy, and its spiritual soul. Citizens can march in the hundreds of millions across the country and the world with no effect in influencing politicians on war policy. Politicians do as they will, with Military Industrialists acting as Iago in Othello’s ear. Surely, they whisper that using small conflicts is a way to test the latest and greatest weaponry.

Since the rise of the Military Industrial Complex at the end of World War II, the United States has been in a state of perpetual war--starting with Korea 1950-53, Indonesia, 1950-53, Guatemala 1950-53, Congo 1964, Cuba 1959-61 Vietnam 1961-73, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Lebanon 1982-83, Grenada 1983, El Salvador 1980, Libya 1986, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Iraq 1990-current. That’s 58 years and counting of non-stop warring.

The Rise of Industrial Complexes as Shadow Governments

Just as the rise of the Military Industrial Complex gave rise to Militarists, the Prison Industrial Complex gave rise to Mandatory Sentencing Laws, which for ambitious prosecutors would be a spring board into politics, e.g. Rudy Giuliani. Mandatory Sentencing Laws caused the population of people in prison for non-violent offenses to increase significantly. It became okay to treat children under 18 years of age as adults. In an Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch 157-page report, they found that 2,225 children, 16% of whom, were between the ages of 13 and 15 years old, serving life without parole.

The Mandatory Sentencing Laws effects African and Latino Americans disproportionately, and according to Human Rights Watch of the total population of 1,976,019 incarcerated in adult facilities, 1,239,946 or 63 percent are black or Latino, though these two groups constitute only 25 percent of the national population.

The Prison Industrial Complex is a mixture of government and corporate interests working in tandem, the more people that are incarcerated, the need for facilities to contain them, increases.

What is the most profitable industry in America? Weapons, oil and computer technology all offer high rates of return, but there is probably no sector of the economy so abloom with money as the privately run prison industry.

Consider the growth of the Corrections Corporation of America, the industry leader whose stock price has climbed from $8 a share in 1992 to about $30 today and whose revenue rose by 81 per cent in 1995 alone. Investors in Wackenhut Corrections Corp. have enjoyed an average return of 18 per cent during the past five years and the company is rated by Forbes as one of the top 200 small businesses in the country. At Esmor, another big private prison contractor, revenues have soared from $4.6 million in 1990 to more than $25 million in 1995.

Ten years ago there were just five privately-run prisons in the country, housing a population of 2,000. Today nearly a score of private firms run more than 100 prisons with about 62,000 beds. That's still less than five per cent of the total market but the industry is expanding fast, with the number of private prison beds expected to grow to 360,000 during the next decade.

Big Pharma

The Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, more commonly known as ‘Big Pharma’ refer to companies with revenue in excess of $3 billion, and/or R&D expenditure in excess of $500 million, and represents the first 30 or so companies in this list. There are 50 such companies.

In 2006 reporter Barbara Dreyfuss wrote an article in The American Prospect titled, INSIDE JOB. In the article she discussed the Medicare Drug Benefit Program, Bush’s ode to Big Pharma. The Medicare Drug Benefit Program basically guaranteed that the federal government wouldn’t use its leverage to negotiate lower drug prices with drug companies. Not surprisingly, the Republican congress rammed through the legislation., which Bush happily signed. Here are excerpts from her article:

Humana's profits jumped 10 percent, much better than Wall Street had anticipated, helped by a surge in seniors enrolling in Humana's Medicare drug and HMO plans. Membership in their drug program now stands at 3.46 million, up a million and a half in the last three months. This increase in enrollment brought Humana $801 million in new revenue…Simply put, the Medicare drug program has been good news for Humana. But for seniors who had hoped that the Medicare drug plan, which began in January, would relieve them of worries about drug costs, things are not so rosy. About one-fifth of seniors in the Medicare program, concentrated especially among the poor who had been on Medicaid, report that they now pay more for their medicines than they had before. Since insurers can decide which drugs they cover and which they won't, many seniors are finding that new medicines they need are not paid for by their plan. And millions of enrollees are now approaching the level of total drug expenses that will provoke a cutoff from any further Medicare help with costs -- the now-infamous "donut hole."

Since the bill's passage, insurers have benefited further from how the Bush administration has implemented the program. For example, while the government is supposed to reclaim excess profits from companies, the administration has built in a profit margin for plans before they have to pay the government anything. Medicare also allows insurers to determine what drugs they cover (within categories) and to drop a drug from coverage virtually at will.

The Axes of Oil

In January 2001 Vice President Dick Cheney formed the Energy Task Force, which according to SourceWatch: included Eli Bebout (Cheney’s compatriot who owns an oil and drilling company), Red Cavaney (President of the American Petroleum Institute), Jack N. Gerard(former National Mining Association), Wayne Gibbens and Alby Modiano (U.S. Oil and Gas Association), Alan Huffman (former Conoco manager), the late Kenneth L. Lay (then head of Enron), Bob Malone (British Petroleum regional president, and Peter Davies, chief economist, and "company employees" Graham Barr and Deb Beaubien), Steven Miller (Shell Oil chairmanand two others), Sir Mark Moody-Stuart (Royal Dutch/Shell Group's chairman), James J. Rouse (former Exxon vice president), J. Robinson West (chairman of the Washington-based consulting firm PFC Energy), and last but not least, Daniel Yergin (chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of The Prize, a history of the oil industry").

Cheney said of the distinguished Task Force: "We have developed a national energy policy designed to help bring together business, government, local communities and citizens to promote dependable, affordable and environmentally sound energy for the future."

Cheney must have seen the future. The price of petro has risen to $4 dollars a gallon, causing a ripple effect in food and transportation costs. Simultaneously, we are seeing oil companies make profits never seen before in human history. Exxon’s gross revenue was $404 billion dollars, that is B as in billion. Exxon’s net income was $40.6 billion dollars; again, that is a B as in billion. Other contenders like Chevron net profit was $18.7 billion, and Shell’s was $31 billion, according to the New York Times.

Senator Schumer said it best, “Congratulations to Exxon Mobil and Chevron — for reminding Americans why they cringe every time they pull into a gas station.”

Even as Big Oil execs wipe their asses with obscene amounts of cash, the Bush administration has provided subsidies for the oil companies by way of an energy bill. New York Times reported in 2006, that the Bush administration was going to waive $7 billion in royalties over five years. Bush in fact signed an energy bill in 2.6 billion in tax breaks and a ten-year royalty relief program.

As the four industrial complexes: military, pharmaceutical, prison, and oil have shown us, they find a way to create a need for their products. In all four instances, we have seen a rise in the manufacturing of circumstances to which these industrialists will bilk the federal government of money and subsidies. They are the hammers, for which every problem has become the nail. They have become the shadow government, completely infecting and twisting government policy to benefit the good of the industry, rather than the health of the democracy. Bush has gone so far as to infect the United States Supreme Court with two corporatists Judges John Roberts and Samuel Alito, to further solidify the gains made by neocons and the corporate pirates.

The Media Industrial Complex

Twenty five years ago, just a generation ago, there were 50 corporations that owned media in the United States. By 1992, that 50 had dwindled down to twelve. By 2000, only six corporations owned most of the media in the United States--but wait, there's more. By 2004, there were only five corporations owning most of the media in the United States - Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth. Media consolidation has created a unique situation, where about five people filter through everything we hear, see and read. Count'em, five CEOs socializing us to become thinkless, consumers. Imagine, that.

