FOX News Creates Fraudulent Video to Discredit Ron Paul

Peacenik isn't a supporter of Ron Paul. Nor is Fox News. But this example shows how blatant the media's manipulation of news is. And meanwhile the CRTC thinks having Fox News, or Fox News wannabes, is ok in Canada. You want to know why most Republicans think Obama is a Muslim? It is because of media distortion/propaganda like this. Follow the link. Watch the video.

As Paul Joseph Watson of PrisonPlanet writes:

In a shocking act of mass public deception, Fox News attempted to skew Ron Paul’s 2011 CPAC straw poll win by representing it with footage from the previous year’s CPAC event, at which Mitt Romney supporters had loudly booed the result, another example of the continuing dirty tricks campaign being waged against Paul by the establishment media.

Congressman Paul replicated his 2010 victory over Mitt Romney by defeating the former Governor of Massachusetts for a second consecutive year at the annual CPAC conference.

However, before anchor Bill Hemmer introduced a segment concerning the story, Fox News played a clip of the 2010 announcement of the poll results, during which Mitt Romney supporters had loudly booed Ron Paul’s victory, passing off last year’s footage as representative of this year’s event.

Hemmer then proceeded to state, “In the end he was the winner, probably not the reaction he was hoping for,” describing the reaction as “mixed applause and boos,” before directly asking Ron Paul if he knew who was booing him.

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A Response to Controversial 'Time' Cover: What ALSO Happens If We Leave Afghanistan

Greg Mitchell

As I noted early this morning over at my Daybook, Time magazine's cover story this week arrives with a graphic cover image next to the title, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." It shows an Afghan teen named Aisha whose nose and ears had been sliced off by the Taliban.

Inside, editor Rick Stengel explains that he consulted psychologists about what harm could be done to children who might see this disturbing image. But he also defends the aim of the story itself in the following paragraph:

"The much publicized release of classified documents by WikiLeaks has already ratcheted up the debate about the war. Our story and the haunting cover image by the distinguished South African photographer Jodi Bieber are meant to contribute to that debate. We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it. We do it to illuminate what is actually happening on the ground. As lawmakers and citizens begin to sort through the information about the war and make up their minds, our job is to provide context and perspective on one of the most difficult foreign policy issues of our time. What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents: a combination of emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land and the consequences of the important decisions that lie ahead."

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This Time cover may go down as one of the most manipulative ever. Pure propaganda. Pure warmongering. First the media refuses to publish pictures of the carnage of war caused by the U.S. and their allies, including Canada. Then they put out this. Peacenik will never read another word in Time Magazine. Bring the troops home now.

MSM Reporting as Propaganda (No one Minds our New Financial Masters)

Peacenik thinks this article is worth reading. It offers an explanation for why the sheeple aren't in the streets protesting.

The sheeple have been trained to not protest. But the sheeple haven't been trained to go hungry, or homeless or hopeless. The protests will come. Too bad they're 30 years too late.

by Yves

I’m of two minds about taking up this theme, since stating what ought to be obvious but is nevertheless unpleasant and inconvenient is apt to get one branded as lunatic fringe.

Access journalism has created what is in many respects a controlled press. And that matters because people are far more suggestible than most of us wants to admit to ourselves.

Let us start with the cheerleading in the media over Wall Street, and in particular, Goldman earnings. Matt Taibbi, in “Good News on Wall Street Means… What Exactly?,” tells us why this is so distorted:

It’s literally amazing to me that our press corps hasn’t yet managed to draw a distinction between good news on Wall Street for companies like Goldman, and good news in reality.

I watched carefully the reporting of the Dow breaking 10,000 the other day and not anywhere did I see a major news organization include a paragraph of the “On the other hand, so fucking what?” sort, one that might point out that unemployment is still at a staggering high, foreclosures are racing along at a terrifying clip, and real people are struggling more than ever. In fact the dichotomy between the economic health of ordinary people and the traditional “market indicators” is not merely a non-story, it is a sort of taboo — unmentionable in major news coverage.

