Penn’s War: Media Lap Dogs Backed Iraq Mess
Actor Narrates a New Documentary That Indicts U.S. Involvement in Iraq
Sean Penn, the actor-director-turned-political-activist, narrates a new anti-war documentary that alleges U.S. presidents since Kennedy have manipulated the public to wage wars.
The searing documentary coincides with the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and asserts that the mainstream media have been cheerleaders for a war that has cost the nation — according to Department of Defense figures this week — 3,980 lives.
The star, who won for best actor in the 2003 film “Mystic River,” has been an outspoken critic of the war, often calling it “Dante’s Inferno.”
This week, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” has been released for home entertainment to distributors like Amazon and Best Buy and on Netflix. The film premiered in New York City, Saturday.
Penn, 47, has toured Iraq twice — once just before the Bush administration stepped up drumbeats for the war in December 2002, and also as a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Written and directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, the film weaves archival footage from World War II to the Iraq War. It is based on the book by the same name, written in 2005 by Norman Solomon, founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
‘No One Else Has the Guts to Go’
“I invited Sean Penn out of the blue, when no one else had the guts to go,” Solomon told ABCNEWS.com. “When I worked on the film, I contacted him and he didn’t hesitate at all. He donated his time, his work and his reputation.”
Penn was unavailable for comment because he is in production on a film about the life of Harvey Milk, his publicist Rachel Karten of I/D Public Relations told ABCNEWS.com. The actor is set to play the gay politician of San Francisco’s 1970s in a biopic directed by Gus Van Sant.
Penn has been a growing political force in Hollywood. That is no surprise, considering Penn’s roots: His father, actor and director Leo Penn, was blacklisted in the 1950s for his support of Joseph Stalin.
From his early days portraying an airhead in 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Penn has played more highly charged roles like a death row inmate in “Dead Man Walking” (1995) and Sgt. Eddie Walsh in the anti-war film “The Thin Red Line” (1998).
Penn answered a call to help in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, literally pulling people out of the water. A year ago, Penn led a town meeting in California that was critical of President Bush and his handling of the war, drawing both public praise and scorn.
Penn once paid $56,000 for an ad in The Washington Post criticizing the war, according to a report in USA Today. He also baited Bush for his handling of Katrina and his “inflammatory rhetoric” toward Iran.
“You and your smarmy pundits — and the smarmy pundits you have in your pocket — can take your war and shove it,” Penn told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time. “Let’s unite not only in stopping this war, but in holding this administration accountable.”
Reaction to “War Made Easy” has been favorable, according to Adi Bemak, gift director of the Media Education Foundation, which produced the film and is distributing it worldwide.
The project also received support from actor Matt Damon, who was listed in the film’s credits as a “friend” of the foundation.
“We thank all the friends who have supported our work, and that really means in all kinds of ways — networking, hosting events, hosting staff, making donations,” Bemak said.
Toll or Deaths, Injuries
Five years after the American “shock and awe” campaign to oust the regime of Saddam Hussein, 159,000 troops still remain in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense. In addition to military deaths, an estimated 29,275 have been wounded. But the largest toll has been on Iraqi civilians, with 81,964 to 89,448 dead, according to the Brookings Institute.
One of the highest prices of the war has been the public loss of faith in the ability of its government to tell the truth and in a docile press corps, according to the film.
Solomon’s meticulous research and rarely seen archival news footage from World War II through the Vietnam War, Panama, Grenada, Bosnia and two Gulf wars analyzes the way in which the media regurgitated the politicians’ justification for war.
Every president since John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — all except Jimmy Carter — came under fire for their war rhetoric. But Solomon is even harsher on the news media that trumpeted the government’s war cry.
Even Walter Cronkite, whom Solomon calls “the patron saint of journalism,” did not escape attack, as CBS footage chronicled the newsman’s participation in an aerial mission in Vietnam. Cronkite marvels at the weaponry and U.S. military superiority.
Analyzing the press coverage of the Iraq War, Solomon points to the masterful use of public relations by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when he called on 500 journalists to “embed” themselves with the troops. In doing so, the press showed only the perspective of the “attackers” and not the victims.
Solomon contends he is no pacifist: “If war is justified, the government doesn’t have to lie about it.”
“The public supported World War II even though it went on for so long, because the public never felt it was based on lies,” according to Solomon, who, in the film, reminds the audience of the now-debunked Bush mantra that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
In one of the most compelling scenes of the film, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., speaks out against impending war in Afghanistan in never-seen footage three days after 9/11. She cast the lone vote in Congress against authorizing force in the emotional aftermath of the terrorist attacks.
Journalists as Stenographers
“War Made Easy” is being distributed to schools around the country in the hope that Americans can learn “media literacy” and be more critical consumers of the news, looking to more than mainstream sources, the film’s distributors contend.
Solomon also urges the media to get back to solid investigative reporting that challenges the reins of power. Today, he said, they are only “stenographers of the war makers in Washington.”
“Journalists want to be ahead of the curve, but not out on a limb and they don’t want to take professional risks,” Solomon said. “There are great reporters through all the eras, but they are islands of good journalism swamped by oceans of received wisdom.”
“It’s an appeal to democracy that can create genuine alternatives to war,” he said. “Journalists need to fight back and the public needs to challenge itself.”
However, Rich Noyes, director of research at the Media Research Center, sees the press coverage leading up to the war in Iraq differently. He has just released a five-year study of the three major television networks.
“The left has claimed that the media didn’t do enough to stop the war in its tracks,” he told ABCNEWS.com. “But if you go back to the questions asked and the articles that were written and the news that aired, there were great skeptics, adversarial coverage and even hostile news coverage.”
The most aggressive, Noyes said, was Peter Jennings of ABC News. “We have pages and pages of quotes.”
Despite the media’s attacks, Noyes said the media historically has had a “liberal tilt.”
Since the onset of the war, the media have been even more anti-government, according to Noyes.
By 2004, with coverage of scandals like Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, the negative stories “more than outstripped the coverage of Medals of Honor winners and Silver Stars,” he said.
“The vast array of coverage showed soldiers as anonymous or victims of policy perpetrators or misdeeds,” said Noyes. “This sort of bad news hurt the morale of the country.”
Alan Schroeder, associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, told ABCNEWS.com that investigative journalism is not alive and well today. He worries that corporate forces have taken their toll on an independent media.
