August 21, 2012
August 20, 2012
How the corporate media lies to you
Author’s note:
The use of video news releases (VNRs) may not be new “news” to most of the readers of this site. George Bush even admitted that they are used by the U.S. government in a press conference, as is shown on the video embedded in the original posting of this article. However, here is some information on what to do about them…
Excerpt:
Many people have heard that the mainstream corporate media lies to people. But few know exactly how that is done. As long ago as 2006, a study by The Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch in Madison publicized one technique – video news releases (VNRs). While most VNRs are created by corporations with the intent of selling a product, the U.S. government uses them to sell its policies.
Dozens of television stations have been investigated for broadcasting VNRs produced by corporations or the U.S. government and passing them off as real news. The use of VNRs without full disclosure of the source is illegal and carries a fine from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Television newscasts, which remain the most popular news source for most people in the United States, frequently air VNRs without disclosure to viewers, without conducting their own reporting, and even without fact checking the claims made in the VNRs.
Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer’s product. Disclosure information regarding the source is sometimes removed when it is broadcast by the television channel, as was the case with Fox-owned stations in St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Miami and South Bend, IN.
Here’s one example of a corporation using a VNR, as reported by TV News Lies:
NEWS ALERT: A man survived a jump from a plane this afternoon. He was not wearing a parachute and he credits his new Nike Plane Jumpers with cushioning his fall.
Now let’s say that story is completely true. All the networks and printed media pick up the story. Front page, lead story. Well, what they forgot to tell you was that the plane was a 2 seater plane, and it was on the runway, stopped, and the jump was from 3 feet off the ground. Now the full story was available to all the media, but Fox News does not feel that those details are important.
That may be a great corporate plug for Nike, but it is nothing that is even close to the truth about what really happened in that event.
A bigger problem arises when the U.S. government uses VNRs to “sell” policies such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A classic example is a VNR put out by the state department about Jessica Lynch. It was the basis for a story published in the Washington Post, written by “journalists” Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loer (which has since been redacted once the truth came out):
Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Lynch, 19, a supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die in fighting 11 days ago, one official said. The ambush took place after a 507th convoy took a wrong turn in the southern city of Nasiriyah.
“She was fighting to the death,” the official said. “She did not want to be taken alive.”
Great story, but the only problem is that none of it was true. The truth is, Lynch never fired a shot at Nasiriyah. Her rifle jammed during the attack. She suffered shattering injuries when a rocket-propelled grenade struck her Humvee, causing the vehicle to crash. But she was not shot or stabbed.
Another VNR used by the U.S. government was the staged, fake coverage of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad. The truth is that the jubilant crowd cheering the take-down of the statue was a rent-a-crowd from Saddam City, a poor neighborhood some distance away and the entire VNR was staged by army psy-ops.
According to an article by Peter Maas writing for The New Yorker:
Propaganda has been a staple of warfare for ages, but the notion of creating events on the battlefield, as opposed to repackaging real ones after the fact, is a modern development. It expresses a media theory developed by, among others, Walter Lippmann, who after the First World War identified the components of wartime mythmaking as “the casual fact, the creative imagination, the will to believe, and out of these three elements, a counterfeit of reality.” As he put it, “Men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities [and] in many cases they help to create the very fictions to which they respond.”
Many of these these outright lies elicit the intended response from Americans, as was apparent in the overwhelming public support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many people continue to be oblivious to the fact that corporate-owned media and TV news lies to them. One of the 14 defining characteristics of fascism is a controlled media. That is obviously the case in the U.S., where journalists who are supposed to be doing their jobs and reporting the truth simply rebroadcast or reprint VNRs without any fact-checking.
SourceWatch recommends that Americans report suspected VNRs to the FCC after contacting the managing editor of the station in order to determine that it was indeed a pre-packaged segment from an affiliate. Here’s how to file a complaint:
Go to FCC.gov. On the right side of the home page, under the column titled “Bureaus and Offices,” click on “Enforcement.” This takes you to the Enforcement Page. On the right side of the page, under “What We Do,” click on “Broadcast Issues.” On the next page, under “Information You Can Use,” click on the fifth line down that says, “Payola and Sponsorship Identification.” There you will find the sections of the Communications Act that require broadcasters to disclose whether broadcasted matter has been aired in exchange for money, services or other valuable consideration. The page contains a table listing enforcement actions that have been taken, with links to descriptions of those actions. Below the table are instructions about “How to File a Complaint.”
According to the Independent UK, spokesman Craig Aaron from Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy, said more than 25,000 people have written to the FCC about the VNRs.
It will be interesting to see what happens when more and more Americans realize that much of their news is fake. Will TV news outlets continue to lose viewers as more people turn to the internet for their news? That seems to be the case. According to a Pew Research Center report in 2011, viewership for Fox News declined by 11 percent, CNN plummeted by 37 percent, and MSNBC was down 5 percent.