Americans praise themselves as informed, virtuous and thoughtful. The idea that the United States government in the 21st century could oppress, deprive US citizens and foreign countries of their autonomy, detain foreign nationals indefinitely, advocate torture and where perpetual war, is peace, is unthinkable. Aldous Huxley, author of the "Brave New World" satirized that "people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think."

Media critic Ben Bagdikian stated in his 1998 book The Media Monopoly, "At issue is the possession of power to surround almost every man, woman and child in the country with controlled images and words, to socialize each new generation of Americans, to alter the political agenda of the country" (Bagdikian, IX). Under this new imperial paradigm, corporate expansionism, and acquisition and ownership of mass media by industrial corporations such as newspapers, book publishing, magazines, broadcast and cable news has allowed these corporations to exercise unprecedented influence over national legislation and government agencies.

Media Consolidation began in earnest under President Reagan, extended under Bush I, accelerated under Clinton, and under Bush II, as they say here in Brooklyn, fagetaboutit.

Fox News



It was the Telecommunication Act of 1996, under Bill Clinton that invited one Rupert Murdoch, a reincarnated Herman Goering into the sandbox of media conglomeration. Murdoch's financial reach and his ability to change reality through his mechanized propaganda news machine reminds me very much of what Goering once said while standing trail in Nuremberg after World War II.

He stated, Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag 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 leaders. This 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 every country.”

According to Businessweek, "his[Murdoch’s] satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes 175 newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London. In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include fast-growing Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels. In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered."

Murdoch is a neoconservative and once said of Tony Blair’s support of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, "I think Tony [Blair] is being extraordinarily courageous and strong on what his stance is in the Middle East. It's not easy to do that living in a party which is largely composed of people that have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort of pacifist…” and of Bush, he said, "We can't back down now. I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it."

Rachel Maddow of Air America succinctly, and eloquently stated that Fox News in part was created to destroy the Democratic Party. Murdoch has partly succeeded in his bid to destroy the Democratic Party; they often use Republican talking points in order to gain credibility on their own issues. See below:



Fox News has created a parallel universe for the Republican Party to which they can do no wrong. Also, in this universe, neoconservatism is the new centrist; anything outside of this purview is far-left. Fox News has managed to start whisper campaigns against Democratic candidates, which have become full-blown stories in the mainstream corporate media.

When Howard Dean ran for president in 2004, he was the front-runner, much like Obama is today. And in December of 2003 Howard Dean appeared on Chris Matthew’s Hardball. It went something like this:

"Eleven companies in this country control 90 percent of what ordinary people are able to read and watch on their television," Dean said. "That's wrong. We need to have a wide variety of opinions in every community."

Host Chris Matthews asked whether Dean would "break up these conglomerations of power" -- specifically "large media enterprises." The candidate replied: "The answer to that is yes. I would say that there is too much penetration by single corporations in media markets all over this country."

Dean added a comment that could be echoed in communities across the nation: "We need locally-owned radio stations. There are only two or three radio stations left in the state of Vermont where you can get local news anymore. The rest of it is read and ripped from the AP."

Pressing for more clarity about Dean's presidential agenda, Matthews asked: "Are you going to break up the giant media enterprises in this country?"

"Yes, we're going to break up giant media enterprises," Dean responded. Moments later he went on: "What we're going to do is say that media enterprises can't be as big as they are today. I don't think we actually have to break them up, which Teddy Roosevelt had to do with the leftovers from the McKinley administration. ... If the state has an interest -- which it does -- in preserving democracy, then there has to be a limitation on how deeply the media companies can penetrate every single community. To the extent of even having two or three or four outlets in a single community, that kind of information control is not compatible with democracy."

It was after saying this that the Media Industrial Complex would sink Dean’s candidacy with this:



The corporate media continues to marginalize Dean to this day.

Fox News with the help of the mainstream corporate press have marginalized and distracted Democratic candidates with bullshit like moral values, weakness, and lack of patriotism. Fox and others have an ongoing campaign against, Democratic presidential candidates. Fox News leads with the smearing, and the mainstream corporate press picks it up and normalizes the lies.



Here is Fox’s taking on John Edwards:



Here is Fox attacking Obama:



Corporate Media
The purpose of media has moved from advocacy to propagandizing and moving product. As I said before it doesn’t matter if it is soap or a war, the pitch is the same. Keep repeating what you say, and people will start to believe you and buy what you’re selling.

The Media Industrial Complex is not a conspiracy theory, it is, what it is. It’s main objective is to conform the American citizen into a consumer. It pretends to offer choices, but those choices are consumer ones.

Americans have lost their political choices because of the influence of oil, pharmaceutical, military, prison and media conglomerates that work our politicians like meat puppets. This is why Fox News, MSNBC,, CNN, and others can operate with contempt as they do. An obtuse public have been convinced that they have political choices when in reality, there is very little. Candidates such as Denis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Howard Dean, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, John McCain version 1.0 and others are discredited early and treated as jokes.

Today’s corporate candidates are being sponsored like NASCAR, if there were a law that required politicians to wear patches of the companies that have financially contributed to their campaigns, we would be able to see the extent of the sickness.

Yeah we have a choice between 26 brands of cereal, but why do we have no choice in our politicians? If anything, the industrial complex has shown us that they will use their power to get their way to the detriment of the country, and humanity.

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THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 7, ISSUE 12
THE LONG ECLIPSE
by Malik Isasis















Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said that some white people won’t vote for a black candidate. So, when Obama lost the race he was expected to lose, why are the media over playing the loss? Earlier this year, I predicted in an essay Death By A Thousand Paper Cuts that the corporate media and the Republicans will kill Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations by death of a thousand paper cuts. I underestimated the contempt of the Republicans, the jealousy and sense of entitlement by Hillary and Bill Clinton, and the vacuous corporate media who is the parrot on the shoulder of the imperialist pirate George Bush. The Republicans, Hillary and Bill Clinton and the corporate media are using a blunt object now to kill Obama’s bid to become president.

By all measures, Obama has out campaigned both Republicans and Democrats by raising more money, winning more states, and more total votes. But this isn’t enough; Obama must be perfect because the corporate media continues to raise the bar and move the goal post with race and gender baiting a divided Democratic coalition to offset Obama’s accomplishments.

The corporate media is doing everything it can to throw the Democratic fight by consistently overplaying Obama’s failures, while overplaying Hillary’s successes. Watch Clinton’s campaign chair Terry McAuliffe praise Fox News, which is now being used as propaganda by Fox News.



Even though Obama has won some of the whitest states like Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, the corporate meat puppets continue to inject the myth that Obama is unable to connect with white voters. George Bush and his policies haven’t shown any propensity toward understanding poor, middle class white voters, but since he is white I guess he gets a pass—as a matter of fact, Bush and the Republicans have failed, utterly in understanding poor and middle class white voters, but the corporate media just says, "Oh, well."

Puppeteering

Day after day, pundits and political operatives plague the airwaves with ideological sickness, which shapes the narrative of the mainstream pundits like Tim Russert and George Stephanopulous who give credence to misinformation by Republicans as well as Hillary. Russert and Stephanopulous often recite neocons’ talking points when discussing Iraq with Democratic politicians. The Democratic politicians then shamelessly, frame the debate with these pundits using the same narrative that was created by the Republican Party. As argued in my earlier column When the Rainbow Isn’t Enough.