“Investigative journalism takes a lot of time and you don’t produce daily stories and it requires a financial investment,” he said. “Journalism is a business and subject to all the pressures of the marketplace.”
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
My only comment is that the history of journalists being complicit in war mongering has an even longer reach than that of the documentary when one considers the cases belli of the Spanish-American War: Hearst used it to sell newspapers. The idea of journalism being an neutral reporter of the news is a relatively recent one, while rags with a definite point of view have a much longer history. Since we are in a time where Dubya, Cheney, & Co. are in the midst of executing a “Great Lurch Backwards” to a redux of the Robber Baron era with “Spoils System” government, is it any surprise that the corporate media is what it is?
Three cheers for Sean Penn!!! Of course the media has been complicit in the casus belli of the illegal occupation of Iraq. They slowly are realizing their folly and should NOT receive a public dispensation.
The Media Research Center, cited towards the end of this article, is part of the right-wing extremist Republican propaganda machine. Rich Noyes, the MRC’s director of research, is a deliberate liar. ABC News might just as well quote Rush Limbaugh. MRC has just about as little credibility. They are nothing but a shill for the Republican Party of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.
Noyes’specious claims of a liberal media and Abu Ghraib coverage hide the fact that in the build-up to the Iraq war, the media coverage was astoundingly tilted towards war-mongering. I wrote a hundred letters to the editors. It didn’t stop the war. But maybe next time it will. “The public supported World War II,” however we were tricked into that war also, and perhaps rightly. We were already waging a low-grade war on Germany, but they refused to up the ante. We economically and diplomatically strangled Japan until they attacked us (and don’t think for a minute that we luckily had our aircraft carriers and our new class of battleships far from Pearl.) In this article the movie “The Thin Red Line” is characterized as an ‘anti-war movie.’ I always thought of it as just another interesting regular war movie. It’s very realistic in death and suffering and in the propaganda and politicking needed to motivate the soldiers.
-The most aggressive, Noyes said, was Peter Jennings of ABC News. “We have pages and pages of quotes.”
If you look into Jennings’ bio you will find that unlike most of the people acting as journalists on American TV, he had proper training in news gathering at Canadian radio and TV stations. This is pertinent because, unlike the US, Canada is one of the countries whose press puts a premium on the veracity of it’s news reporting. This might partially explain his high journalistic standards, which are in turn, the cause of the attacks on him by Rich Noyes, Rush Limbaugh and other defenders of George Bush’s actions over the last several years.
Sean Penn, Great job, it takes a lot of courage. Haven’t seen the film but I hope to. You guys can take a lot of satisfaction in knowing that you are right.
It doesn’t help that journalists like Tom Brokaw publish books glorifying war. I am sorry Mr. Brokaw, but it was not the “greatest generation.” In fact, there was little if anything that was great about it.
“,,,the largest toll has been on Iraqi civilians, with 81,964 to 89,448 dead, according to the Brookings Institute?????”
MORE LIES….its sickening
No kidding Claudius, how about the people in the 60s, they stopped a war. They should be “The greatest generation”.
klakin,
Agreed.
call bush at 202.456.1111
If we the People were in control of the government or were the government like we are supposed to believe, we would be offended by the above “Since the onset of the war, the media have been even more anti-government, according to Noyes.”
The further Irony is that the Neo Cons and our political conditioning specialize in telling us what we have heard all our lives that Government is evil or should be shrunk down so that it can be drowned in a bathtub.
I will try to refrain from using “Leftist” or “left” to label me or the Peace People of the planet because Left was given to us to demonize us… Just look up the definition.
This is a hard habit to break but I will try just like
Black folks are trying to end use of “Nigger” even among themselves.
This article throws out “Left” and “Right” as gospel but I wonder if they are unconsciously demonizing themselves in the process.
When we argue we label each other constantly and it gets us nowhere.
The world is divided not by those who hate government and those who like it but those who are trying to end the War Economy and build peace and understanding and those who are too caught up in the profit of War and Hate and misunderstanding.
We should not be Left against Right because that is not a fair contest…Also insane when you realize that we would not exist without the relative balance of left and right in Nature.
The real fair and Just fight will be better served and framed between the Lovers and the Haters of this world.
I guess we also need to change our frames of reference and language to win.
I will work on it but I need Help.
Go Sean!
Love….
Despite the media’s attacks, Noyes said the media historically has had a “liberal tilt.”
A usual diversion, one that is repeated often by Limbaugh (the “drive-by media”). Alas, most Americans do not know the difference between investigative journalism and spin.
Sorry to bicker over words, but the corporate media are not lap dogs; rather they are the dogs of war. They LED the US to war more so than the politicians. The corporate media sold the war and continues to make it sound unreasonable to demand “TROOPS OUT NOW” which was the rallying cry during Vietnam. Understanding who is leading who, who is in control, how this stuff works is important to grasping the difficulty of the task to overhaul what we have or whether it must be overthown–at least to some degree.
TROOPS OUT NOW
OVERTHROW THE CORPORATE MEDIA
“Investigative journalism takes a lot of time and you don’t produce daily stories and it requires a financial investment,” he said. “Journalism is a business and subject to all the pressures of the marketplace.”
That line says it all. Journalism is a business and war sells, big time. Who wants to read about another sunny and peaceful day?
Is Rich Noyes related to Faux Noyes? They seem to share the same viewpoint.
Hey Sean:
In the eighties, I thought you were nothing but a spoiled brat. I want to
thank you for showing me your REAL substance and proving me wrong(sometimes
the best thing in the world is being wrong).
My guess is that the ABC journalist who did this story was told by her bosses to get the “other” side.
So let’s see. One of the major points of this article is the media buying into and selling the war. I think they just made their case again. Quoting “sources” such as the Media Research Center is precisely how we got into the war in the first place. Right wing pundits lined up, while Phil Donahue is yanked from MSNBC because he had people on who questioned the war.
Nothing has changed.
It takes a lot of guts to stand up for whats right when you are surrounded by everything that is wrong. I admire Mr. Penn’s integrity and intelligence. If we had more like him, who’s humanity is comparable to their bravado, the world would be a better place.
WAY TO GO DUDE!