No one likes to be lied to.
Read more, get links and video here: Madison Independent Examiner – How the corporate media lies to you.
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August 19, 2012
August 18, 2012
August 17, 2012
August 16, 2012
August 15, 2012
Singapore: Stalinist housing blocs & feng shui
After spending a rather unique night trying to sleep on glorified lawn chairs at the Doha airport, I finally arrived in Singapore — blurry-eyed and confused. And that’s not a good condition to be in when trying to navigate through the Singapore airport — because this airport is HUGE. Imagine the Great Mall of America, Rodeo Drive and a mini-Disney Adventureland combined with more restaurants than you could eat at in a month, an elaborate system of people-movers and thousands of happy tourists and shoppers, all tacked onto miles and miles of terminals, departure gates and runways — and you pretty much get the picture. The Singapore airport is HUGE.
“Where is the closest transit hotel?” I bleated piteously.
“After Terminal 3, get on the tramway, turn right at Cartier, walk a half-mile past the third food court, it’s next to the butterfly garden.” Found it!
For approximately $60, I was able to rent a sweet teeny-tiny little hotel room in miniature for six hours — and promptly fell asleep. It was like they had shrunk a hotel room at the Hilton to fit into your closet. I loved it.
And what’s not to like about the Singapore airport — if you are a Material Girl. Everything you can imagine is on sale here. WHAT will this place ever do if people ever wise up and discover that material goods can’t buy you happiness — and also when the world runs out of raw materials? Then the Singapore airport will be screwed. But until then, the place is like a freaking MUSEUM for material goods, the ultimate wet-dream for Material Girls.
The airport also offers a two-hour free tour of the city of Singapore. My plane doesn’t leave for Jakarta for another seven hours. I’m on this!
“The island of Singapore consists mainly of parklands and highrises,” said our guide. And it did. So many lovely parks. Hand-groomed parks very much like Central Park in New York — only miles and miles and miles more of them.
“Why do you have so many parks?” I asked.
“It’s good feng shui,” said our guide. Oh. Okay. “The ancient art of feng shui tells us that the way your home or business is laid out can strongly affect your fortune. And having good feng shui brings you good luck and having lots of greenery around brings you even more good luck.” http://video.about.com/fengshui/Color-and-Feng-Shui.htm
Well, it does look like all those miles and miles of parklands and trees and manicured flower beds and well-trimmed lawns really are bringing Singapore lots of good luck. America should try that!
And springing up like gigantic mushrooms from all of these parks were many many tall skyscrapers and housing blocs. The total effect here reminded me of Pyongyang, up in North Korea. After Americans had leveled the city flat with thousands of bombs back in the 1950s, Pyongyang was rebuilt on a grid of parklands, skyscraper hotels for tourists and Stalinist housing blocs.
Of course the parklands in Singapore are hecka lot nicer and the housing blocs here are far more luxurious than in Pyongyang — but the effect is the same: The good feng shui of parks to offset the bad feng shui of housing blocs and skyscrapers.
Back home in Berkeley, our current mayor and most of our city council appear to be trying to Manhattanize Berkeley just as fast as humanly possible. But. They are leaving out that other highly important ingredient of good feng shui — the parks. If our current mayor wants to cram Berkeley full of Stalinist housing blocs, fine with me. But where are the parks? So next election I’m going to vote for Kriss Worthington for mayor instead. http://www.krissworthington.com/home/
That is, if I ever get out of the Singapore airport alive. One could live here comfortably forever — except that there are no parks (unless you count runways).
PS: Mitt Romney has named Paul Ryan to be his vice presidential running mate. Paul Ryan! Electing those two would be like electing the Beagle Boys to guard Uncle Scrooge’s bank vault. With Romney and Ryan in charge of our treasury, we can almost count on being burgled for every last red cent that we own.
A vote for these Beagle Boys may be a really great idea — but only if you yourself are a Beagle Boy too. Most of us are not.
According to Robert Reich, “Republicans want to obliterate any trace of the [Bush] administration that told America there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and led us into a devastating war; turned a $5 trillion projected budget surplus into a $6 trillion deficit; gave the largest tax cut in a generation to the richest Americans in history; handed out a mountain of corporate welfare to the oil and gas industry, pharmaceutical companies, and military contractors like Halliburton (uniquely benefiting the vice president); whose officials turned a blind eye to Wall Street shenanigans that led to the worst financial calamity since the Great Crash of 1929 and then persuaded Congress to bail out the Street with the largest taxpayer-funded giveaway of all time.” http://www.nationofchange.org/erasing-w-1344692189
Bush was the ultimate Beagle Boy. And now we are supposed to forget all that and let them force the Romney-Ryan Beagle Boy team on us too? Exactly how dumb do they think that we are?
What would Unca Scrooge do?
Maybe I should just stay here in Singapore after all — because it has such good feng shui. But no. My flight leaves for Jakarta in two hours and there are no backsies on my plane ticket.