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The War on Language

punditman says...A correspondent by the name of Taxiguy has requested the following post, with this comment: "I think this article provides a few minutes of reassurance that the world has not gone completely mad. It also serves as a counterbalance to other articles about the bombast and spew that television news serves up every day."

by Chris Hedges

There is a scene in "Othello" when the Moor is so consumed by jealousy and rage that he loses the eloquence and poetry that make him the most articulate man in Venice. He turns to the audience, shortly before he murders Desdemona, and sputters, "Goats and monkeys!" Othello fell prey to wild self-delusion and unchecked rage, and his words became captive to hollow clichés. The debasement of language, which Shakespeare understood was a prelude to violence, is the curse of modernity. We have stopped communicating, even with ourselves. And the consequences will be as extreme as in the Shakespearean tragedy.

Those who seek to dominate our behavior first seek to dominate our speech. They seek to obscure meaning. They make war on language. And the English- and Arabic-speaking worlds are each beset with a similar assault on language. The graffiti on the mud walls of Gaza that calls for holy war or the crude rants of Islamic militants are expressed in a simplified, impoverished form of Arabic. This is not the classical language of 1,500 years of science, poetry and philosophy. It is an argot of clichés, distorted Quranic verses and slogans. This Arabic is no more comprehensible to the literate in the Arab world than the carnival barking that pollutes our airwaves is comprehensible to our literate classes. The reduction of popular discourse to banalities, exacerbated by the elite's retreat into obscure, specialized jargon, creates internal walls that thwart real communication. This breakdown in language makes reflection and debate impossible. It transforms foreign cultures, which we lack the capacity to investigate, into reversed images of ourselves. If we represent virtue, progress and justice, as our clichés constantly assure us, then the Arabs, or the Iranians, or anyone else we deem hostile, represent evil, backwardness and injustice. An impoverished language solidifies a binary world and renders us children with weapons.

How do you respond to "Islam is the solution" or "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior"? How do you converse with someone who justifies the war in Iraq-as Christopher Hitchens does-with the tautology that we have to "kill them over there so they do not kill us over here"? Those who speak in these thought-terminating clichés banish rational discussion. Their minds are shut. They sputter and rant like a demented Othello. The paucity of public discourse in our culture, even among those deemed to be public intellectuals, is matched by the paucity of public discourse in the Arab world.

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Whence the Terror Hysteria? Follow the Money

By Philip Girardi

www.antiwar.com

One of the unique pleasures of living near our nation’s capital is to sit down with the first morning cup of coffee, open the Washington Post, and flip through the full-page ads placed by defense contractors. The ads almost always feature dedicated young soldiers, fierce bald eagles, and American flags. They extol our heroic warriors and note how they, the contractors, are on the front line defending freedom and the American way. They do not mention that the ads are paid for by the taxpayers, courtesy of the huge profits generated by unneeded defense spending. Their CEOs and shareholders must smile when they see the ads. The rest of us shouldn’t.

This is not to suggest that defense contractors don’t do a lot of good in the world. They support armies of lobbyists and contribute to congressmen who otherwise would have to find real work. They make sure that the pundits and ideologues who promote a vigorous defense of American interests at home and abroad are well-funded through their contributions to think-tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, and Frank Gaffney’s ubiquitous Center for Security Policy. They hold gala dinners and invite Bush administration hacks and blue dog Democrats to speak, paying them generous honoraria to make sure they have comfortable retirements. They sometimes show incredible ingenuity, figuring out how to make gasoline that costs $1.13 per gallon in Kuwait cost $8 when it arrives in Iraq a day later. They produce ships and planes and missile systems that America doesn’t need, but doing so surely keeps workers in their factories in key congressional constituencies from having to file for unemployment. It’s a win-win.

And defense contractors know how to make people afraid and keep them that way. The next war, against Iran, will no doubt be prepped by claims that Tehran was involved in 9/11 and that it is the principal supporter of al-Qaeda. Those Persians are "killing our soldiers." And nothing much changes when you flip from Republican to Democrat. Even if the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is now being referred to as Overseas Contingency Operations, there has been no shift in how Washington approaches the terrorism problem. Overseas Contingency Operations are just as big a business as was GWOT; they are designed to make money and create good jobs for a lot of people. If one opens that same Washington Post featuring the full-page self-congratulatory ads and turns to the employment pages, the few jobs available in this recession-wracked economy are in the quarter-page listings for defense contractors. Squeezing money from the taxpayers or borrowing it from foreigners appears to be the entirety of Washington’s local economy.