THIS MAY BE OUR ONLY HOPE FOR ANY “PUBLIC” REALITY CHECK…EVEN WITHIN THIS ARTICLE, THE “LIBERAL BIAS” OF THE MEDIA BUGABOO LET’S FLY IT’S EVIL SMIRK..THAT HAS GOT TO BE ONE OF THE MOST ATROCIUOS AND BIZARRE LIES AND PROPAGANDA PLOYS IN THE HISTORY ON PUBLIC DISCOURSE…THEY HAVE “FACTS” THAT SHOW THAT THEE IS A “LIBERAL BIAS IN THE MEDIA” HOW CAN WE SHUT THESE IDOTS UP ONCE AND FOR ALL..WELL..THIS MOVIE IS A START..FACTS! NOT HOT AIR…FACTS! SO WAY TO GO AMIGO’S..YOU HAVE DONE A GOOD THING..I WILL SEE IT, I WILL DISCUSS IT WITH OTHERS, AND I WILL LEARN..AND I WILL GLOAT AS I WATCH THE FACES OF RIGHT WING CORPORATE FASCIST THEOCRAT LOYALISTS..CONTORT WITH RAGE AS THEY ARE SHOWN THE “FACTS’ AND CANNOT REFUTE THEM…
FINALLY..HEY..RICH GUY’S…WHY DON’T YOU BEGIN THE “PRIVACY REVOLUTION”..C’MON, WHATTYA SAY? START AN AIRLINE THAT DOES NOT STRIP YOU OF YOUR FREEDOMS JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE ON VACATION AN DON’T WANNA TAKE THE BUS. OR THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY THAT SAY’S “WE DON’T USE FINE PRINT TO STRIP YOU OF YOUR PRIVACY, OR HAVE NO CREDIT..” PRIVACY BASED BUSINESS’ THAT ACTUALLY PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY BY SECURING YOUR DETAILS VIA A PROCESS THAT ACTUALLY GIVES YOU ANONYMOUTY…EVERYBODY IS A MR.SMITH…I DUNNO HOW TO DO IT..BUT IF THEY CAN LAND A MAN ON THE MOON…
FINALLY..RICH GUY’S..HOW ABOUT TAX REVOLT…SOUNDS LIKE IT’S TIME TO ME…PUT SOME ADDS IN THE PAPERS..IF THEY DON’T CENSOR THEM..AND ADVOCATE A “GENERAL TAX STRIKE”..THE ONLY POWER WE HAVE LEFT IS THE POWER OF THE PURSE…SO WE SHOULD STOP PAYING FOR THEIR LITTLE 100 YEARS OF WAR FANTASY..S IF WE HAD A 100 YEARS LEFT AT THIS RATE…STOP PAYING FOLKS…OR BE COMPLICIT IN THE CRIMES…DO NOT DECLARE..AND RICH GUY’S..HELP SPREAD THE WORD…PLEASE!
jcrumb, you make really good points, but are the CAPITALS necessary?
Good for Penn for roasting our corrupt MSM. He should also spend time thinking about practical solutions and conveying them.
Since most major news media are privately-owned businesses acting under 1st Amendment rights and vaguely-defined licensing regs, the only way government, acting in the name of The People, can hope to foster fair and accurate reporting is very indirectly: Namely, by regulating diversification of media business ownership via the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause and associated legal powers.
The idea here is that media ownership diversification of licensed public airwaves and other publicly-regulated transmission utilities tends to yield fact and opinion diversification which diversification in turn tends to favor consumer choice of the best “product” — in this case, Truthful Reporting.
While this is fraught w/ catch-22’s and other foibles, any other kind of governmental oversight concepts/mechanisms are either implicitly Unconstitutional or too potentially dangerous to functional free speech -even if Constitutional.
AT MINIMUM, then: reversal of present, gov-regulated ownership centralization allowances can and should be immediately promulgated in favor of maximized ownership diversification.
This will help ease the problem of mega corp-dominated NEWS reporting; and any progressive US president could easily institute it, simply by firing most of the present FCC and associated fed regulators and replacing them with fair-minded people who understand the news media’s vitalness to democracy. Present centralization of printed newsmedia ownership can be similarly reversed via ICC-associated fed regulatory powers.
Meanwhile, a US president can and should also make a major public issue of the need to keep Internet content COMPLETELY UNREGULATED by gov, while fostering regs to prevent further ownership centralization of ISP companies and services.
NEXT: Citizens should support those public-interest media watchdog groups which are currenly tyring to set up a highly-visible, publicly-chartered, National Code of Journalism Ethics and Review Board, jointly determined and administered by media owners and citizens alike.
This, too, is fraught with foibles and Catch-22’s and, in any case, it would not and should not have any official ‘police powers.’ But it could in the end bring some formal public review and consumer accountability to a journalistic process that is now a kind of cultivated anarchy which favors no mechanisms of public accountability whatsoever.
There’s much more that can be done to make private news media more accountable to the needs of democracy with sufficient citizen will and courageous presidental/congressional leadership - but more on that in following posts.
Journalists in this country could very well stand up for truth, if they would only be willing to lose it all to gain their self-respect. It’s easy, just scale back on your lifestyle, and I mean really back, to where your own family will be thinking that something is terribly wrong. Then, brace yourself for the most rewarding life you could ever dream of. What have you got to lose, only material possessions. What have we all got to gain with you doing this? Lives saved.
Reminded of Al Franken’s discussion with Sean Hannity where Hannity made fun of Franken for having a small number of outlets for his radio show while he had 460 or something. Like a kid on a schoolyard. He smirked his way away and you could see that with 460 stations carrying his drivel that drivel would obviously become the order of the day. Well, drivel has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and filled Hannity’s pockets with gold. What a shameful man.
Note of correction for ABC: If I’m not mistaken, Sean Penn’s father’s name is Arthur Penn, not Leo.
The media was asking tough questions?
Bullshit.
Not one of the msm, outlets, had the balls to even bring up PNAC, for discussion.
Anyone remember the whitehouse press Q and A’s with Bush? They all looked like goddamn scared shitless deer, caught in the headlights, and threw him nothing but softballs. What a joke!
Give me a break!
A good conterpoint to the work of the actor Tom Hanks and “his people.”
At Nuremberg, media and propaganda officials who’d participated in the Nazi propaganda campaigns were tried as war criminals.
A quick Google search turned up this … http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/nure-a16.shtml
Maybe someday we’ll see the same in this country. There’s no doubt that some in the media have a lot of blood on their hands for what they’ve done in creating and supporting the Iraq war.