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The war on chalkers
Authors note:
If this isn’t an indication that we are moving towards a police state, then I don’t know what it will take to wake people up. I don’t think it matters who gets elected in the executive branch anymore. Local authorities have gotten out of hand.
Excerpt:
Over the past five years at least 49 people in 16 American cities have drawn the ire of authorities for coloring things with chalk. Most were arrested for sketching designs or writing messages on public streets or sidewalks.
On Saturday in Madison, Steve Books, a long-time Veterans for Peace activist, wrote “This is far, far, far from over” in chalk on a sidewalk next to the Capitol building. As a result, he was taken away in handcuffs by Capitol Police and issued a citation for “conduct otherwise prohibited” under Wisconsin Administrative Code 2.14 that in Books’ case carries a fine of $205.05.
The response by authorities to Books’ heinous powdery crime is consistent with a nationwide trend that some are beginning to call “the war on chalking.” Such a trend also may be an indication that the U.S. is moving closer towards fascism.
State Troopers in Austin, TX reacted in a very similar manner to “chalkers” drawing on the sidewalks at 11th Street and Congress Avenue across from the Capitol. According to KUT news, a press release from the Texas Department of Public Safety stated:
On 08/09, at approximately 6p.m., Corey Williams and Audrey Steiner were arrested for Criminal Mischief, class C misdemeanor. The charges might be enhanced to a class B misdemeanor if the cost to the city of Austin [to clean the chalk off the sidewalks] is $50 or more but less than $500. According to the Criminal Mischief law (28.03), “a person commits an offense if, without the effective consent of the owner, intentionally or knowingly makes markings, including inscriptions, slogans, drawings, or paintings on the tangible property of the owner.”
Two children reportedly burst into tears as police confronted their mom in that chalking incident.
Arrests for chalking nearly started a riot in Los Angeles last month that included bottles being thrown at police and shotguns loaded with beanbags fired into the crowd.
The war on chalk is not only targeting political activists. Jan Pepperman of Brooklyn, NY was issued a warning letter from the city ordering to her to “PLEASE REMOVE THE GRAFFITI FROM YOUR PROPERTY” or face a $300 fine. The graffiti in question was a chalk drawing done by her six-year-old daughter on the front stoop of their Park Slope residence.
Then there is the case of Susan Mortensen in Richmond, Virginia. In March, Mortensen was arrested for allowing her four-year-old daughter to draw on rocks with sidewalk chalk at a local park on Belle Isle. The vandalism charges are expected to be dismissed, but first the 29-year-old mother will have to perform 50 hours of community service removing the weeds around 200 boundary posts near the James River, then scraping and repainting them.
Mortensen told a local TV station that her daughter is now “very nervous around cops” and “very scared of chalk.”
Back in Madison on Sunday, chronic Capitol protesters and hard-core chalk insurgents defied authorities and filled the sidewalks with messages such as:
· Watch out, we’re packing chalk
· If money = speech, what does chalk equal?
· WI pays Chief Erwin $99,000 per year to arrest sidewalk chalkers. It’s Working®
· WI Capitol Police Palace Guard: To Intimidate and Harass
· I ♥ free speech – don’t you?
Bert, the jovial sidewalk chalker from Disney’s Mary Poppins, probably would have been proud to see that.
Read more, get links, video and a slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – The war on chalk
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August 12, 2012
Romney & Ryan: The Beagle Boys!
If you were Uncle Scrooge, would you really let these two guys loose in your bank vault? Hardly. Romney and Ryan are good for America — but only if you are a Beagle Boy too. Most of us are not.
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The Arab Holocaust: An amazing story of Western chessboard diplomacy in the Middle East
I recently spent four hours hanging out at the newly-renovated Cairo international airport, and then eight hours more sleeping on a lounge chair at the airport in Doha — so does this brief-but-intense experience now make me an expert on the entire Middle East? Sure.
If you don’t count the Crusades, the Middle East’s most deadly encounter with the West’s political and economic chessboard began way back in 1918 — after the Turkish empire crumbled, after the heroic times of Lawrence of Arabia and after the Great War. That’s when a deadly and brutal Arab Holocaust originally began.
After World War I ended, Palestine was cut into pieces by the European powers, Egypt was denied the independence that it had been promised by the Brits, the despotic Saudis tightened their grip on the Arabian peninsula, various heavy-handed but Western-friendly emirates and potentates sprang up, colonialism grew apace, France put the thumbscrews on Algeria, etc.
And one gigantic shadow also loomed menacingly over all this frantic neo-colonial scramble for the Middle East: The automobile. Oil.
Then came World War II and, after Rommel the Desert Fox was ousted by the Allies, times got even tougher in the Middle East in the late 1940s and 1950s — as Palestine was violently seized by European neo-colonials, the CIA invaded Iran and Iraq’s nascent democracies, puppet dictators were established by American and Israeli neo-colonial interests, and local non-puppet dictators and democracies alike were bloodily deposed.