The pundits are nothing more than a sewing circle, creating whisper campaigns, and misinformation that are picked up by the mainstream corporate media.

Hillary Clinton is losing because she has run a poor campaign, and since Barack has run circles around her, she and Bill with the help of Fox News will distract and tap into the xenophobic nature of people with manufactured controversies like this:



Hillary is showing her true colors, which is her inability to subdue her ego and think bigger than herself. This campaign has become more about her than the people. She feels she deserves the presidency and will do nearly anything to win it. If she can't win it, she'll make sure Obama can't.

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THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 7, ISSUE 11
US News Media's Latest Disgrace
by Robert Parry, Consortium News
















After prying loose 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents, the New York Times has proven what should have been obvious years ago: the Bush administration manipulated public opinion on the Iraq War, in part, by funneling propaganda through former senior military officers who served as expert analysts on TV news shows.

In 2002-03, these military analysts were ubiquitous on TV justifying the Iraq invasion, and most have remained supportive of the war in the five years since. The Times investigation showed that the analysts were being briefed by the Pentagon on what to say and had undisclosed conflicts of interest via military contracts.

Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former Fox News analyst, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’” [NYT, April 20, 2008]

None of that, of course, should come as any surprise. Where do people think generals and admirals go to work after they retire from the government?

If they play ball with the Pentagon, they get fat salaries serving on corporate boards of military contractors, or they get rich running consultancies that trade on quick access to high-ranking administration officials. If they’re not team players, they’re shut out.

Yet, what may be more troubling, although perhaps no more surprising, is how willingly the U.S. news media let itself be used as a propaganda conduit for the Bush administration regarding the ill-advised invasion of Iraq.

Fox News may have been the prototype of the flag-waving “news” outlet that fawned over pro-war retired military officers and mocked anti-war citizens.

But the same imbalance could be found at the major networks, like NBC where then-anchor Tom Brokaw spoke in the first person plural as he sat among a panel of retired brass on the night of the Iraq invasion – March 19, 2003 – and said: "In a few days, we're going to own that country."

The blame also goes far beyond the TV networks, to the most prestigious print publications. The New York Times famously promoted fictional stories about Iraqi aluminum tubes for building nuclear weapons, and the Washington Post editorial page remains to this day an ardent cheerleader for the war.

So, the real question is not how widespread the ethical lapses of the U.S. news media were – both in palming off self-interested ex-generals as objective observers and for failing to demonstrate even a modicum of skepticism in publishing false articles that paved the way to war.

Rather, the urgent question is what must be done if the United States is to reclaim its status as a functioning constitutional Republic in which a reasonably honest news media keeps the public adequately informed.

Having spent most of my career on the inside at places such as the Associated Press and Newsweek, it’s been my view for many years that the mainstream U.S. news media can’t be reformed, that it is beyond hope.

Though there are still good journalists working at major news companies – and the better news outlets do produce some useful information, like Sunday’s story in the Times – the central reality is that corporate journalism is rotten at the core and won't stop spreading the rot throughout the U.S. political process.

That’s why for the past dozen-plus years at Consortiumnews.com, we have called for a major public investment in honest journalism, so information can be produced that it is both professional and independent of the kinds of external pressures that have deformed today’s mainstream press.

We must find new ways to tell the news.

The Reagan Era

The scope of the problem dawned on me in the late 1980s, as I watched the widespread criminality of the Iran-Contra and related scandals – ranging from money-laundering, gun-smuggling, drug-trafficking and acts of terrorism – get swept under the rug because they implicated senior U.S. officials.

During those years, I witnessed the Washington press corps – which still basked in the glory of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers – rushing headlong toward becoming little more than a propaganda funnel for the powers-that-be.

Indeed, in 1992, my first book, Fooling America, argued that the Watergate-Vietnam-era press corps was undergoing a historic transformation into a snarky conveyor of ill-considered conventional wisdom.

The book also made the case that this transformation was not accidental, nor was it driven just by corporate greed and journalistic careerism (though there was plenty of both). There also was a powerful ideological component.

Behind the scenes, the Reagan administration had constructed a domestic framework modeled after CIA psychological warfare programs abroad. The main difference this time was that the psy-op took aim at the American people with the goal of managing how they perceived events, what insiders called “perception management.”

From documents that I uncovered during the Iran-Contra scandal, it was clear that the motive behind this extraordinary operation was the bitterness that conservatives felt toward the mass protests against the Vietnam War and toward American journalists whose reporting supposedly had undermined the war effort.

So, Ronald Reagan’s team made it a high priority to rein in troublesome journalists and to reverse the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome,” the American people’s revulsion over any more foreign military adventures.

The documents revealed that the domestic operation took shape in the early 1980s under the guidance of CIA Director William Casey, who even donated one of the CIA’s top propagandists, Walter Raymond Jr., to manage the program from inside President Reagan’s National Security Council staff.

Other factors fed into the success of this propaganda operation, especially the rise of a bright group of political intellectuals known as the neoconservatives. They proved especially adept at using McCarthyistic tactics to marginalize and silence dissent.

The crowning achievement of this decade-long effort came during the first Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. President George H.W. Bush believed that a successful U.S.-led ground offensive could finish the job of bringing the American people back from their post-Vietnam malaise.

However, after months of devastating aerial bombings, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had persuaded Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait with no more killing, and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and other front-line U.S. commanders favored the deal.

But Bush rebuffed the offer, instead ordering the ground attack that slaughtered tens of thousands of fleeing Iraqi troops during a 100-hour campaign. [For details, see the Colin Powell chapter of Neck Deep.]

When the ground war ended, Bush offered an insight into his central motivation. In his first comments about the U.S. victory, he declared: “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.”

Amid the war euphoria, some American journalists who had thought a less violent solution should have been pursued – including conservative columnist Robert Novak – offered cringing self-criticisms about their mistaken doubts.

The only sustained criticism of President Bush on the war came from the neocons, like Charles Krauthammer, who complained that Bush should have let the killing go on, that he stopped the ground war too soon, that he should have conquered Baghdad and occupied Iraq.

In my book, Fooling America, I told the story of this decline and fall of the U.S. news media, from its glory days of Watergate to its groveling days of the early 1990s. But 16 years ago, few people wanted to hear the story – or believe it.

The common view at the time was that the Washington press corps was still the aggressive watchdog of Watergate fame and, if anything, was too “liberal.” Though I had a major publisher in Morrow, the book got little circulation and was trashed by key book reviewers, including one from the Washington Post.

The thought that the heroic Washington press corps was changing into something cowardly and reckless was an idea whose time had not yet come.

[Fooling America has long been out of print, but some of the material can be found in Robert Parry’s later books, Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep.]

Repeating History

In the investigation of how the Pentagon used TV military analysts to sell the Iraq War – thus allowing George W. Bush to “complete the job” left unfinished by his dad – the New York Times also traced the administration’s P.R. theories back to the Vietnam War and to the early days of the Reagan era.

“Many [TV military analysts] also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war,” the Times reported in the article by David Barstow.

“This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from ‘enemy’ propaganda during Vietnam.