———-
Make no mistake about the corporate media. They work doing what their bosses tell them to do. Like anyone in any organization. And the bosses are of course interested in the corporation making money.
I see people on the left who haven’t gotten this who always seem to think that the coverage is just a mistake and if we point it out with phone calls and letters to the editor, it will be corrected. But that’s fundamentally wrong. Because the coverage is not a mistake. The coverage is designed to increase the profits of the corporation.
In some cases this is obvious. For instance, General Electric, one of the world’s largest ‘defense contractors’ (aka arms merchant or merchant of death) is the owner of NBC, which means they control NBC, CNBC, MSNBC. And of course those stations support the war, which in turn of course creates more direct profits for the ‘merchant of death’ divisions of the corporation.
Or, for the news organizations, war means more viewers which means higher ratings which means more advertiser revenue. When we are launching “Shock and Awe” against Baghdad, more people tune in to CNN or Faux to watch. That’s a direct Cha-Ching into their corporate revenue.
Sometimes its more subtle. For instance, any media outlet gets its revenue from its advertisers. So, does Boeing, Lockheed Martin, GE, etc advertise in their media. If yes, then they’ll be careful with their ‘news’ coverage so as not to offend.
Or sometimes is just supporting a politician who they think will otherwise be friendly\useful to the corporation. When the politicians are using the FCC to relax anti-monopoly rules, or using the WTO talks to force other nations to allow American media into their countries, then the corporation will be willing to support that politicians war in order to gain benefits elsewhere.
But one thing you can be assured of. The corporations are acting to amass as much power and money to themselves as possible.
Say thanks to the Clintons and the Democrats by the way. The first wave of relaxing the anti-monopoly rules that led to todays concentrated, monopoly media was their work. Their “Telecom Act” of 1996 was step in this direction. And I’m sure they were well compensated with bribes, uh contributions for their efforts. Is it any surprise that in this year Rupert Murdoch (of Faux news fame) is helping Hillary raise money?
Sean Penn is super cool.
The quick rule to learn about corporate media is …. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE.
Take nothing they say at face value. Be aware that anything they promote is for their interests. They promoted this war for their bottom lines. We are paying the costs of a $3 trillion war and 4000 casulties.
If they support a candidate, we should immediately know that candidate to be our enemy. If they give favorable publicity to a candidate, we should immediately be sceptical as to why. The candidates that are on our side will either not be covered on the corporate media, or they will be ridiculed, scorned and attacked.
Learn to spot this. Look for the candidates they don’t cover. When you see the corporate media attacking someone, learn that this is someone you need to go check out and listen to.
To get our country back, we need so many people doing this that favorable coverage on corporate media should be the kiss of death to any campaign.
“That line says it all. Journalism is a business and war sells, big time. Who wants to read about another sunny and peaceful day?”
—————-
The key is, it didn’t use to be. TV Networks used to regard ‘news’ as a public service. There used to be ‘walls’ between the business operations of a media outlet and the new operations of a media outlet. The people on the ‘news’ side were free to report and comment as they saw fit without worrying about the business implications.
This was all destroyed back in the 80’s and 90’s during all the corporate acquisitions of media firms.
The above is what gave us journalists like Cronkite or Murrow. The above is how it must work in a democracy where an informed citizenry is a requirement.
I didn’t get too far into this article to see proof of Penn’s assertion that “…the mainstream media have been cheerleaders for a war that has cost the nation — according to Department of Defense figures this week — 3,980 lives.”
This war has cost a lot more lives IF YOU COUNT THE IRAQIS. The failure to realize the consequences of the invasion is a huge loss of life. Obviously backers of the occupation would like to minimize that figure.
Last time I checked, the Iraqi women and children who’ve been killed were no less human and no less dead than our own people, unless of course racism is a part of the imperialistic plan justifying endless colonial occupation, which would make those lives count less than those of the occupiers.
For the media to write as if the decision to invade and occupy Iraqi indefinitely has cost 3980 lives is the same pattern of media complicity that failed to challenge the assumptions on which the war were based. Instead of letting the WMD lies slide and the notion of a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq to fester, this very same media now neglects to ignore the many thousands of people lost in part due to their complicity in the war.
An independent media is a cornerstone of democracy. With so much media consolidated and controlled by corporations–many of which like GE’s NBC profit directly from war spending–the antiwar perspective has been and is continuing to be repressed.
Having failed the American people, I hope more people continue to stream to alternative news sources to get the facts. Mainstream media can’t be trusted now as it should never have been before the war. Complicity between the Bush administration’s White House Iraq group and their marketing of the war and the Corporate Media must be investigated. Judith Miller and the Plame outing are two examples of how the media has served the political aims of the Bush junta, presumably in exchange for access.
JBPeebles: Complicity between the Bush administration’s White House Iraq group and their marketing of the war and the Corporate Media must be investigated. Judith Miller and the Plame outing are two examples of how the media has served the political aims of the Bush junta, presumably in exchange for access.”
But who will do the investigating? The Plutocracy owns and controls the congress, the media, and the Military-Industrial-Telecommunications Complex and its subparts.
Founder and President of the Media Research Center, L. Brent Bozell III runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures.
What else can be said after the above 2 lines?
God Bless you Sean Penn, true patriot of the 1776 brand.
The 1st amendment is alive, but not well.
The corporate media serves its own greedy inerests,not the American people.
We must all do what we can to throw the bums in jail.
Thank you Sean
Yes, the big myth of the liberal media still burns strong in many peoples minds. What I say to them is would truly liberal media be constantly blowing the whistle on it self? If the media was actually liberal wouldn’t they be pushing the myth the other way and we would constantly be hearing about the “right wing media dominance” from the MSM (corporate media)?
In fascist Germany you constantly heard about the “Jewish conspiracy” to subvert this, to take over that; that they were corrupting the very soul of the nation and world. The Fascists where using the Jews as scapegoats accusing them by projecting their own dark impulses on the ever more disenfranchised Jew. A diversionary tactic Karl Rove would eventually embrace like a new bride.
Penn is a Patriot. Apparently the Media Research Center blather was put in the article to give it “balance”. The kind of balance that comes from a media entity (ABC) that has and continues to work with the CIA Psyops division.
I do have to ask CD’s if there was not a better source?
Sean Penn is the man! Thank you Sean for being steadfast against these neocons and their filthy war. You make my heart sing.
What US media? You mean US government propaganda organ?
What US citizen? You mean brain dead sheeple?