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Punditman says...Oh yeah, that's why we're here. This article is a great reminder of why punditman created punditman in the first place: The so-called war on terror and its complementary propaganda and the military industrial complex and its complementary propaganda and how they work in tandem—for profit. There are those who still can't see this connection or who refuse to. They prefer a much simpler narrative, like "They fight for our freedom." Perhaps some of these lost souls pop by here once in a while and learn a thing or two that changes their consciousness. One can hope.
Peacenik talks a lot about economic decline, doom and disaster. That's fair game, but then Philip Girardi summarizes the ever-present, incestuous connection between the US defence industry lobby and the highly leveraged Global War On Terror—and he nails it. There always seems to be money for the war makers even if the war is a fraud and everyone else's money is in tatters. Always. Unless you're talking Russian Revolution and WW I, or later, how the money the Soviet Union wasted on the arms race, war in Afghanistan, etc. contributed to its collapse. Surely the US is not immune to a similar fate...I think.

Canadian Military Plans to Spam Afghans This Summer

Canadian military propagandists plan to bombard Afghans' cellphones with texts and contest offers

by Allan Woods

OTTAWA - Canada plans to boost its propaganda reach by tapping into mobile phones in Afghanistan to send text messages, run contests and drive listeners to its military-run, Pashto-language radio station.

It's a fairly crude, transparent tactic in the high science of counter-insurgency, but the military sees it as a way to better connect with local Afghans in a war-torn land where the cellphone is one of the fastest growing, and only reliable, means of communication.

The capability, to be set up this summer, will encourage Afghans to sign up for text-message alerts from defence officials and to enter military-run contests awarding prizes to lucky locals, according to public tendering documents.

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Ferchrissakes. What is more ridiculous? Waging this propaganda in the first place or publicizing it via a publicly tendered bid? Can someone tell Peacenik what Canada is doing in Afghanistan? Can someone tell Peacenik why Canada is in Afghanistan? Canada doesn't know who the "enemy" is and doesn't know if they are killing civilians or "enemies." Canada can't afford the cost of the war effort. And now the Afspamistan campaign? Give Peacenik a break! Will Tim Horton coffees be the prizes? This is worse than goofy. It illustrates the obvious: Canada should not be in Afghanistan. Bring the troops home now.

Vietnam and Now: Lying and Deception "For the Good of the Country"

May 11, 2009

The lies, deceptions, misrepresentations and statistical legerdemain of the present financial meltdown remind me of the Vietnam era when the same sort of endless propaganda and deception was foisted on the American public "for the good of the nation."

The Vietnam War launched a great number of rich metaphors and ironies. We had to destroy the village in order to save it, etc. But beneath this tortured history lies a key point:

The entire justification for the war and its prosecution were constructed on conscious deceptions chosen by our elected and unelected leaders "for our own good." I think the process worked thusly: fearful the American public was tiring of the burdens of a global Cold War with global domination at stake, the U.S. Powers That Be did not trust democracy or the U.S. public to "make the right decision" which would serve "the best interests of the nation."

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Nice bit of history here from Charles Hugh Smith. They lied about Vietnam and they are lying about the financial crisis. They lie about everything. Peacenik is bemused by all the stories about how the corner is turned, the bottom is in. Even George Soros thinks the worst is over. Peacenik will continue to wait and see.....and watch the market continue to rally....on the basis of lies.

Robert Fisk’s World: Right to the very end in Iraq, our masters denied us the truth

The sentence ‘millions of Iraqis now live free of oppression’ is pure public relations

We acknowledge," the letter says, "that violence has claimed the lives of many thousands of Iraqi civilians over the last five years, either through terrorism or sectarian violence. Any loss of innocent lives is tragic and the Government is committed to ensuring that civilian casualties are avoided. Insurgents and terrorists are not, I regret to say, so scrupulous."