“‘We lost the war – not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,’ he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars – taking aim not just at foreign adversaries but at domestic audiences, too.

“He called his approach ‘MindWar’ – using network TV and radio to ‘strengthen our national will to victory.’”

But the danger of “MindWar,” aimed by the U.S. government at the American people, is that it turns inside-out the concept of a democratic Republic in which a well-informed people exercise meaningful control over their government.

Instead, you end up with a duplicitous government using propaganda, fear and intimidation to whip the people into line. Rather than the government being the servant of the people, the people become the servant of the government.

Then, as undemocratic regimes have shown throughout history – with the voice of the people silenced – insiders get a free hand to carry out foolhardy policies and to line the pockets of their friends.

With the U.S. taxpayers now looking at an open-ended Iraq War with the total cost possibly reaching $3 trillion, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who the “winners” were in this “MindWar.”

Often they were the same TV military analysts and news media pundits who were advocating for the invasion more than five years ago. Almost everyone of them has made out like bandits, many with fat stock portfolios and posh vacation homes, not to mention appreciative CEOs back at corporate central.

The “losers” should be equally apparent. Besides the fleeced American taxpayers, there have been more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead, another 30,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis.

This bloody march of folly began some three decades ago when the U.S. news media began surrendering its responsibility to keep the people informed and instead opted for the easier and more lucrative role of acting as propagandists for the powerful.

The New York Times article is just further proof of that sorry reality.

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THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 7, ISSUE 10
GHOST IN THE MACHINE
by Malik Isasis



















Folie a duex is a mental disorder whereby two people share a delusion, e.g. a person develops a delusional system as a result of a close relationship with a person who has already established a delusional system, i.e. the right wing cabal is delusional and because of their intimate relationship with the corporate media, the corporate media has assimilated the right wing cabal’s delusional system. This could be the only reason for ABC News’ spending 45 minutes interrogating Barack Obama on topics such as wearing a flag pin, right?

George Stephanopoulos, a former Bill Clinton staff member, and Charlie Gibson were the corporate shills who were the facilitators who didn’t even try hiding their agenda. If you had looked beneath their seats, you would have seen political operatives’ hands’ up these meat puppets’ asses, moving their mouths.

Distraction.

Distraction.

Distraction.

What a shame the media has become here in the United States. The ABC News’ debate was one big beta test for the right wing cabal’s attack campaign on Barack Obama, which will try to discredit him as a candidate by questioning his patriotism and insinuating affiliations with terrorists and black nationalism. Leading the charge in the distraction from Bush’s failures is Fox News, however, they are receiving some assistance from Hillary and Bill Clinton, who investigative journalist Robert Parry referred to as having Stockholm Syndrome from the years of Republican abuse. Hillary can not get over the fact the Barack is just a better candidate, so she uses the same tactics the right wing has used against she and Bill in the 90s.

The Patriotism Card

The neoconservative cabal has been successful in news management by creating an environment where questioning its motives is unpatriotic.

The news conglomerates such as Disney, Viacom, General Electric, Bertelsmann and News Corp. has forged an unquestioning-environment by producing and perpetuating the American mythology that war is romantic, heroic and that the troops are heroes and beyond reproach. This mythology also incorporates America as infallible and is just, in its indiscriminate destruction of the Middle East in the name of democracy.

The neoconservatives’ public relations campaign has worked because it continues to pull from the well of September 11, 2001, but it becoming clear that this tactic is unsustainable. Nevertheless, they over-state fear and inflate terrorists as boogey men, for which they, the Republican Party, are the only antidote.

The neoconservatives’ rampant patriotism is pornographic, and self-indulgent. They try and blind the populace with bullshit phraseology God Bless America, or Proud to be an American so that they can normalize the extremity of their theft. They are the real barbarians at the gate, off loading the treasury into personal banking accounts, using Mexicans, blacks, gays, the City of San Francisco and Muslims as shiny keys of distraction to cover their get away.

It is not what the neoconservative cabal says, but what they do. The attainment and maintenance of power is the only goal. The language is the tool to that end.

The Infection

The neoconservative cabal has built a media apparatus for over a generation now, so even if the Democratic Party sweeps every single race this year, they are like a virus, and will continue to cause havoc through Fox News, talk radio, think tanks fronts and political operatives in the corporate media to undermine any policies that advocate for the well being of the American people.

The Republicans and their operatives are pigs who love to root in their shit, and will do anything, anything to win. Obama will be morphed into Osama Bin Laden by September.

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THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 7, ISSUE 9
WE'LL MAKE YOU SEE DEATH
by Joanne Mariner, Salon























A harrowing account from a man the CIA handed over to Jordan – smuggled from prison on tiny paper – exposes U.S. complicity in torture.

On a recent trip to Amman, Jordan, during a visit to the home of someone who had been detained by the Jordanian intelligence service in 2002, I was given two very thin strips of paper covered with Arabic writing and marked with a thumbprint. Curled up into a tight spiral, they were no bigger than the cap of a pen.
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My contact, who had smuggled the papers out of intelligence detention a few years previously, told me that the message therein had been written by a prisoner who had been detained with him. He said it gave a detailed account of that person's experiences.

That evening, in my hotel room, an Egyptian colleague translated the text, word for word. Stunned by its contents, I transcribed the message into electronic form and sent it into cyberspace for safekeeping.

The message's author was a Yemeni terrorism suspect named Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi, who was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002. Though the message was undated, it was clear from the narrative that it had been written in October 2002.

Sharqawi said that he had been delivered to Jordan by the CIA. Unknown to the outside world, he was held as a secret prisoner by the Jordanian intelligence service: unregistered, cut off from all communication and hidden during visits by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In the note, which he managed to slip to my contact without his captors noticing, he gave what he called a "short summary of my sufferings."

"They beat me up in a way that does not know mercy," Sharqawi wrote, referring to his Jordanian captors, "and they're still beating me. They threatened me with electricity, with snakes and dogs ... [They said] we'll make you see death."

Sharqawi described his interrogations, explaining that the Jordanians were feeding his responses back to the CIA. "Every time that the interrogator asks me about a certain piece of information, and I talk," Sharqawi said, "he asks me if I told this to the Americans. And if I say no he jumps for joy, and he leaves me and goes to report it to his superiors, and they rejoice."

I didn't dare leave Sharqawi's note in my hotel room, so I carried it in my purse for the two weeks that I remained in Jordan. During that time, I interviewed several Jordanians who had been held with Sharqawi and other prisoners who had been handed over to Jordan by the CIA. Former detainees spoke of a period, in 2002-2003, when the third floor of the intelligence service's detention facility was "full" of foreign prisoners who had been delivered by the CIA. Although the prisoners had been held in solitary confinement, they had managed to communicate by knocking on cell walls and speaking surreptitiously through cell windows.

How did it come to pass that these men – non-Jordanians all – had been brought to Jordan? The practice of extraordinary rendition, or turning over terrorist suspects abroad, goes back to the Clinton administration, when the CIA transferred several Egyptian terrorist suspects from countries such as Albania and Croatia to Egypt. After Sept. 11, 2001, however, the CIA's rendition practices changed. Rather than returning people to their home countries to face "justice" (albeit justice that included physical abuse and grossly unfair trials), the CIA began handing people over to third-party countries to be detained and interrogated – countries known to use torture.