What US politicians? You mean war criminals?
Read “Internal Combustion, How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives” by Edwin Black.
citizen 1
agree with your descriptions.
the worst being so many brain dead citizen sheeple.
but you gotta try to start reform somewhere, notwithstanding all the millions of dead brains…
My TV just about stays on a “news” channel and I haven’t heard a reporter ask a hard question of Bush or Cheney in the past seven years. They let them get away with lie after lie and never question or disagree, even when the facts are
right at their fingertips. You can get more facts from “The
Daily Show” with Jon Stewart than on CNN, and his show is
comedy. At least when George makes a statement that is totally BS, Jon will show a clip that proves it’s BS. Our government sucks big time and the “media” just helps them
by regurgitating their drivel.
It’s the little people fighting everyday in the trenches that count. Famous movie stars look and sound good but that’s about it.
Sean is correct. Nixon took the US off the gold standard by getting rid of Bretton Woods. In doing so, Nixon enabled the private central bankers print money at the NON ‘federal reserve’ without anything backing the money but a promise.
Nixon did this to accelerate the vietnam war.
The Left needs a new poster/bumper sticker to appropriate the favorite phrase of those who worship 9/11 as a cause for righteous war—”Iraqistan: WE TOO will never forget!” Haven’t had an adequate one since “Kill Your Television” for provoking weird looks and second thoughts. When people saw that one their faces looked as if they had read “Kill God.” I especially want the media to know that I will never again even fathom how they still have jobs, let alone credit their “credibility and reform”….
“…alleges U.S. presidents since Kennedy have manipulated the public to wage wars.”
Never mind that Roosevelt intentionally provoked the Japanese and then permitted them to attack Pearl Harbor by not alerting his commanders of an attack which he was fully aware was coming.
Speaking of the press and JFK: The President and the Press: Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in
missions–by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor
leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a
monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means
for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion,
on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice,
on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has
conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a
tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic,
intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried,
not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is
questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the
Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope
or wish to match.
“In one of the most compelling scenes of the film, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., speaks out against impending war in Afghanistan in never-seen footage three days after 9/11. She cast the lone vote in Congress against authorizing force in the emotional aftermath of the terrorist attacks.”
Never-seen? It’s in Mike Ruppert’s video on 9/11.
WaPost EDITOR SHOWS WITH NEW DOCS CIA INVOLVEMENT IN JFK ASSASSINATION AT HIGHEST LEVEL.
(Sorry, I am tired of the Left being Gatekept away from the stories that could actually get large numbers of people intereste even though they might not listen to tweedy university sociologists. Dont think this is a left gatekeeping strategy? See The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts an Letters, by Francis Stonor Saunders. Also see The Mighty Wurlittzer: How the CIA Played America.
Laftgatekeeping has a well documented history. It creates dichotomies between structural analysis and something that is called conspiracy theory to create a cowcatcher, baby and bathwater psychological effect.)
Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the
CIA
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Man-Mexico-Winston-…
ALSO THE AUTHOR IS FIELDING QUESTIONS ON THE BOOK AT EDUCATION FORUM
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php…
DAVID KAISER, AUTHOR OF THE ROAD TO DALLAS JUST PUBLISHED BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, WHICH ALSO ARGUES THAT THERE WAS A CONSPIRACY IS ALSO GOING TO BE FIELDING QUESTIONS AT EDUCATION FORUM
——-
A critical question makes the Kennedy Assassination perhaps more relevant to today than ever:to what extent is the nominal leader, the President, really in control of the permanent military, political, and communications bureacracies that shape his options? In 1961, when Kennedy became president, key components of this permannent bureacracy were thirteen years old. As a parent with a teenager there were moments of tension when one can wonder who or what called the shots. This was uniquely the case in 1960, as for eight years– the truly formative ones in the developement of the entire post-war US society– the CIA had been given extreme lattitude. Kennedy’s relations with the permanet political and military bureacracy can serve as basis of comparison for how matters of war and peace are decided today, when blame-game controversies sometimes seem mere PR strategies for plausible denial 10.0
Jefferson Morleys book leaves little doubt that no matter what our betters tell us, the CIA was to a very significant degree doing its own things in 1963. The reason this emerges far more clearly than in other books, is that Morley’s never allows the ocean of detail to alter his camera agle. It is not a totalizing focus like some other books that mistake thickness for ambition. Rather, it sticks to the Mexico City CIA station, its chief Winston Scott, and his close World War Two friend and possibly his own privatest Idohaon– the only one weirder than fellow poet and contemporary Ezra Pound– James Jesus Angleton.
Morley is carefull. When your asking about unauthorized actions of the CIA people who normally talk freely in the New Yorker have a way of clamming up. It is hard to find sources in the middle ground, for example on the question of who knew what when about the Bay of Pigs. Far easier to treat this grey area as the blacktop of the Langley 500, the way Tim Weiner does in his childishly simplified and baldly propagandistic narration of Kennedy relations with the CIA.
How does he get insiders to talk for a book that is lethal to the government sanctioned version of the assassination? By not oversating things. By mentioning enough right wing cubans without so many as to lose sense of thier handlers. By clearly delineating who was in charge of what CIA operation, and who didn’t know about them as well. We can see the critical wires cross, and are not confused in a whirl of unessential relations. We can see the extra piece– George Joannides– being added like one too many bones in an ankle and the clarity with which one could mistake treason for the logical coorination of a counterintelligence
operation. Individuals are not blamed here, but the flow chart that teaches how the Cubans were “turned” is clear for the first time. At least for me, but I’m gradual.
Also Morley tells the story from the persepctive of Win Scotts family. This “works” in many ways. It might just be the footwear necessary for treading accross one the most contested and and important middle grounds — between president and permanent bureacracy– in twentieth and 21st Century history. cont. at
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Man-Mexico-Winston-…
“My TV just about stays on a “news” channel and I haven’t heard a reporter ask a hard question of Bush or Cheney in the past seven years.”
Holy smokes , with a remark like that the news channel and its advertisers are laughing at you . As long as you are watching , they are making money and telling lies . You and 50 millions of Americans who think like you , TURN THE DAMN THING OFF. Then again , my choice of the word “think” may have been overly-optimistic.
Sean Penn is a fine actor (saw him in “Dead Man Walking”) and a fine human being. I’m going to get his other movies.