This quotation comes from the Ministry of Defence's "Iraq Operations Team, Directorate of Operations" and is signed by someone whose initials may be "SM" or "SW" or even "SWe". Unusually (but understandably), it does not carry a typed version of the author's name. Its obvious anonymity – given the fact that not a single reference is made to the civilians slaughtered by the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq – is no surprise. I, too, would not want to be personally associated with such Blair-like mendacity. What is astonishing, however, is that this outrageous letter should have been written this year.

I should say at once that I owe this revelatory text (actually dated 20 January) to a very un-anonymous Independent reader, Tom Geddes, who thought I would find its "economy with the truth" interesting. I certainly do. We are now, are we not, supposed to be in the age of Brown-like truth, as we finally haul down the flag in Basra, of near-certainty of an official inquiry into the whole Iraq catastrophe, a time of reckoning for the men who sent us off to war under false pretences. I suspect that this – like the Obama pretensions to change – is a falsehood. Well, we shall see.

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punditman says...

Robert Fisk surveys ongoing British government propaganda regarding the Iraq war and counters it with this rather important rejoinder: contrary to official claims, Saddam Hussein did not "refuse to co-operate" with the UN weapons inspectors. He actually was co-operating, and the UN weapons team under Hans Blix was about to prove those mythical weapons of mass destruction were non-existent. Hence the US forced Blix and his team to leave Iraq. Punditman wonders how many people actually know that. The lies about Iraq continue. The revisionist history has begun; it is important to guard the truth.

Who's Telling the Truth About Iran's Nuclear Program?

by Muhammad Sahimi

Since February 2003, Iran's nuclear program has undergone what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself admits to be the most intrusive inspection in its entire history. After thousands of hours of inspections by some of the most experienced IAEA experts, the Agency has verified time and again that (1) there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, and (2) all the declared nuclear materials have been accounted for; there has been no diversion of such materials to non-peaceful purposes. Iran has a clean bill of health, as far as its nuclear program is concerned.

This is not what Israel, its lobby in the United States, and its neoconservative allies had expected. Such a clean bill of health deprives them of any justification for advocating military attacks on Iran. The illegal act of sending Iran's nuclear dossier to the United Nations Security Council and the subsequent, highly dubious UNSC resolutions against Iran have also not been effective. So what is the War Party to do?

It has resorted to an international campaign of exaggerations, lies, and distortions. This campaign involves planting lies in the major media and on the Internet, making absurd interpretations of what the IAEA reports on Iran, and issuing dire – but bogus – warnings about the speed at which Iran's uranium-enrichment program is progressing. Such warnings have been around for over two decades. In 1984, West German intelligence predicted that Iran would make a nuclear bomb within two years.

The campaign uses all the instruments of the U.S. political establishment to advance its agenda. The Bush administration routinely talked about "Iran's nuclear weapon program" or "Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons," without ever bothering to present any credible evidence for their assertion. Iran's drive for nuclear weapons has become an article of faith even to President Obama, who, in my opinion, is not pro-war. LeonPanetta , the new CIA director, recently said, "From all the information I've seen, I think there is no question that they [Iranians] are seeking that [nuclear weapon] capability." What information, Mr.Panetta? Enlighten us, please.

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punditman says...I would guess that the vast majority of people out there, despite their political affiliation, would simply assume that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon and is playing a game of Monty Python's Olympic Hide-and-Seek with the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency. You, dear reader, may be one of these people. The only problem is that there is no evidence for such an assumption. None.

Punditman also makes the safe assumption that most people do not know that even the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007 said Iran "halted" its nuclear weapons program in 2003; and, if they don't know that, then Punditman would bet his fictitious dividend cheque that most also don't know that this same report did not present any evidence that an Iranian nuclear program has ever existed (none, ever)–so it couldn't be "halted" in the first place!

This speaks to the power of media- and political-propaganda, working in tandem.

Is Punditman defending Iran? Not at all. Does Punditman trust Iran? Punditman does not trust any State. Punditman is simply defending the facts.

Endless Propaganda

The War on Terror is a Hoax

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.

If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.

The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells is that not a single neocon has been assassinated.