Jordan is not the only country to which the CIA has sent prisoners for proxy detention. Egypt has held several such prisoners, and Morocco is believed to have held some. Yet the Jordanian intelligence service has long had an exceptionally close and cooperative relationship with the CIA, so the CIA relied heavily on Jordan for holding prisoners outside of the protection of the laws.

Largely through my interviews in Jordan – piecing together accounts by former and current prisoners – I was able to identify 13 other non-Jordanians who, like Sharqawi, were apparently rendered to Jordan from American custody in the years that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. In all likelihood, the actual number of rendered suspects was higher, given the secrecy of the detentions and the enormous difficulties that detainees faced in communicating. None of the detainees whom I learned of had been held after 2004 – though, again, the secrecy means that a full and comprehensive picture of the detainees and timeline will take time to emerge. There could be many more about whom we do not already know.

Responsibility for the renditions is truly international. While the United States and Jordan are most directly implicated, the countries in which the detainees were originally found are also complicit. Most of the rendered suspects were arrested in either of two places: Pakistan, particularly the city of Karachi; and Georgia, particularly from the Pankisi Gorge. One detainee reportedly said that he was held for three months at a U.S. prison in Iraq before being moved to Jordan, while many others later were held in secret CIA detention in Kabul or at the U.S. military base at Bagram, in Afghanistan.

A pressing question is where these men ultimately ended up. Since the rendered prisoners were not Jordanian, Jordan was a place of temporary detention and interrogation, not a permanent jailer. Even before my trip to Jordan, we knew that some of them – including Sharqawi – were now being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Sharqawi has been held there since late 2004 without ever being charged with any crime. A couple of others are believed to be in detention elsewhere, and at least one is free, but the whereabouts of other prisoners are unknown. It is possible that many or all of the remaining detainees -- which include citizens of Algeria, Tunisia and Syria – underwent a second rendition, being transferred from Jordan back to their home countries without legal proceedings or any opportunity to challenge such a transfer. The treatment they may be enduring is unknown.

The Jordanian government continues to deny that it ever held rendered detainees. Not long after I received Sharqawi's note, I met with a group of senior Jordanian intelligence officials and put our information to them. My two colleagues and I were sitting on one side of a long conference table; our Jordanian interlocutors were on the other side. It felt like a debate. I did not confront them with the note, for fear that it would be confiscated, but I did mention Sharqawi as an example of someone who had been transferred by the CIA to Jordan. They frowned – and categorically rejected the idea. Not only had Jordan never detained terrorism suspects delivered by the CIA, they asserted, but they had "disproved" such allegations in the past.

But the note from Sharqawi that I received is more than an allegation; it is tangible and compelling evidence. And the multiple, independent accounts I heard from former detainees are more than just allegations, too – they form a pattern of consistent testimony. Add to this the flight logs of CIA flights to Jordan, which correspond with the dates of detainee transfers, and a clear picture starts to emerge.

The Jordanians can continue to deny their involvement, and the CIA can refuse to comment, but the fact of CIA renditions to Jordan has been documented. We know that they happened. The key objectives, at this point, are to achieve some measure of accountability for these abuses and to make sure that they don't happen again.

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THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 7, ISSUE 8
JINGO ALL THE WAY
by Malik Isasis























How is it that Fox News is the standard bearer of truth? As Incurious George and his playmates push blame on Iran for their failures in Iraq, and is heightening their threats against Iran, Fox News and the corporate meat puppets are parroting Fox’s propaganda so that the Incurious One can start another catastrophe in hopes that Americans will shut up and sing, as they did after September 11, 2001.

Barack Obama has been in Fox News’ cross hairs for months now. They have removed the veneer from their fascistic, white supremacist, and contemptuous ways and are outwardly spewing bile to destroy Barack Obama. So far nothing has stuck, but with the help of the rest of the corporate media, it just may.

The latest Operation Kill Coon campaign involves an out-of-context quote involving the comment “bitter” concerning the lower middle class voters’ economic situation by Obama that was published in the Huffington Post in full context. Fox News gleefully is conflating that with Reverend Wright, Michelle Obama’s comment, and the “bitter” comment a pattern of Obama’s lack of patriotism is beginning to form. Coincidently, here is Obama in 2004, saying the same thing.

The neocons over at Fox have set the tenor of jingoism and any note out of sync with the ideology of America’s greatness, will face the full financial and political resources of Rupert Murdoch who will set out to discredit and destroy you. The allegations of “Blame America First ” is one tactic used by Fox News. Please, don’t trust me, see for yourself:



McClinton

What a disappointment Hillary has turned out to be, blinded by her sense of entitlement and gassed on her on ego, she floats high above reality. Her attacks on Obama have been beta tests for the Republicans in the fall if Obama should win the nomination. She immediately jumped on Obama for the “Bitter” remark saying:

“Now, like some of you may have been, I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small town America. Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist, and they are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know — not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York. You know, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it¹s a matter of Constitutional rights. Americans who believe in God believe it is a matter of personal faith. Americans who believe in protecting good American jobs believe it is a matter of the American Dream. When my dad grew up it was in a working class family in Scranton. I grew up in a churchgoing family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don't "cling to" religion because they're bitter…”

Hopefully, the people of Pennsylvania will see the kowtowing, and her very own condescension toward people’s intellect.

Hillary has teamed up with Fox News and McCain in attacking Obama. Her strange bedfellows are going to cut her throat once Obama is out of the picture. She has argued experience and patriotism, both which McCain supposedly has in spades. If that's her argument, then she loses…right? Well if Fox has their way, they will use her arguments against her ad naseum, which Fox News is so apt at doing.

Bush Will Not Go Quietly into the Night

For nearly 8 years Bush has literally, gotten away with murder, corruption, torture, domestic spying, blunting science and the fall of the economy. Yet, Fox has gotten the rest of the media to follow their lead in pumping “America Greatness” propaganda in spite of the reality of the economy, the state of the occupations and that greatness is the exact opposite of these things.

As with every election since the new millennium, the neocons and Incurious George will use war and the threat of war as a way to shut down opposition and to shut the American people up. Iran will be the next star of the new horror story, and John “The Maverick” “American Hero” McCain will be its protagonist. They will be betting, Would you vote for someone named Barack Obama, with questionable patriotism in the time of “war”?

The Small Town Mythology

Neocons, Republicans and the rest of the right wing cabal use lower and underclass people and their “small-town values” like a condom, once they are done fucking the lower, and underclass people they are tossed into an empty receptacle until the next election cycle. It is they, the Republicans who when in office, send their jobs over seas; it is they who send their children, father and mothers off to wars; it is they who stagnate their wages; it is they who destroy unions which protects wages, and healthcare.

The right wing cabal hide behind plain talk, and anti-intellectuality, but they are closeted elitists—making billions in the corridors of Washington D.C. Here is how you measure a Republican: whatever they say about the Democrats believe the inverse. When they say that Democrats believe in big government, it is they who need a bigger government to protect the assets and wealth of corporations.

In October of 2007 I wrote an essay, The 33% in which I addressed the media’s use of the lower-class value system:

"The neocons’ propaganda machine has created a simple narrative, not simple in the pejorative sense, but simple in a brilliant way. The neocons’ fictional narrative folds neatly into America’s white supremacy values. It is in this brilliant strategy that the Republicans are able to get people to vote against their own interests.