Thank you, Sean, for your bravery and hands-on work. God bless you and protect you. I’m praying for you.
Sorry, I am tired of the Left being Gatekept away from the stories that could actually get large numbers of people intereste even though they might not listen to tweedy university sociologists. Dont think this is a left gatekeeping strategy? See The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts an Letters, by Francis Stonor Saunders. Also see The Mighty Wurlittzer: How the CIA Played America.
Laftgatekeeping has a well documented history. It creates dichotomies between structural analysis and something that is called conspiracy theory to create a cowcatcher, baby and bathwater psychological effect.
Anybody seen Tim Ossman lately?
The issue of media complicity is the major issue in all of our “issues,” IMO. Without a source of accurate, unbiased information, no free country can survive for long.
Also, the media in the US has been used as a mass marketing tool ever since Big Biz hired Ed Bernays, Freud’s nephew, to figure out how to control the masses so that they could create “demand” for products after WWII. Men needed jobs, and Big Biz needed money. That’s when citizens started being consumers.
Seriously, the first step to reclaiming freedom of thought is to stop watching TV. The second is to realize that you are being controlled. After that, it’s a one-way trip down the rabbit hole. You’ll never be the same.
“…81,964 to 89,448 dead, according to the Brookings Institute”
The Brokings Institute. Yeah, right! A right wing mouth piece for the Republican Party. More like 1.2 million Iraqi deaths (go to http://antiwar.com/casualties/) if you want to get closer to the truth.
The media is now, and has been historically, the propaganda arm of the warmongerers. Whether it’s the “savages” when we were committing genocide against Native Americans as part of “Manifest Destiny” or the “Remember the Maine” for the Spanish American War or the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution for Vietnam to WMDs and al Qaeda connections, the media has always trumpeted the transparent lies to whip up a frenzy among the public to go to war.
However one that I see now that even has much of the so-called anti-war movement hypnotized is that we can’t leave Iraq because a calamity of biblical proportions would occur. The ONLY way to have a secure Middle East is for us to immediately and safely get out of Iraq and provide aid through the UN, allies and NGOs to fix what we broke. Those who say it’s too complicated for us to leave now even though it was wrong for us to go in are simply self-deluded warmongerers who have once again been manipulated by the media and what passes for education in the United States.
” SecularAnimist March 20th, 2008 11:25 am
The Media Research Center, cited towards the end of this article, is part of the right-wing extremist Republican propaganda machine. Rich Noyes, the MRC’s director of research, is a deliberate liar. ABC News might just as well quote Rush Limbaugh. …”
I CAN AGREE WITH THAT TAKE, for now, for what’s quoted from him in the article is not illustrative of any reality I’m aware of. And I don’t see how a person in his position could only be mistaken; instead of lying.
AS FOR REP. Barbara Lee, it’s great to learn of what she did a few days PRIOR to 9-11, and I’ll want to find out more about this. However, as for her having been the sole member of Congress to have voted against authorising the war on Afghanistan, which was also GREAT of her (as were her efforts against the criminal coup d’etat the US, Canada and France committed against the democratically elected govt of Haiti; among … more topics or issues), I wonder about Cynthia McKinney.
From what I recall having seen on tv in Canada, she, McKinney, doggedly demanded answers from the Bush administration and with respect to plenty of unanswered questions about 9-11; and this, if recalling correctly, was very shortly after 9-11, before the launching of this war. I believe she did this on the floor of Congress preceding the launch of the war, anyway; or maybe it was shortly after the launch. If, however, it was before the launch, then did she then go head with the authorisation of the war?
That’s something I’ld like to know the answer to and possibly will, one day, get it. I was pretty much homeless at the time and didn’t have but occasional access to tv viewing, so maybe missed out on reporting of the answer I’ve been hoping to come across.
” Greg R March 20th, 2008 11:30 am
Noyes’specious claims of a liberal media and Abu Ghraib coverage hide the fact that in the build-up to the Iraq war, the media coverage was astoundingly tilted towards war-mongering. I wrote a hundred letters to the editors. It didn’t stop the war. But maybe next time it will.”
I DOUBT IT WILL DO THAT, and the reason for this doubt is the belief that if the msm news media pundits don’t themselves realise a war is wrong, without needing to be contacted by readers and viewers, then they very probably aren’t interested, say, in opposing an unjustifiable war anyway. After all, it didn’t required genius to realise that the Bush administration could not be believed; definitely based on only their words. Iow, I’m not meaning to criticise the efforts people make to try to get the news media to get with providing [real] journalism.
However I agree that Noyes’ reference to this part of U.S. news media reporting hasn’t impressed me well at all. Sure it’s important to expose and oppose such crimes, like torture, f.e.; but while the U.S. news media has done this, and much, en masse, it’s a much lesser crime than the launching and continuation of this war of aggression, which the msm news media barely and seldom criticises. To report on crimes which are considerably to very much lesser in scale or gravity without attacking the worst crimes of all, and while both are known, is cowardice. And, imo, it’s war criminal enough.
Penn:
“Let’s unite not only in stopping this war, but in holding this administration accountable.”
I LIKE that idea, and also thank him and Solomon for this work they’ve done. The corrupt msm news media needs to be exposed and denounced.
I like Sean Penn — we need more celebrities who come out like this. Penn is the kind of guy I’d like to sit down with over coffee or beer (his choice) and create a master plan to bring the world back on track.
As for my question, above, with respect to Cynthia McKinney on 9-11 and/or the launching of war on Afghanistan, perhaps I am mixing up memory recall; maybe it was Barbara Lee I saw on tv when on the floor of Congress she demanded answers to the plenty of relevant and then yet unanswered questions. Or maybe that was McKinney and my mix-up is in another respect. … whoosh.
Far from having learned anything from the errors of the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the press is now contributing to the Bush administration’s bellicose plans for Iran. Just recently CNN edited McCain’s gaffes about Iranian training of al Qaeda to make him seem more presidential and wise. The distortion continues….
WHY IS THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT TABOO? I searched this site and found that just about every article (few and far between as they are) about the 9/11 Truth Movement appears to be a “debunking” article. There are many talented and intelligent writers in the Truth Movement who would certainly enthusiastically contribute their views to the content of commondreams.org.