By the 1960s, all the seeds for an Arab Holocaust that had been eagerly planted and watered earlier by greedy Western political and corporate chess masters began to really start to grow — and suddenly the Arab Holocaust was truly well under way.
In the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the Arab Holocaust tree began to blossom profusely and bear strange fruit as American corporate chess players continued demanding a larger and larger piece of the pie — with the seizure of Sinai and the West Bank, the betrayal of the USS Liberty, the occupation of Gaza, Reagan’s bloody eight-year surrogate war that took over a million lives in Iran and Iraq, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon that killed an additional 250,000 men, women and children.
And all this vigorous military activity in the Middle East looked just fine on the chessboards of European, Israeli and American war rooms — but what did its reality on the ground look like? A human holocaust. The Arab Holocaust.
Whenever corporate-owned America moved a pawn on its Middle East chessboard in Washington and set up the Shah in Iran and Saddam Hussein in Iraq and helped unleash Moshe Dayan onto Palestine, to them it looked merely like pawns being knocked over — or pieces of paper changing hands.
But those pieces of paper were also death warrants for hundreds of thousands of Arabs all across the entire Middle East.
Then along came Charlie Wilson’s War — when the U.S. happily armed bin Ladin and Al Qaeda. And we all know how that went: The Taliban came to power and untold thousands of Afghans ended up dead (not to mention an additional 5,000 Americans).
Then when Bush Senior and Bush Junior decided to invade Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq and also pay for the cruel napalming of Gaza, at least a million more people died. And when Obama continued to fund the occupation of Afghanistan and Palestine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_dk-1nYSJU&feature=youtu.be and NATO invaded Libya and Syria, and Arabia’s and Yemen’s and Bahrain’s bids for democracy were brutally suppressed, more Arabs died. Many many more.
And now we have entered the age of the drone — and the Arab Holocaust continues.
And according to Middle East expert Pepe Escobar, Israel and the CIA have just happily hopped into bed with Al Qaeda once again — in order to kill as many Syrians as they possibly can. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NH03Ak04.html
For almost a century now, the Middle East has lived under a man-made Holocaust hurricane that has brutally killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab women and children as well as men — and killed them with enthusiasm and ease.
And when will this vicious and uncivilized Arab Holocaust finally ever end? After every single Arab in the Middle East has been killed? Or when they have finally run out of oil over there.
PS: I am using the term “Arab” loosely here. Within the eclectic mix of over a million dead bodies that have been piled up in the Middle East in the last many decades by callous acts of Western neo-colonialism, you will find not only “Arab” corpses per se — but also corpses that spoke Farsi, Urdu and Pashtu, Muslim corpses, Sunni corpses, Shia corpses, Christian corpses, Jewish corpses, Druze corpses and even Zoroastrian corpses — all equitably rotting away in the bright Middle East sun.
As far as I can tell, the only two actual components that human beings seem to require in order to be included in the West’s neo-colonial list of possible “Arab Holocaust” victims are to have the same skin tones as Jesus and to live in the Middle East.
PPS: I just saw a program on TV that discussed how former Nazis who participated in the WWII Jewish Holocaust are still being hunted down and punished even now. So WHEN will the war criminals of the Arab Holocaust start to be brought to justice as well? Or are we just hypocrites.
PPPS: Having survived my odyssey through the Rome, Cairo, Entebbe and Doha airports in one piece, I am now ready, willing and able to tackle the Singapore airport next. Wish me luck.
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August 11, 2012
August 10, 2012
The real unemployment rate in the U.S.
Author’s note:
I am tired of hearing about an 8 or so percent unemployment rate. The real rate is far higher than that. If one looks at the true amount of people out of work and those that are actually eligible to work, that figure could be as high as 45 percent. Of course, that is not President Obama’s fault, but it is a reality that all of us are living with.
Excerpt:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there were approximately 163,000 private industry jobs created in the U.S. in July, and the unemployment rate is 8.3 percent. Those figures, however, do not accurately depict the reality of the unemployment rate in the U.S. today.
The government’s most widely publicized unemployment rate takes into account only those who are collecting unemployment benefits and actively looking for work. It does not take into account those whose unemployment benefits have run out, those who have given up seeking work, or those who are underemployed – desiring full time work but forced to work part time.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases two separate reports, the highly publicized U-3 unemployment rate and a lesser known rate called the U-6. There are, in fact, six different scales of unemployment that are numbered U-1 through U-6. The U-6 rate, however, is the most “liberal,” yet accurate gauge of the real unemployment rate in the U.S. because it takes into account not only those receiving unemployment benefits, but also those who are not receiving benefits as well as the underemployed. And the U-6 rate is truly staggering.