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punditman says...Once in awhile, you need a dose of Paul Craig Roberts' truth serum to put your brain back on task. There...that feels better.

Zombie Lies Still Find Targets

by dday

I was on this phone call today with Tom Malinowski from Human Rights Watch and others discussing the Obama executive orders on torture, and everyone is guardedly optimistic about what this means for the rule of law. If the gray areas on "other dispositions" besides trying or releasing Gitmo detainees and the wiggle room on extra-legal torture techniques are cleared up, we have a blueprint for restoring the rule of law. We need to be vigilant, however, to close whatever loopholes there may be.

This didn't seem to matter to one reporter on the call, who up front ADMITTED HE HASN'T BEEN FOLLOWING THE ISSUE and asked what would happen if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had to be set free because we waterboarded him. This is someone who has confessed to practically every terrorist act of the last 40 years, wants to be a martyr, and for whom there is enough evidence untainted by torture to progress to trial.

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The media has been doing the republicans' and the Bush's bidding so long that they can't help themselves. Peacenik thinks its time the media was re-educated. Obama and his media team need to shoot down the nonsense that is spouted on Fox and CNN and the New York Times. And some of the talking heads need to retire. GE, the corporate owner of CNBC, has been to the public trough for bailout money. Maybe its time to remind GE who is funding the bailout. Its not the republicans. Its not the conservatives. Its not Rush Limbaugh.

Pure Propaganda From the Papers of Record

by Philip Girardi

The Israeli propaganda machine has called up its allies in the media and Congress to make sure that no one will condemn the invasion of Gaza, which has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians, most of them civilians and many of them children. The pictures of small bodies lined up to be buried are convincing evidence that something is very wrong in Gaza, but leaders in Congress from both parties have nonetheless rallied to the cause of Israeli victimhood, putting all the blame for the conflict on the Palestinians.

Folks outside the United States who do not have the benefit of the Israel lobby to guide their thinking are seeing the carnage in a different way, noting the disproportionate nature of the Israeli attack and also the unlikelihood that Tel Aviv's stated objectives are obtainable without utterly destroying Gaza's infrastructure and turning the strip of land into a military-occupied moonscape. Many are also wondering what Israel's actual goals might be, since the invasion will only empower Hamas politically, not destroy it. Is it to tie the incoming Obama administration irrevocably to Israel's security agenda or to strengthen the Kadima Party in the lead-up to national elections next month? Only time will tell, but, as always, the Palestinians will bear the brunt of the suffering, and the United States will surely pay some price for green-lighting the Israeli offensive.

The Washington Post, as always, has not been shy in its support of Israel. It has featured editorials and a preponderance of letters to the editor strongly supporting the Israeli position. No less than 11 opinion pieces by Israeli politicians Tzipi Livni and Ephraim Sneh, American professor Robert Lieber, Israeli academic Yossi Klein Halevi, Jim Hoagland, John Bolton, Michael Gerson, and Charles Krauthammer (twice) have all exonerated Tel Aviv in the current crisis and accused Hamas of being solely responsible. Referring to the invasion, Richard Cohen wrote last week that "It takes real stupidity to blame it on Israel." That shared the page with a piece by Anne Applebaum that asserted, astonishingly, that Hamas believes "the continuing firing of rockets into southern Israel will, sooner or later, somehow bring about the dissolution of the Jewish state." It is clear that complete ignorance of what one is writing about has never deterred anyone on the Post's opinion pages.

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punditman says...

To paraphrase Chomsky, if all you rely upon is the mainstream media as your guide to what is happening in the world, your mind will be very impoverished.

Mary Dejevsky: Why did the West ignore the truth about the war in Georgia?

The US and UK left the impression that Russia was the guilty party

Thank goodness, they might be thinking at the US State Department and the British Foreign Office, for the financial crisis. Were it not for the ever-blacker news about the Western world's economy, another scandal would be vying for the headlines – and one where the blame would be easier to apportion. It concerns our two countries' relations with Russia and the truth about this summer's Georgia-Russia war.