The “War on Terror” is driven by the fundamental notion that there are terrorists “out there” who need to be stopped by US military force. The 9/11 Truth Movement holds, to varying degrees, that the real terrorists are on the other end of the guns than are the people being killed by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I know that the evidence supporting that scenario is compelling. Since Common Dreams systematically blocks links to reputable sites where this topic is discussed, it is clear that the maintainers of Common Dreams are helping to stifle meaningful and honest discussion on this issue. And this is the most important issue of the day.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried,
not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is
questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the
Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope
or wish to match. ~ John F. Kennedy
Replace “Cold War” with “War on Terror”.
It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when truth must turn to an actor for expression, rather than media which are supposed to exist for that purpose. Nothing against Mr. Penn, to the contrary, I hold him in the highest regard. But a pity that those employed to the service of explicating the truth are so caught up in a parrotting of scripts presented to them.
Media is us — right here.
We can’t expect the corporate media to report on anything of substance. It is a dysfunctional myth that we should think otherwise. The corporate media has no problem ignoring people like us, but it’s harder for them to ignore celebrities.
Paris Hilton, for instance, could probably turn a whole election.
Sean Penn and Robin Williams would be a good team for the presidency.
Whoosh, again; damn mixed one thing up alright, and it’s that the article does not say that Barbara Lee spoke or warned about the ‘impending war in Afghanistan’ [before], but [after] 9-11. Ugh. Grinding my teeth a few seconds …
But while I’m at this above self-correction, I also noticed the following post having been added after mine.
” Hetware March 20th, 2008 11:58 pm
WHY IS THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT TABOO?”
There are two specifically relevant article posted over the past week or so at globalresearch.ca, and while I haven’t yet read the most recent, the older of the two is something I consider that everyone should treat as must reading. I believe that I can feel confident that the more recent of the two pieces likely also is must reading; having previously read an excellent article by the same author and on the same topic.
“25 Intolerable Contradictions: The Final Undoing of the Official 9/11 Story
Review of David Ray Griffin’s book
by Elizabeth Woodworth”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8374
“Griffin Takes Powerful New Approach to 9/11 Truth
Review of David Ray Griffin’s latest book
by Tod Fletcher
Global Research, March 15, 2008″
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/20/7780
Fletcher’s is quick to read, yet, and again, excellent; definitely an article and review [everyone] can easily understand. There’s nothing “tricky” about what it says at all.
Ms Woodworth’s article also is short enough, and her older related article of Sep. 2007 is posted at GR; only needing to go to her author’s index, for which there’s always a link at the end of articles at GR. That was and remains a strong article by her, and is specifically on the “mysterious” military drills the morning of 9-11.
As for Hetware’s search of CD, what this has turned up for articles on 9-11 and the 9-11 Truth Movement, I’ve posted links to a number of good articles here in the past; although maybe those were not specifically about promoting the truth movement, as much as analysis of the attacks and related events on 9-11.
And as much as the 9-11 TM needs to be strongly supported, something I agree with, we also must not forget that Sibel Edmonds and her claims need to be definitely and strongly supported; fully.
Maybe that won’t be necessary in order to bring a stop to the war on Iraq, but it obviously will be needed to bring a stop to the war on Afghanistan, and both MUST be stopped … ASAP, like … yesteryears ago. The real purposes of each of these wars are pretty much one-and-the-same, and 9-11 was not an ‘inside job’ for nothing. OHHHHH, there’s major, big, HUGE agenda involved, and referring to it as a reconstruction and expansion of the Roman Empire is a fitting analogy. It is arguably true, so I don’t need to bother with saying ‘imo’ or ‘imho’.
Some of the key individuals involved in these U.S. crimes may very likely not fit in the Roman Empire analogy, but some certainly do. PNAC and its makers definitely are.
Hetware says,
“There are many talented and intelligent writers in the Truth Movement who would certainly enthusiastically contribute their views to the content of commondreams.org”.
I BELIEVE THAT, but have they submitted articles to CD? Perhaps some have, but maybe none with really good or worthwhile articles; or perhaps it’s just that CD hasn’t had enough time to dedicate to adequately verifying these, and just chose to discard them.
Some people who post comments here have stated that they’ve submitted articles to CD, to see these never get posted. It happened to me a few times a few or several years ago, so I never bothered to try again.
We do NOT SEE what goes on “behind the scenes”, the Web interface of CD, and CD hasn’t posted any articles to provide a related explanation, not afaik anyway. So I certainly don’t know what the reasons are for submitted articles being rejected or discarded, and always silently so; based on my few experiences anyway.
It’s possible that the workers or providers of CD don’t believe what’s been well revealed about the 9-11 events by the intelligent and true “conspiracy theorists”, who long enough got a bad reputation due to schmucks pretending to be of the 9-11 TM, publishing bogus theories that couldn’t even be guaged as respectable guesses at all, much less theories. It’s also possible that they, at CD, believe, but while fearing the police state; maybe.
Why the absence? I definitely do not know; however, CD has posted a few good articles on Sibel Edmonds and her claims, so … this is good. It’s good and lends to the credibility of the true 9-11 TM, imo.
Mike Corbeil March 21st, 2008 12:56 am
It’s possible that the workers or providers of CD don’t believe what’s been well revealed about the 9-11 events by the “conspiracy theorists”. It’s also possible that they believe, but fear the police state. Why the absence? I do not know.
I am talking about posts I have made which are immediately consigned to the moderation queue and never approved. If they contain WhiskeyTangoCharlie7 dot NovemberEchoTango, they will not post. There are other URLs which have shown to be similarly filtered. One of them is to a site I maintain. That fact shows me that CD deems me to be somehow unworthy of expressing my honest and well informed opinion.
I don’t want to push my luck too far by repeating my transgressions. See what happens if you try to post a link to Jim Hoffman’s Research site. It might work if you don’t use anchor tags. I don’t know.
Paul Bramscher -
How can we - right here- be the news gathering media?
We average citizens obviously can’t hire reporters or start our own news bureaus.
The reality is that for the moment we have little choice but to access professionally organized news organizations for national and international news - a few of which, like The Nation, The Progressive, and the Guardian, Common Dreams, and Alter Net, are at least reasonably free of manipulation by money-mad overlords.
But the problem of the general population’s need to become adequately news-fact literate via a commonly-shared standard for proper-vetting of news facts, and then, on top of that, being able to evaluate and transform such reliable news data into humanly-useful political judgments, isn’t solved simply by us Internet users declaring ourselves to be Already There.