The neocon narrative tells Southerners that their moral and religious values are superior, beyond reproach—they are the moral compass of America, the corporate media coddles this folklore by persistently referring to this voting block as “Values Voters” (see here) If they are Value Voters what does that make the rest of us?”

The Fight Within the Homeland

Questioning of America’s greatness or fallibility has been met with contempt by the corporate media. The questioning of America’s ally Israel is also met with contempt and charges of anti-Semitism. These two countries can drop bombs, rob treasury, take land, occupy countries, displace millions and when questioned, the corporate media will lash out. These two countries may not have thousands of troops goose-steeping in public squares, but what they do have are media, which creates parallel realities. These realities are much more effective than a heavy handed dictator. Unlike a dictator, the corporate media creates the illusion that we are in control of our political system, that we have political choices.

Advocacy journalism has been marginalized, or distorted into journalists doing undercover reporting on sexual predators, while leaving the most obvious of predators free to prey on the country.

The corporate media’s only objective these days is selling us products, whether that product is soap or a war, there is very little difference. The result is the same: America's citizenry's main duty has been transformed into blind consumerism.

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THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 7, ISSUE 7
The Very Annoying Washington Post
by Robert Parry, Consortium News







One of the many annoyances about living in George W. Bush’s Washington is to read the commentaries about the Iraq War on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Possibly never in modern times has a major newspaper been more wrong, more consistently with more arrogance than has the Post on this vital issue.

Beyond getting almost nothing right – from the Post’s certitude over Iraq’s WMD to its reverence for Colin Powell’s U.N. testimony to its excitement over the purple-ink elections to its enthusiasm over whatever latest corner has been turned – the Post also has this obnoxious tendency to mock Americans who don’t share the paper’s wisdom.

One might have thought that editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt and the Graham family would have learned a few lessons in humility from their wretched record as cheerleader for what even many Republicans now acknowledge has been a disastrous war.

As Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, wrote in a column dated March 11, 2007:

“By now, nearly four years into the Iraq War and related controversies, one is tempted to simply disregard the Washington Post editorial page, and some of its regular columnists, on those matters: They have been so wrong on nearly everything for so long.” [See Mitchell’s new book, So Wrong for So Long.]

But self-criticism is not the Post’s way. Instead the editorial page is back again, mocking those who haven’t submitted to the new conventional wisdom about Bush’s courageous “surge” decision and its brilliant implementation by Gen. David Petraeus.

So, after Petraeus’s Senate testimony on April 8, Hiatt and his team were chortling about politicians – particularly Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – who had doubted that the surge would turn the war around.

In its April 9 lead editorial, the Post noted that when Petraeus last testified in September 2007, “the military results of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq, though significant, were still so preliminary that much of the debate centered on whether they were real.”

When Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker returned this time, “the reduction of violence had been so great as to be undeniable. Sen. Barack Obama, who predicted that the surge would not slow the bloodshed, was among the Democrats who acknowledged yesterday that it had.”

The Post also was awed by the progress on Iraq’s political front.

“Gen. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker have gotten more confident about calling the surge a success, and rightly so,” the Post exclaimed.

Surge in Violence

It was almost as if the editorial had been written before the latest upsurge in violence and the outbreak of new political disorder in Iraq, with Shiite factions now battling among themselves as well as against Sunnis – with rockets raining down on the heavily fortified Green Zone and with casualties, including American dead, spiking.

The greatest “success” of the surge seemingly was to buy time for President Bush to run out the clock so he could end his presidency with roughly the same number of troops in Iraq as were there when the voters overturned the Republican congressional majorities in 2006.

It’s also clear that other developments – such as Sunni tribes accepting U.S. money not to shoot at American soldiers, Moqtada al-Sadr declaring a unilateral cease-fire for his Shiite militia, and de facto ethnic cleansing – also contributed to the drop in the horrendous levels of violence in 2006. But little of lasting substance actually had occurred.

Still, what was perhaps most galling about the Post’s editorial was its smug attitude that only Iraq War supporters respect the facts while the war's critics are lost in their destructive partisan fantasies.

This up-is-down hubris has been a hallmark of Washington neoconservatives for years, especially as they constructed the make-believe world that has left 4,000 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. [For more on the neocons, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege or Neck Deep.]

Yet, as the Post presents it, the neocons recognize the reality of success in Iraq, while the war's critics insist on seeking cheap political gain.

The Post continued: “What hasn’t changed is the partisan debate over Iraq, which as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) lamented, remains resistant even to established facts. … Democrats, including presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Obama, remain locked within the ‘this war is lost’ prism the party adopted a year ago.”

But what also hasn’t changed is the Post’s disrespect for Americans who have been right much more often than the Post.

The newspaper never acknowledges how thoroughly wrong its editorial writers have been for so many years, never admits that war critics have been much closer to the mark than the Post’s “best and brightest” columnists, never shows the proper respect for dissent, and always suggests that to object to Bush’s open-ended war in Iraq is somehow unpatriotic or deranged.

At the end of the latest editorial, the Post favorably cites Ambassador Crocker’s opinion – that “an early or unconditional withdrawal would ... invite disaster ‘with devastating consequences for the region and the world.’”

One might respond that the Post’s mindless enthusiasm for an aggressive, brutal war against a country that was not threatening the United States has, if nothing else, achieved exactly that – “devastating consequences for the region and the world,” not to mention the United States of America.

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THE END IS NIGH ISSUE: VOLUME 6, ISSUE 6
APOCALYPTO
by Malik Isasis























Last year I reviewed the film 28 Weeks Later. 28 Weeks Later is a zombie film, and like its ancestor Night of the Living Dead, it’s an allegory about rage and the break down of society. The film is a perfect rendition of how cruel humanity is. Humanity’s cruelty is usually lost amongst the various ways we’ve found to distract ourselves. Demons, zombies and ghouls are periphery in horror films, instead it seems the real horror, of horror films, is the loss of humanity of the survivors.

Human beings have effectively extricated themselves from the natural order of things. We no longer see ourselves as being a part of an eco system, restrained by nature. We overcame the limit of light that nature provided by discovering fire; we overcame her harsh weather by inventing clothing and building protective huts; we overcame feast or famine by domesticating other animals for food year round; we overcame nature’s vast oceans by building boats and migrating beyond our boundaries of inception.

These accomplishments are testament to our ancestors. It was their successes who gave us the leisure of thinking about why we are here. It was then, when we no longer had to hunt and gather that we had time to pursue knowledge full time. It was in this transition we began pulling ourselves out of the animal world and began seeing ourselves as God. Our ancestors tended to see nature as God, but as knowledge increased, that God became us.

Takers and Leavers

Not all of humanity are Takers, there are still hunting and gathering cultures who only take what they need to subsist. Novelist Daniel Quinn in his novel, Ismael explored the conflict between the Leavers those whom modern culture sees as primitive (hunters and gatherers) and the Takers, the industrialists who see themselves as the pinnacle of evolution (or creation), that the world was made for man, and that man is here to conquer and rule the world. It is within this self-indulgent narrative, we the Takers, have laid waste to animal cultures, the environment and threaten our very existence. Our engineering and medical feats have created a false sense of superiority over nature and other animals. It is only when a major disaster strikes that we realize for a brief moment—a fleeting moment, we are at the whim of nature.