There is also a factor in the calculations known as “seasonal adjustments.” According to Ezra Klein, writing for the Washington Post, as well as Jacob Goldstein writing for Planet Money, if seasonal adjustments are not factored into the equation, the U.S. lost 1.2 million jobs in July rather than gaining 163,000.
So, what is the truth? An article published by CNN entitled “The 86 million invisible unemployed” may shed some light – along with some simple math.
The U.S. government officially admits that 8.3 percent of the labor force is “visibly” unemployed. The total US population is approximately 330 million. 24 percent of those, however, are young people not eligible to work and 13 percent are retired. So the total population of available workers in the United States is 100% – (24% + 13%) = 63% of 330 million people, or 208 million workers. Out of the pool of available workers, therefore, 8.3 percent accounts for about 17.3 million people. Together with the 86 million “invisible” that means 103.3 million Americans are available to work but do not have a full time job. And with 103.3 million workers not working or underemployed, the true jobless rate in the U.S. right now is closer to 49 percent, not the 8.3 percent the U.S. government and media is propagandizing about.
Read more, gets links, a slideshow of graphs and a video here: Madison Independent Examiner – The real unemployment rate in the U.S.
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Sympathy, Schadenfreude and a Political Debacle?
Smoke signals, seen Monday in Richmond CA, send the message: “Higher gasoline prices soon come.”
The Democrats have shown very little inclination to indulge in the delight of the misery of others (Schadenfreude) but they may soon grant themselves a dispensation if current trend in polling results force the Republicans into choosing between letting Mitt Romney precipitate some Custer style massacre election results this fall or the use of some nefarious parliamentary procedures to deny Romney the nomination.
A month from today, the Presidential Campaign season will be underway and that means it may be too late for the Republicans to start brandishing a threat to impeach Harry Reid for his assertions about Mitt’s shutout record against the taxman. When a Democratic politician is suspected of telling a fib, impeachment has to be considered to uphold the integrity of the American people, but if a Republican President sends his country into war because “he didn’t know” what he was talking about when he used possibility that WMD’s might exist to prove that war was inevitable, well then . . . give the guy a break because he meant well.
Only partisan Democrats think there is an inconsistency with giving Dubya a pass on his verbal gaff and then pushing for impeachment of both the “I did not have sex with that woman” guy and the “I’ll use Senator McCarthy approach to attack Mitt Romney’s tax forms” guy.
Once American journalists have printed the assertion “Harry Reid is lying” and Reid’s “No, I’m not” response, haven’t they fulfilled their obligation to provide the American people with fair and balanced coverage of the dispute? Isn’t providing any additional germane material tantamount to partisan punditry which will only serve to politicize the Presidential Campaign process?
During the week, the media carried stories reporting that polls showed that President Obama was ahead of the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in the crucial swing states. Could the large number of Republicans who were urging Mitt to release his tax forms be used to jump to the conclusion that there is a disconcerting level of concern about Mitt’s appeal to the voters (and the concomitant “coattails effect”) that is causing some buyers’ remorse before the Republican Convention has been gaveled to order?
Gort 42, a Pennsylvania based political blogger, was offering the phrase “swift yachting” to describe the tidal wave of concern about Mitt Romney’s tax returns and his cavalier rich playboy image. Are Republicans afraid that the image of an indolent wastrel might not be a draw for hard working tax paying American voters? Couldn’t they market him as a Reggie Van Gleason surrogate candidate?
On Wednesday August 8, 2012, the World’s Laziest Journalist bought a bargain used copy of Ferdinand Lundberg’s 1968 book “The Rich and the Super-rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today,” which asserts that the rich often use the concept of a Foundation to establish the image that most wealthy Americans are actually philanthropists.
On that same day, we found that a writer on the Daily Kos website was posting material hinting that the tax records of the Tyler Charitable Foundation and the Romney Foundation might provide the curious with valuable clues and insights into the financial secrets that Mitt deems too personal to release.
On Monday, August 6, smoke signals in San Francisco’s East Bay area were seen in the evening and according to some experts the message being sent out to all Americans was: “Higher gasoline prices soon come.” Won’t higher gasoline prices mean more jobs, less taxes, and general euphoria in the various oil company boardrooms throughout the world?
Earlier that same day, Uncle Rushbo was warning his listeners that the tree huggers were about to politicize Football. According to America’s anchor man, the liberals would use statistics (provided by the same scientists who have “proved” that global warming exists?) about brain concussions to outlaw that particular sport.
To make the issue even more alarming, Uncle Rushbo indicated that the team owners, who are mostly Anglo Saxons, were not the same ethnic group as were the players who were being injured. That, he indicated, would only serve to goad the goody-two-shoes citizens into injecting race into the issue, and that, in turn, would only cause an increase in the level of fanatical emotional commitment for the activists trying to “get ’er done” and eliminate a native American sport from the pop culture scene.