It seems pretty obvious, jusr by scanning various news-fact and news opinion website that most internet news consumers, right, left, or middle, go to sites which offer, firstoff, news content that confirms their established political persuasions; and secondly, confirms the same established persuasions via even the more-pleasant pudding of similar opinion.
This may be emotionally comforting, but it doesn’t contextually educate, or self-challenge, or provide any improvement to the common problem of how to improve a society-wide, adequately-shared vetting process for news fact gathering and dissemination.
So far, the proliferation of Internet newfact sources has just reproduced the same functional collapse of loyalty-to-objectivity we see in the conventional, now corporate-Rightist dominated MSM.
It doesn’t matter whether we comparitively-miniscule, alleged Internet Enlightenees romanticise - largely to ourselves- the potentials of Internet news souces to ease the fragmentation of our of society’s now fatally-disparate senses of reality and truth.
The vast majority of Americans will for the foreseeable future, continue to get their news, and form their opinions, from shallow-bit TV and radio sources, because that is how the mad rush of their dehumanized lives have come to be designed by anti-democratic forces that too many of them chose to ignore earlier: News, in a word, which is increasingly corrupted by socially-atomizing ideologies, and almost always hopelessly truncated in-context even when standard journalism does manage to try to be datum-objective.
Yes, our society’s MSM normative/epistemoligical breakdown is guaranteed to be fatal for democracy. But its a breakdown that goes infinitely deeper than any technological failure, and one that can’t be undone by ay magically-wished meta-techno-fix.
This is why I say: we need first to deal with the media problem in its most seemingly hopeless, presently-corrupted manifestation. If we can’t come to a common political decision on the need to re-regulate conventional corporate media ownership, how could be any reason to hope we will be able to protect the integrity and potential of Internet?
However or whatever you or I or a relatively few others may say about The People needing to turn off their TV’s and radios, or about our personal hopes of what Internet news sources may be capable of doing now, or evolving into, it’ll never happen in time, given the slowly-changing habits of the news-consuming public.
Well before any single or several Internet news sources have time to develop the society-wide credibility needed to finally cause a majority of citizens to dump conventional news sources in favor of the latter, the Internet will become as corporate dominated and corrupted as the now-worthless MSM.
We need to deal with the conventional MSM problem as it is now — both on moral, political, and regulatory levels. In the present.
Not in some techo-imagined, magically fixing future.
The reality is that for the moment we have little choice but to access professionally organized news organizations for national and international news - a few of which, like The Nation, The Progressive, and the Guardian, Common Dreams, and Alter Net, are at least reasonably free of manipulation by money-mad overlords.
http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/
HETWARE & MIKE CORBEIL
thanks for the links. not seen the whiskey one before. very interesting. shame we can’t see your site though hetware……………
and how safe is our beloved internet?
www.technewsworld.com/perl/section/cyber-attacks/
The media has asked for this, a few times over. I think of them as the Monica Media. After all, when you “perform orally” for the president-there are only so many asociations one can make.
“thanks for the links. not seen the whiskey one before. very interesting. shame we can’t see your site though hetware……………”
I will hazard to speculate that a list of the sites blocked by CD would prove to contain much that the typical visitor would very much want to see and benefit from seeing.
“The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: & enough too in their opinion.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
CorpusCallosum,
The Indymedias and citizen journalism. People can come together and make wonderful things without corporate control — the wikipedia is an example. We need a wikinews.
Why advocate for a dysfunctional co-dependence with the corporate media, banging your head against a brick wall? I no longer suck the teat of Fox, CNN, GE/Westinghouse, etc.
I still have quite a bit of respect for ABC News. Jennings is gone, but correspondents like Martha Raddatz actually go to Iraq, ask some tough questions, and generally tell it like it is. Watching Charlie Gibson struggling to get a straight answer out of Dubya during an interview was very educational. They have to be patriotic and “support” the troops, but they are objective. That my neocon “friends” call ABC the “Liberal Media” also tells me they are objective.
Fox is the real culprit. Its on all the time in a lot of homes. In between the police blotter stuff they sneak in phoney “documentaries” like the one that concluded we must attack Iran, and tear at every morsel given by Obama or Clinton. Hannity clobbers Colmes almost every night…
The fun part about Fox is one night they had this buxom legal analyst with a low cut top. The camera focused in on her cleavage as she talked and you could see it move with every breath she took! Then there is that living Barbie doll Laurie! I watch ABC for the news, PBS for journalism, and Fox for the girls!
The more I hear about Sean Penn, the more I like him.
”Solomon contends he is no pacifist: “If war is justified, the government doesn’t have to lie about it.””
Pacifism, is apparently a very dirty word.:(
Well, I’m DEFINITELY not a “pacifist.”
You smite my cheek, pal, and the next cheek to get turned is going to be YOURS, and you’re probably not getting back up right away, either.
But that doesn’t mean I endorse cold-blooded murder-for-hire.
The laws on self-defense vary from place to place in the details, but basically a person can legally use lethal force to protect himself from an imminent threat of grave bodily injury or death when there’s no other resonable means of avoiding that threat. You may also similarly come to the defense of an innocent third person, so threatened.
But a claim of self-defence is an affirmitive defense. That means the burden of PROOF is on the one making the claim.
You’d have a hard time claiming self-defense if the dead guy’s wallet and jewelry turned up in your pocket.
If the Bushgang were in court on a homicide trying to claim “self-defense” with the onionskin-thin evidence they’ve put up to justify the war, they’d all be on their way to the joint by now.
Liberty & Justice,
SJ
www.spartacusjones.com
Paul Bramscher March 21st, 2008 11:11 am
The Indymedias and citizen journalism. People can come together and make wonderful things without corporate control — the wikipedia is an example. We need a wikinews.
Sadly, Wikipedia has proved to be more of the same. I would attempt to explain, but doing so would probably result in my being banned from CD.
Hetware: Then I guess the problem is that people don’t do what you want. If you want something done right, you sometimes have to do it yourself.
bbr-001,
You might consult Cindy Sheehan about Martha Raddatz. I understand that Raddatz’s book has some glaring inaccuracies (blatant mistruths) about the cause of Casey’s death.
Todays so called journalists are nothing more that propogandist mouthpieces for their corporate masters. No such thing as independent thought. They all read from the corporate script.
Sean I hope you read these messages so you realize how thankful people are that great men like you are not dead men walking!! big hugs to you Sean.. and may the truth be known and understood by all.