Do we really have to go to a conference in Minnesota to do "something"? I propose that instead of making the transition to digital television in 2009, we all just stop watching. Problem diminished.

Look at TV and Cable across the MSM---if they were each FREE, how could they POSSIBLY all be virtually the same (meaning, childish, terrifying, irrational, trivial, useless)? Is it such "a small world after all" as DisneyCorp claims? Not to mention---WE in the audience knew most of these Pentagon-WarCorporation shills for what they were before Iraq even started. Are you telling me that media "professionals" didn't know? Or hadn't bothered to find out the real backgrounds/possible motives etc. of their "guests"? Which was it? Why ANYbody tunes into these spineless prostitutes is beyond imagination...

Anyone remeber at the start of the Iraqi War disinformation campaign, Rumsfeild announcing the creation of The Office for Domestic Strategic Disinformation? (AKA PROPOGANDA?)

Its first official act was to claim that the idea had been abandoned.

Its second official act was to remame itself THE NETWORK NEWS

As he was leaving office in 1961, Presdident Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of the military industrial complex (that he enabled during his 8 years in office).

Shortly thereafter the military industrial complex morphed into the military industrial media complex just in time to sell the Viet Nam occupation to the US electorate.

Congress is also MIA on their constitutional responsibilities to provide oversight on government accountability. Dorgan is just trying to shift the blame to someone else. Congress could compile the information for a criminal complaint, but they won't. Maybe some of their own propaganda hearings to get some headlines, but you won't see anything more.

Me, I'd love to see them put the heads of CNN and Faux at the witness table sitting right next to parents who've lost their children because of these lies. But even that would be too strong a headline for the Democrats.

Here's the easy answer. Use the parental blocking features on your tv system to block all American corporate media news channels. You won't miss them, and you won't have to clear you mind of this sort of propaganda that will slip through if you watch any of this crap.

It's called manufacturing consent and it's just business as usual. The US military-industrial-congressional racket is merely one aspect of the "legitimization game" that applies to every aspect of life and livelihood in what the poor dupes fondly refer to as the "greatest democracy on earth", and most especially to the pseudo-democratic process itself.

My niece and her family , 3 teenage kids, herself and her husband, moved out to the country where i live.. they did not get the usual TV connection to their new home, as i suggested they didn't need it really.
Well the kids nearly had a stroke "we're gonna miss all those shows" they cried
Now it is nearly a year later and they have been weened off MSM and all the trivial tripe that passes as entertainment. the family now spends way more time together and if they do turn on the box.. it is for a movie or a video game, they do have a local "over the air" station, to get the weather etc, but being the CBC (our public TV), there is not much on for the kids to watch.

The cries about losing "all those shows" is forgotten, as when they hear the other kids in school all wound up about Spears, or the latest Hollywood big shot going to rehab, they find it rather amusing that they spend so much time living vicariously through the tube.

yes it IS an addiction, TV watching.. I know some who will sit and watch a show for an hour and when asked, can't tell you what they just watched.

even if they have no interest in what is broadcast they sit and watch because it is easier than getting up and doing something.

So turn off your TV's

you will be surprised how soon you will forget all the crap they fill your head with ...in a few months you actually start to think again, clearly without all the tripe of MSM consumerism and propaganda clouding the real issues.

simplify.. the times are rapidly changing. Soon you and your neighbors are going to need each other like never before.

Peak oil
Genetic tinkering
Climate change
Peak Natural Gas
Food shortages
No Clean Water

It is payback time , and Mother nature is a Bitch

Turn off your TV, Cancel your TV Cable, Don't buy their papers, periodicals, magazines, movies etc from the 6 mega media corps. Don't visit thier websites. Starve them of their revunes to spread military propoganda and war!

VIVA LA INTERNET REVOLUCION!

No politicians, no problems. Direct democracy by referendum:

http://nationalinitiative.us/

Besides not watching television myself, I let those who still do watch television know what I think of their scummy habit. I try to shame them into stopping.

Television viewers deserve to be stigmatized, just as the media have stigmatized peace proponents as lunatics and traitors. Television viewers, either by nature or by conditioning, are ignoramuses, and they need to be told so; they need to be confronted and blamed for their responsibility in empowering Bush and for fomenting war and economic destruction. They need to be regarded harshly and they need to be instructed that ignorance is no excuse. They need to be told that their habit is degenerate, in a category with drug addiction or alcoholism, and they need to understand that as citizens they have a responsibility to be informed.