Did we hear him correctly? Did Uncle Rushbo say on Monday’s program, that some scientists believe that brain concussions can trigger an inclination towards child molestation? Do seminaries have football teams? Football is to firmly ingrained in American culture to be eliminate so that makes a potential threat to do so another perfect wedge issue.
Speaking of wedge issues, what are the chances of getting some new gun control legislation passed before this fall’s elections?
About the only development that could further exacerbate the level of rancor for this year’s political process would occur if some wealthy philanthropist, with extensive computer hacking resources, were to use illegal and immoral methods of obtaining copies of Mitt Romney’s disputed tax returns and then surreptitiously provide copies to Julian Assange’s posse to post for all the world to see.
Is Harry Reid playing into the hands of some diabolical conspiracy theory plot to use the Romney tax issue as an excuse for delivering the Republican Party’s Presidential Nomination to someone else? Isn’t the Republican bullpen is empty? Isn’t it true that there is nobody left on the bench? Is the Romney nomination a clever ruse? Is it in fact just a play fake?
Should the Democrats have played possum on the tax forms issue and waited until after Romney got the nomination before making them the subject of a fuss?
If the perception of Mitt Romney as a spoiled brat rich kid is accurate, then it seems quite likely that he will not suddenly develop a propensity for accepting defeat graciously. If he is given a chance to step down before the Republican Convention will the guy who has always been able to buy the toys he wants, prefer, instead, to do a “White Heat” finale that will provide Americans with a memorable TV “wipeout” moment?
That might be what Harry Reid wants, but what will happen if Romney is given a metaphorical “Rommel Option” ultimatum and does step down before the Convention? Then what? Is President Obama’s strategy flexible or is it designed to function with only Romney as the “presumptive” opponent? Could an alternative Republican nominee throw Obama’s game plan into complete disarray? As bullfight fans would be quick to point out; the moment of truth is rapidly approaching.
Alfred M. Landon said: “A government is free in proportion to the rights it guarantees to the minority.”
Now the disk jockey will play “Happy days are here again,” “When you’re smiling,” and “He’s a rebel.” We have to go do a Google search for ChipPac. Have an “aletoricism” type week.
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August 9, 2012
August 5, 2012
Border town: Gulu, gateway to Darfur, is Uganda’s NGO heaven!
Still in search of information on human trafficking and child soldiers in Uganda, I hit the road with two Global Exchange experts on the subject, driving up to Gulu, a rugged frontier town next to the South Sudan border. For years now, Gulu has possessed the dubious distinctions of being the gateway for sending aid to Darfur and also home of the notorious child-killing monster Joseph Kony.
“There are over 500 NGO operations located in Gulu,” someone there told me. 500? Really?
The streets of Gulu were jam-packed with black SUVs driven by NGO personnel and white SUVs driven by UN observers — and also with Ugandans selling “Welcome to Uganda” T-shirts. The whole combination was WEIRD.
The first thing we did once we got to Gulu was to go straight to the Coffee Hut — for Greek salads and espresso. The place was packed with “Mzungas” — white people. And why not? The Coffee Hut offered free wi-fi!
But not all NGOs in Gulu are run by white people, however. Au contraire. Most are staffed by caring educated passionate capable Ugandans — NGOs such as Invisible Children http://s4s.invisiblechildren.com/school/a1U70000000GnYYEA0, the RON bread project, the Undugu Family Band, GUSCO http://www.gusco.org/about/about.php, Human Rights Focus http://www.hurifo.org/, Not For Sale http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/ and MEND http://www.mend.co — just to name a few NGOs that I visited while in Gulu.
This border town has served as a supply-line to Darfur and southern Sudan for years now. But Gulu itself has also had its own problems in that it used to be at the eye of the Joseph Kony hurricane for many years. So forget about Darfur for the moment and let’s concentrate on Joseph Kony. That man is one sick puppy!
First off, I learned that Kony had been terrorizing East Africa for over 22 years. “You don’t last that long in the war game unless someone major is backing you,” said one NGO rep. And just who might be backing Kony? The same corporate slime-balls who usually back everything wrong in this world. The “extraction industry” hit men who thrive on chaos because it gives them the opportunity to step in and steal oil and minerals from the natives — from West Virginia and Iraq to East Timor and Darfur, they are there. And these guys are a talented lot. They steal and pilfer globally with great panache and never seem to get caught.
So I learned a lot about Joseph Kony while I was in Gulu. And we even drove by his mother’s house outside of town. Kony was a homeboy.
One missionary stationed near Gulu told me, “The mayor of our village came to ask us to help him bury the dead because Ugandans don’t like to handle dead bodies. So we went out into the fields and collected approximately 87 skeletons, victims of Kony’s 2007 battles near the village. Two of them wore the LRA uniforms. Many of them were children.”
Someone else told me that, “You can always tell where Kony is operating these days because he leaves a harvest of havoc behind him. People start showing up dead and children go missing and villages are destroyed. He is currently operating the the Central African Republic. You can tell by their latest swath of dead bodies.”