What if…

We are one natural or manmade disaster away from humanity totaling collapsing. I’m talking about melting polar ice caps causing world wide floods, or nuclear fallout spurred on by unimaginative politicians. I’m not just being hyperbolic. When Hurricane Katrina swept in and burst the levees in New Orleans, the wealthy left the poor behind, the white people left the black people behind; the abled left the disabled behind, the young left the old behind.

This is humanity.

Our self preservation mirrors that of other animals; the Gazelles and Wildebeests on the African plain for instance, leave behind the weak, the old and the young when a clan of Lionesses is running in formation for their breakfast.

In New Orleans we witness a society collapse before our eyes in a matter of days. We witnessed the fall of humanity on all levels. Days, weeks, months and years after Katrina, the depression, suicide, and homicide rates have sky-rocketed in New Orleans. New Orleans was/is a microcosm of our potential in the event of a global catastrophe.

The veneer of humanity only holds because we keep ourselves ignorant and distracted. It’s every man, woman and child for his and herself. If we just clear away the distraction, we can see our humanity for what it really is, rather than what we want it to be. If you watch the news--even the corporate propaganda, you'll witness our true selves, unmasked in the conflicts of Iraq, Israel, Sudan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United States and countless other countries. This has been our narrative for hundreds of years, spreading contempt, misery and unbelievable suffering.

If we just opened our eyes for a moment, we’ll see that we were a bit premature in removing ourselves from the natural order of things, because we have failed at being God.

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THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME FIVE, ISSUE FIVE
The US Establishment Media in a Nutshell
by Glenn Greenwald, Salon























In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to “domestic military operations” within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

“Yoo and torture” - 102
“Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73
“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16
“Obama and bowling” — 1,043
“Obama and Wright” — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
“Obama and patriotism” - 1,607
“Clinton and Lewinsky” — 1,079

And as Eric Boehlert documents, even Iraq — that little five-year U.S. occupation with no end in sight — has been virtually written out of the media narrative in favor of mindless, stupid, vapid chatter of the type referenced above. “The Clintons are Rich!!!!” will undoubtedly soon be at the top of this heap within a matter of a day or two.

“Media critic” Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post today devoted pages of his column to Obama’s bowling and eating habits and how that shows he’s not a regular guy but an Arrogant Elitist, compiling an endless string of similar chatter about this from Karl Rove, Maureen Dowd, Walter Shapiro and Ann Althouse. Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson devoted her whole column this week to arguing that, along with Wright, Obama’s bowling was his biggest mistake, a “real doozy.”

Obama’s bowling has provided almost a full week of programming on MSNBC. Gail Collins, in The New York Times, today observed that Obama went bowling “with disastrous consequences.” And, as always, they take their personality-based fixations from the Right, who have been promoting the Obama is an Arrogant, Exotic, Elitist Freak narrative for some time. In a typically cliched and slimy article, Time’s Joe Klein this week explored what the headline called Obama’s “Patriotism Problem,” where we learn that “this is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what’s wrong with America than what’s right.” He trotted it all out — the bowling, the lapel pin, Obama’s angry, America-hating wife, “his Islamic-sounding name.”

Needless to say, these serious and accomplished political journalists are only focusing on these stupid and trivial matters because this is what the Regular Folk care about. They speak for the Regular People, and what the Regular People care about is not Iraq or the looming recession or health care or lobbyist control of our government or anything that would strain the brain of these reporters. What those nice little Regular Folk care about is whether Obama is Regular Folk just like them, whether he can bowl and wants to gorge himself with junk food.

Our nation’s coddled, insulated journalist class reaches these conclusions about what Regular Folk think using the most self-referential, self-absorbed thought process imaginable. The proof that the Regular People are interested in these things is that . . . the journalists themselves chatter about it endlessly. In Great American Hypocrites, I described the process as follows in the context of examining the three-week-long media obsession with John Edwards’ haircut (to the exclusion of a whole array of revelations about what the government was doing or planning to do) and how they justified that coverage:

Most certainly, the press will pretend to be above it all (”this is not something that we, the sophisticated political journalists, care about, of course”). But they yammer about Drudge-promoted gossip endlessly, and then insist that their own chattering is proof that it is an important story that people care about. And because they conclude that “people” (i.e., them) are concerned with the story, they keep chirping about it, which in turn fuels their belief that the story is important. It is an endless loop of self-referential narcissism — whatever they endlessly sputter is what “the people” care about, and therefore they must keep harping on it, because their chatter is proof of its importance.

They don’t need Drudge to rule their world any longer because they are Matt Drudge now.

Every day, it becomes more difficult to blame George Bush, Dick Cheney and comrades for their seven years (and counting) of crimes, corruption and destruction of our political values. Think about it this way: if you were a high government official and watched as — all in a couple of weeks time — it is revealed, right out in the open, that you suspended the Fourth Amendment, authorized torture, proclaimed yourself empowered to break the law, and sent the nation’s top law enforcement officer to lie blatantly about how and why the 9/11 attacks happened so that you could acquire still more unchecked spying power and get rid of lawsuits that would expose what you did, and the political press in this country basically ignored all of that and blathered on about Obama’s bowling score and how he eats chocolate, wouldn’t you also conclude that you could do anything you want, without limits, and know there will be no consequences? What would be the incentive to stop doing all of that?

UPDATE: One other point to note about all of this is that these fixations are as skewed as they are vapid. Barack Obama is an exotic elitist freak because he went to Harvard Law School and made $1 million from his book. Hillary Clinton can’t possibly have any connection to the Regular Folk because her husband, who grew up dirt poor, became quite wealthy after being President. John Kerry was completely removed from the concerns of the Regular People because his second wife was rich.

By contrast, George W. Bush was a down-home, salt-of-the-earth Man of the People despite being the grandson of a U.S. Senator, the son of a President (who greatly magnified his riches in his post-presidency), and the by-product of an extremely wealthy, coddled life. Ronald Reagan was pure Americana despite spending most of his adult life as a very wealthy Hollywood actor (and converting his post-presidency into far greater riches still). And John McCain is as Regular a Guy as it gets, even though he dumped his first wife (the mother of his three children) after she was disfigured and disabled by a near-fatal car accident so that he could marry his much younger, much prettier, and extremely wealthy heiress-mistress, whose family riches then launched his political career and sustained a life of luxury for almost three decades (that’s how McCain’s rustic “Sedona cabin” — i.e., his sprawling compound — came to be).

It would be bad enough if our political press were obsessed with such trivialities. The fact that they do so in such a Republican-leader-worshiping manner makes it only that much worse, particularly given that it’s this dynamic, more than anything else, that determines the outcome of our elections.

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THE RIGHTWING CABAL ISSUE: VOLUME FOUR, ISSUE FOUR
FIGHT THE FUTURE
by Malik Isasis
















Barack Obama has subverted the financial infrastructure of the Democratic Party machine, which over the years has elected and supported the status quo of useless Democrats who’ve supported the Republicans and their rightwing cabal in torture, imperialism, occupation, war, money laundering, domestic spying, and national bankruptcy because they were afraid to be called Un-American. It’s hard to believe that through 2002-2008, cartoonish propaganda of being called unpatriotic struck fear in the hearts of politicians, but the fear was not based in rationality, but self-preservation—selfishness of losing their positions of power. So the cowardly Democrats hid behind the coattail of Incurious George as he asserted his putrid will on the world.