Over the past couple of weeks, a spate of reports has appeared in the American and British media, questioning many assumptions about that war, chief among them that Russia was the guilty party. Journalists from the BBC, The New York Times and Canada's Embassy magazine, among others, travelled to South Ossetia, the region at the centre of the conflict, in an effort to establish the facts.

Not the "facts" as told by the super-slick Georgian PR machine at the time, nor the "facts" as eventually dragged from the hyper-defensive and clod-hopping communicators of the Kremlin. But the facts as experienced on the ground by those who were there: civilians, the local military commander, and the small number of unarmed monitors stationed in the region by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The journalists travelled to the region separately and by different routes. They spoke to different people. But their findings are consistent: Georgia launched an indiscriminate military assault on South Ossetia's main town, Tskhinvali. The hospital was among the buildings attacked; doctors were injured even as they operated.

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punditman says...

Where were these reporters when it really mattered? Punditman has been documenting the blatant use of propaganda by Western governments in the Georgia-Russia war — accompanied by hopelessly biased reporting in the western press — since that conflict occurred last summer. This occurred despite the indisputable fact that Georgia launched an indiscriminate military assault on South Ossetia's main town, Tskhinvali — which led to a Russian response.

It seems there is now some pull back from the official position.

Nevertheless, a recent case in point: In a November 12th broadcast, BBC's HARDtalk programme host, Stephen Sackur accused Russia alone of starting the war when he interviewed Konstantin Simonov, Director General of the National Energy Security Fund, Russia. It was as if the West and Israel played no role whatsoever in stirring up and training Georgian forces, and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is all lilly white.

So this is all old hat. Does that make us "pro-Russian"? No. Does it make us truth-seekers? Yes, because we smelled a rat from the beginning — and we were right.

US Journalists & War-Crime Guilt

By Peter Dyer October 15, 2008

Editor’s Note: This year, the U.S. news media cheered the opening of the $450 million Newseum in Washington, a self-congratulatory celebration of American journalism.

However, rather than giving themselves that expensive pat on the back, the major U.S. media organizations might have done something to show remorse for their complicity in the Bush administration’s propaganda that justified the invasion of Iraq.
As freelance journalist Peter Dyer notes, prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunals deemed such journalistic support for war crimes to be a capital offense:

October 16 is an anniversary that should hold considerable interest for American journalists who have written in support of ”Operation Iraqi Freedom” – the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Sixty-two years ago, on Oct. 16, 1946, Julius Streicher was hanged.

Streicher was one of a group of 10 Germans executed that day following the judgment of the first Nuremberg Trial – a 40-week trial of 22 of the most prominent Nazis.

Each was tried for two or more of the four crimes defined in the Nuremberg Charter: crimes against peace (aggression), war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy.

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Peacenik thinks this article should give wingnut media cheerleaders reason to pause. Thanks to George Bush, the concept of war crimes seems to have been irradicated thanks to the "war on terror." Unless of course you're an enemy combatant. Peacenik is trying to get his head around the idea of O'Reilly or Krauthammer in the Hague.

The Mighty, Scary Press Corps

by Glenn Greenwald

Criticizing the McCain campaign for refusing to allow reporters to question Sarah Palin, Time's Jay Carney writes:

Political operatives love to talk about circumventing the media and other co-called "elites" -- i.e., independent specialists, observers and thinkers. The operatives convince themselves they can take their candidate's message directly to the people -- on their terms, without all that poking and prodding and skepticism. That's propaganda. In a democratic society, it rarely works for long.

If only that were true. But if there's one indisputable lesson from the last eight years, it's that political propaganda works exceedingly well -- not despite an aggressively adversarial press but precisely because we don't have one. Carney's idealistic claims about the short life-span of propaganda in American democracy are empirically false:

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Peacenik just read elsewhere that Palin has agreed to an interview with Charlie Gibson. Just what Greenwald predicted would happen in this article. I would bet that there will be no gotcha questions and any questions about foreign leaders will be pre-screened. The press hasn't asked anyone in the Bush administration a tough question for 8 years. I don't even know why McCain and Palin are worried. BTW a weekend Gallup poll showed McCain jumping ahead of Obama.

The Neocons Do Georgia

Humanity's Greatest Enemy?
www.counterpunch.org

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The success of the Bush Regime’s propaganda, lies, and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.