Another man told me about his experiences with having the LRA raid his all-boy prep school when he was a kid. “An old man on a bicycle rode up and warned us that Kony’s army was coming so we all scattered to safety in time. But no one warned our sister school, Aboke, and the girls there, the cream of Uganda’s most intelligent and high-charactered girls, were mostly kidnapped and raped.”
Apparently one old nun followed the soldiers, threw herself in front of Kony’s soldiers and said, “To take these girls, you will have to kill me first,” and many of the girls got away as a result. But the rest of them were forced to become child soldiers and sex slaves to the LRA. Tragedy. http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=d00f9562-9f5c-4ab4-b1b3-2c172a3ffc6b&sponsor=
After hearing so many stories about Kony in Gulu, I began to realize why one of the leaders of the “Invisible Children” NGO recently went a bit crazy. Kony was driving me crazy too!
We then talked with some staff members of Invisible Children. “IC is trying to help as many children as possible in many various different ways — but it is a daunting task. For every child that we are able to help, there are over 500 more waiting in line with major needs.”
Invisible Children offers 700 high school scholarships a year and 300 scholarships to college, as well as help in constructing school infrastructure all over this area. Kony would be truly pissed off.
Then on the drive back to Kampala, I discovered two more things — rhinoceroses and chapatis. At a huge new rhino reserve, I got to actually walk within 100 feet of a nursing rhino mother and her calf. It was magical. And all along the roadside, people were selling handmade chapatis. YUMMERS! Well worth the trip to Uganda alone.
PS: Next I went off to Jinja, the source of the Nile. Wow. And sat beside the shores of Lake Victoria and ate some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. Zachery’s in Oakland? Eat your heart out!
Jane Stillwater, fearless African explorer. “Dr. Livingston I presume?”
No, just the waiter, asking me if I wanted mushrooms or anchovies on my pizza. Of course I wanted mushrooms. “Got any olives?”
PPS: Global Exchange is also currently staging a fact-finding trip to Kabul, Afghanistan, that will explore the role of women in current Afghan society — and will also include a side-trip to the former site of the legendary Bamiyan buddhas http://www.teosofiskakompaniet.net/images/Bamian69.jpg This is totally exciting! When I was in Kabul back in 2007, the only way that an American lady like me could get there was to ride on the floor of the back seat of a car while wearing a burka.
Sign up for the Afghanistan trip here and be your own fact-finder: http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/afghanistan-women-making-change
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Here’s some of my Uganda photos from my FaceBook page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150896618206618.400459.519281617&type=1&l=0fadbcca19
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New campaign, old strategy?
In “The Selling of the President 1968” (Trident Press 1969), author Joe McGinniss described the trials and tribulations that the Nixon team had to surmount in that year’s Presidential Campaign, and since the challenges are quite similar to those being faced by the Romney Ryan ticket, we thought that simultaneous reviews of both that book and Timothy Crouse’s “The Boys on the Bus” (Ballantine Books paperback edition 1972) would be relevant as the Republican Nation Convention draws neigh.
McGinnis describes (on page 39) the difficulty of marketing Nixon eight years after he lost the 1960 battle with John F. Kennedy: “Trying with one hand, to build the illusion that Richard Nixon, in addition to his attributes of mind and heart, considered, in the words of Patrick K. Buchanan, a speech writer, “communicating with the people . . . one of the great joys of seeking the Presidency;” while with the other they shielded him, controlled him, and controlled the atmosphere around him.” Same problem, different Republican candidate, different year.
The star of the Nixon strategy team was a fellow named Harry Treleaven who came to the Nixon camp’s attention after he took a leave of absence from J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1966 to work on a congressional campaign in Texas. The incumbent was a Democrat named Frank Briscoe and Treleaven assessed (McGinniss’ book pages 44 – 45) the race this way: “There’ll be few opportunities for logical persuasion, which is all right – because probably more people vote for irrational, emotional reasons than professional politicians suspect.”
Picking Paul Ryan made liberals very angry, which, in turn, made conservatives very happy. President Obama’s initial reaction seemed to be the use of logical argumentation to change the conservatives’ emotional reaction. Wouldn’t seeing the dismantling of the Social Security program make liberals even angrier? In a world devoid of logical thinking, wouldn’t that make the conservatives even happier?
The 1968 Nixon campaign perfected the strategy of making some news just in time to get it placed on the evening network news programs, which meant that the Democrats would be left scrambling the next day to contend with damage control, while Nixon & Co. started the game anew. Adjusting the campaign to the timing of media news cycles was a breakthrough innovation.