The rightwing cabal is at it again in their shitbomb factory, peddling fear about Obama that is just as unsophisticated as those used to sell the populace a war and two occupations. And it works because they are able to tap into the darkest self, the most selfish self and the most anti-intellectual self. The rightwing has made an art of raising anti-intellectuality and base fear, the most reptilian part of the brain to drive a wedge between people who have more in common than not because it is better when we are divided—the imperialists/capitalists can steal from us.

The Republican cabal has convinced the anti-intellectuals that they are better; that their values are beyond reproach that their Judeo-Christian value system is the only way.

Our Democracy

We live in a democracy, which values the voices of the minority. The Democrats need the support of the Republicans to stop the death and destruction in Iraq. However, reaching out to the Republicans has only resulted in the Democrats getting their hands stung.

The death of a million Iraqi civilians, and the 4000 deaths of U.S. troops are used as propaganda to justify more death. The rightwing cabal are not about democracy; they’re not about freedom, nor are they about moral values.

Everything that they say, believe the opposite.

When they talk about family values, it means they are probably molesting a child, when they talk about marriage, it means they are wearing women’s stocking while a sex worker stump on their scrotum; if they say that the occupation is going well, it means that it is, for the oil companies, and private contractors; when they say they believe in the culture of life, it means they mean for themselves and their loved ones and not for others.

The Republicans are walking zombies, rotting from the inside out, puking bile every time they open their mouths. Every single thing they touch, they destroy. They are incapable of governance. They govern by chaos, when there is chaos such as an occupation and “War on Terrorism’ they can hide just how incompetent they are. What’s frightening about these zombies is their lack of shame, even when they are caught with their dicks in their hands; they instantly portray themselves as victims. Their political evolution is so narrowly define that it is no wonder they collapse once a generation.

The Republicans govern for the corporate class, and as long as the bottom line is ballooning from the looting of the US Treasury, and the Iraqi’s Oil profits, there is no need to intercede in stopping the death and destruction.

Other people die, so that they can live.

Barack is challenging the fear based propaganda and has not given way to it as his Democratic brethren has, but they continue to hide in the shadows until Barack wins the nomination to support his movement. Again like Republicans, the Democrats are only inspired by self-interests. These punk ass Democrats must be purged and put out to pasture, they are a stain on democracy.

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THE CORPORATE ISSUE: VOLUME THREE, ISSUE THREE
THE WELFARE KING OF THE 21st CENTURY
by Dean Baker, Truthout























To help advance his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan invented the "welfare queen;" a woman who drove to pick up her check every month in a Cadillac. This mythical figure helped galvanize support among working class whites who felt that their tax dollars were being frittered away on people too lazy to work, most of whom they believed to be black.

There was little truth to the mythology of the welfare queen, the vast majority of welfare stints were always short and were usually the result of family breakups or job loss. Furthermore, welfare never amounted to more than a trivial item in the federal budget, coming in near one percent of total spending. And, most welfare beneficiaries were white. But the welfare queen mythology proved to be an effective political tool, propelling Reagan to an election victory and boosting Republican prospects over the next two decades.

But the old welfare queen mythology has run out of steam. The Republicans are victims of their own success. Welfare rolls have plummeted in the decade following the 1996 welfare reform. Work requirements and harsher qualification rules make it hard to sell the image of a whole class of lazy freeloaders.

If the welfare queen is dead, then it's time to say, "Long live the welfare king." This person really exists, his name is James E. Cayne, and taxpayers just handed him almost $50 million. Mr. Cayne got this gift when J.P. Morgan renegotiated the terms of its takeover of Bear Stearns. The buying price went up fivefold, fetching Bear Stearn's stockholders $1.2 billion instead of the $236 million in the agreement brokered by the Fed last week.

While Bear Stearns shareholders may still have been unhappy about their losses even at the higher price (the stock had been worth more than ten times as much a year earlier), in reality this was a very generous gift from US taxpayers. As an inducement to carry through the takeover, the Fed gave J.P. Morgan up to $30 billion in guarantees, in case the bank has to make good on Bear Stearns' liabilities. In other words, J.P. Morgan is being given the opportunity to do some gambling, with the taxpayers committed to making good any losses. The money that J.P. Morgan paid for this privilege went to Bear Stearns shareholders, not the taxpayers.

James E. Cayne did especially well as a result of the taxpayer's generosity because as the former CEO of Bear Stearns, and current chairman, he owned a great deal of the company's stock. To put the taxpayer's gift to Mr. Cayne in some context, this is approximately equal to the amount paid in TANF to 10,000 working mothers over the course of a year.

Of course Mr. Cayne and the rest of the Bear Stearns stockholders are not the only incredibly rich people benefiting from the taxpayers generosity these days. The Fed's actions are reining down taxpayer money all over Wall Street. When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke rushed in to save Bear Stearns last week, he made two other important policy changes. He indicated a commitment to protecting other major investment banks and he opened the Fed's discount window to the investment banks. These are both huge taxpayer subsidies to these titans of free market capitalism.

The story of the discount window is straightforward. The Fed is allowing investment banks, which are subject to none of the restrictions or disclosure requirements of commercial banks, to borrow at a government subsidized interest rate. Currently the discount rate is two-and-a-half percent. Those seeking to refinance mortgages, most of whom are probably better credit risks these days than the investment banks, may want to call Mr. Bernanke and ask for the same deal.

While the subsidy involved in the below market lending is easy to see, the commitment to support the investment banks is probably the bigger subsidy to the Wall Street crew. The basic story here is that the investment banks made commitments, mostly in the form of credit default swaps, that they lack the resources to honor. These credit default swaps are essentially a form of insurance. The investment banks promise to make payments to bondholders in the event that there is a default on the bonds they hold.

The banks were prepared to deal with an occasion default, but they don't have the resources to deal with the sort of large-scale collapse that we are now witnessing as a result of the bursting of the housing bubble. Mr. Bernanke has effectively told the banks' creditors not to worry, because the Fed will make good on these credit default swaps, even if Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, or Goldman Sachs can't.

This is a very nice deal for the investment banks, because they got the fees for selling the credit default swaps, not the Fed. And they were very big fees, making the banks and the bank's executives extremely wealthy. In effect, the investment banks sold insurance that they actually were not in a position to provide. Instead the Fed is providing the insurance, but the investment banks get to keep the money they got from selling the insurance: nice work, if you can get it.

This is yet another episode of The Conservative Nanny State, the story of the how the government intervenes in the market to redistribute income from those at the middle and bottom to those at the top. In this case, the media would have us applaud Mr. Bernanke and the Fed for keeping the financial system from freezing up and preventing the economic chaos that would follow.

While the Fed deserves some credit for preventing worse financial distress in the face of the collapsing housing bubble, government handouts for the very richest people in the country are difficult to justify. In other areas, we usually expect to see some quid pro quo, for example, serious regulations on lending and perhaps restrictions to accomplish social goals, like a cap on executive compensation ($1 million a year should attract a much more competent crew). This is welfare as we know it now.

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