As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag.

It certainly worked with Americans.

The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.

Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships.

We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by US and NATO troops.

We don’t know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.

What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to achieve their undeclared agenda.

That such evil people have control over the United States government and media damns the American public for eternity.

America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime.

The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime’s criminal actions. Even Obama, who promises “change” is too intimidated by the neocon’s success in brainwashing the American population to do what his supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us.

This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed “Russian invasion” to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.

Only this time, the rest of the world didn’t buy it. The many years of lies--9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, “the United States doesn’t torture,” the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated “terrorist plots,” the determined assault on civil liberties--have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.

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punditman says...Paul Craig Roberts pulls no punches; he calls it as he sees it.

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

By DAVID BARSTOW
www.nytimes.com

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

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punditman says...Well worth the full read if you have any interest at all in the media-industrial-military complex. When you see so-called "experts" on TV, always check out who butters their bread. This applies to all topics on all networks throughout the known universe.

Quarter Of Americans Now Think Iran is The Biggest Enemy

Consistent neocon propaganda campaign paying off...

by Steve Watson

A quarter of Americans believe that Iran now poses the biggest threat to the United States, confirming that a sustained neocon propaganda campaign to demonize Iran and its leaders for their own strategic benefit is having a significant impact.

According to a new poll by Gallup, Iran is top of the enemy list, with 25 percent, followed by Iraq at 22 percent, then China with 14 percent, and North Korea with 9 percent.

Republicans are more than twice as likely as Democrats to see Iran as the top U.S. enemy, while Democrats are likelier to name Iraq. Older people and those who say they closely follow world news are less likely to cite Iraq than the younger and less informed, reported the AP.

It was September last year when the New Yorker magazine reported that Barnett Rubin, a highly respected Afghanistan expert at New York University, asserted that Dick Cheney ordered top Neo-Con media outlets, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, to unleash a PR blitz to sell conflict with Iran.

The fruits of that propaganda campaign are now clear to see.

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punditman says...

Let's see if I understand: Shi'a-dominated Iran has benefited greatly from the US invasion of the Sunni-dominated Iraqi regime of Sadam Hussein. In fact, now the Shi'a-dominated US-backed Iraqi regime and Shi'a-dominated Iran are getting along famously.

Nevertheless, 22 percent of Americans think Iraq is still their enemy. They think that the government that their soldiers are fighting to defend is their enemy! Of course, they are defending against...wait for it...other Iraqis! Hence the confusion on this minor point of who Americans think they should be killing at the moment. Voice of hubby in background:

"Damn it, Martha. We're still killing them dang ragheads, so the answer is I-RACK is our enemy! Tell the man!

Meanwhile, another 25 percent of Americans think that their Iraqi ally's new friend, Iran, should be their number one enemy. Voice of hubby in background:

"Martha, git off that friggin' phone, Fox News is coming on!"

You can always count on around half the American people being completely anaesthesized--and Dick Cheney knows it.

Everyone the US fights in Iraq is now "al-Qaida"

punditman says:
...and everyone Canada fights in Afghanistan is "Taliban."
The analysis below is an excellent example of how the propaganda system works.

by Glenn Greenwald

Josh Marshall publishes an e-mail from a reader who identifies what is one of the most astonishing instances of mindless, pro-government "reporting" yet:

It's a curious thing that, over the past 10 - 12 days, the news from Iraq refers to the combatants there as "al-Qaida" fighters. When did that happen?

Until a few days ago, the combatants in Iraq were "insurgents" or they were referred to as "Sunni" or "Shia'a" fighters in the Iraq Civil War. Suddenly, without evidence, without proof, without any semblance of fact, the US military command is referring to these combatants as "al-Qaida".

Welcome to the latest in Iraq propaganda.

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term "Al Qaeda" to designate "anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq" is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

But what is even more notable is that the establishment press has followed right along, just as enthusiastically. I don't think the New York Times has published a story about Iraq in the last two weeks without stating that we are killing "Al Qaeda fighters," capturing "Al Qaeda leaders," and every new operation is against "Al Qaeda."

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