The fact that Mitt Romney made his announcement early on a Saturday morning will be an irrelevant descriptive fact for most of the writers who wished to comment on the selection of Paul Ryan as the “presumptive” Presidential nominee’s presumptive running mate, but for the World’s Laziest Journalist, that example of odd timing looked like the metaphorical “kiss of death” for Mitt’s chances to win the fall election. In the Internet era of 24/7 news coverage, one time may be just as good as another so long as the candidate’s media advisors don’t care about the news cycles for more traditional media such as influential newspapers, weekend network shouting matches, and magazine journalism.
If the announcement occurred at breakfast time in the Eastern Time zone that means the candidate was willing to reduce his West Coast audience for live coverage of the announcement to a pathetic minimum of what he could have had by choosing the timing with a better regard for strategic planning.
The preview editions of the Sunday editions of both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times were on the delivery trucks heading for the Saturday advance sales market. No way to get free publicity about the announcement into those valuable assets.
The early edition of the New York Times Sunday paper was probably holding a news hole for a crash close on the story, but there was no way they would hold the Week in Review Section (and run up extensive amounts of overtime) for a Presidential candidate who treats journalists with the same sneering “that’s all your going to get” condescension that he delivers to the potential voters. Why should that attitude remind this columnist of Nixon?
Don’t some of the weekend round-up shouting matches tape their programs on Friday afternoon? In this cost conscious world, what made Romney think he could inspire a dispensation involving excessive amounts of overtime pay for the union workers?
Did Romney expect the networks to call in their Monday to Friday anchor persons to read the story on Saturday night’s installment of their network’s evening news program? What did LBJ say about “If we’ve lost Cronkite . . .”? Does a weekend substitute carry the same level of gravitas as Edward R. Murrow?
Did Newsweek hold the cover story for “crash close” coverage of the announcement?
Where are the adult Republican media advisors who helped write the book for the 1968 strategy described in Joe McGinniss’ book “The Selling of the President”? Why didn’t Karl Rove help avert this example of inept spin control strategy?
Timothy Crouse, in his 1972 book, “The Boys on the Bus,” (page 195) said: “Then Nixon decided to hide out for a year and stop feeding the press handouts. Instead he fed it George Romney.” Does History repeat itself? Could Mitt claim that he was brainwashed into making the ill-timed Saturday morning announcement?
Is there another Republican of Nixon’s stature standing in the shadows waiting for a dramatic call to unveil a secret plan to end the Vietnam War . . . or balance the budget . . . or whatever? Or are the Republicans going to be satisfied with replaying the Goldwater debacle or a 1968 style squeaker?
Over the ensuing weekend, did the TV shows, which love to promise their audiences a variety of behind the scenes insights into what is really happening, mention the hidden implications of the odd timing of the announcement?
Crouse (on page 322) describes the major innovation in news coverage of Presidential campaigns: “Here in 1972, with the new law that obliged contributors to make public their gifts, was a unique opportunity to follow the big corporation rats as they stole out of their holes to deposit a large bag of cash at the door of some candidate and – almost invariably – ask for some favor in return.”
One of the disadvantages of reading books more than forty years old is that some aspects of the text will leave the modern reader hanging in suspense. Treleaven’s 1966 candidate won, but how the heck will we ever satisfy our curiosity and learn what happened to the guy who beat Briscoe 58 to 42 in a traditional Democratic stronghold? What ever happened to George H. W. Bush? (Maybe we’ll get lucky and a reader in Texas can post an update in the comments section.)
On page 10, Crouse quotes newsman Karl Fleming: “So eventually a very subtle kind of thing takes over and the reporter says to himself, ‘All I gotta do to satisfy my editor and publisher is just get what the other guys are getting, so why should I bust my ass?’”
Does that mean that the World’s Laziest Journalist didn’t have to dig out a copy of Crouse’s book and track down a copy of McGinniss’ book, do some fast and furious reading, and then fire up the computer at 0600 on Monday morning? We couldda skipped most of the work and just churned out a few words about Mitt making a bold gamble by catering to the demands of the far right and then posting that anemic effort. Whatever.
Either one of these two books will provide a reader with a better basis for evaluating this year’s election process and taken together they provide conclusive evidence for proving the case for believing that America’s freedom of the press is rapidly approaching the final chapter for the history of an institution experiencing a terminal illness. If the voters are not going to make their decisions based on a well informed evaluation of the issues, then America’s free press is doomed to extinction.
Oscar Wilde said he wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t judge people solely on their appearance and Harry Treleaven believed (McGinniss book page 44) “Most national issues today are so complicated, so difficult to understand, and have opinions on that they either intimidate or, more often, bore the average voter .”
Joe McGinniss quoted (page 131) Richard M. Nixon as saying: “Let us remember, the main purpose of American foreign aid is not to help other nations but to help ourselves.”
Now the disk jockey will play the AC/DC song “Problem Child,” the Rolling Stones’ song “Sparks will fly,” and the 1968 Nixon campaign song “Bring Our Country Back.” We have to post this week’s Week in Review column a few hours early and attend to some administrative matters. Have a “Hidden Persuaders” type week.