It was shown in Nuremberg that "following orders" is no excuse for committing war crimes. Television addicts must be made to understand that ignorance is also not an excuse for committing war crimes, and that their habit is criminal in nature.

It doesn't have to be politics. I find that talking about any topic with a person whose mind is controlled by television is just as repulsive as talking to someone with a big mouth full of rotten, black teeth, and I let them know it too.

Ghawar, with friends like you...

Seriously, I hope you don't identify yourself as a Progressive to these same people.

I'm The Slime
by Frank Zappa

I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little had changed
I am the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I am the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I am the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't got for help...no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks..
Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin'room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I do not watch much television, but since my wife is from China and she likes to keep tabs on her home country, we have the DISH package with about 20 Chinese stations. I will sometimes watch CCTV-9 from Beijing, which provides evening news and certain political discussion programs in English. For the life of me, I cannot tell the difference between Chinese network propaganda and USA network propaganda. The only real difference I see is in the foreign coverage, where CCTV seems to offer much more informative and objective information regarding developments in other nations.

And, over time, it becomes more and more difficult to believe that, as of 2008, the common people in the USA have any more control over their government than the common people in China have over theirs. Sure, a common person might rise to hold a powerful position in the USA, if that person follows all the rules of the controlling elites, but the same is true in China. And in the USA, we can opine about this or that on the Internet or elsewhere, but that is only because those in control know that only money talks above a whisper in the USA, and the government in China will listen to its elites just as the USA government will listen to economic elites. And there is one other small difference -- the common people in China do not delude themselves into thinking they have power when they do not.

Aww come on - at least MSNBC has Keith Olbermann.

skeezyks April 24th, 2008 2:23 pm

THANK YOU!

Here's a trip down memory lane for you all, a REAL reporter in action, covering hundreds of Veterans marching to the White House to demand not impeachment, but immediate arrest. The rest of the world heard about the spectacular politial action on 3/19/08 but the mainstream media TOTALLY blew this off.

"Overseas Reporter gets the story": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEFvWj15las

Also see "IVAW Siezes National Archives Building": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxGX4QdURCo

and "Mr. President, you're under ARREST!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwINBO9fu-I

Enjoy,
Gordon Sturrock
Squadron13.com

Countless experts in propaganda tried to tell people that, only to be blasted with being "terrorist-sympathizers" or "Saddam-Lovers"...

Anyone who has spent as many years in the advertising and marketing business as I have recognized the tell-tale signs of B.S. from the very start and tried to spread the word... NO ONE WOULD LISTEN!

Two of my friends had been analysts for a couple of the top Intel sources in this country, and they agreed that the choir for "WMD" was just too perfect... too repetitive... and too similar from too many sources to be true.

Then we had a battalion of people who also tried to make themselves heard like Australian intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie, Cambridge University's Glen Rangwala, Scott Ritter, David Kay, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern... most of whom were discounted as cranks and crazies.

The public and particulalry FOX NEWS owes them all a major apology... not to even mention the families of all the dead and crippled.

We were stampeded into a war planned and carried out by idiots and the one sure way we could prevent it from happening all over again is to see them all tried for war crimes... starting with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

What is even more amazing is the same media is doing it again - more and more anti-Iran drumming, pushed by Cheney and the lords of the Pentagon

The most egregious is the North Korea - Syria B,S. If you look closely it is from unsubstantiated ISRAELI intelligence

And here we go again.

The revolution is not the only thing that will not be televised.

We need a lot of rope. Some ole time fashion hanging is in order in the near future....

Coffee,,,,,,,

Why would anyone expect Howard Kurtz on CNN to do anything remotely close to an investigative analysis. His weekly program is always the same. He asks whether or not the media acted properly with respect to any given story arising during the week and then weakly concludes they did just the right thing. It's always a kind of media masterbation that leaves the viewer feeling unfulfilled.

Newton Minow's 1961 speech to the NAB
http://www.janda.org/b20/News%20articles/vastwastland.htm

America is a soulless war machine.

Yep! It's still a vast wasteland but this time it's a dangerous wasteland. Strewn with lies, lies and more lies,the shills on TV have successfully aided the Republican Party in putting in place their Fascist agenda. The war with Iraq has been only one of their successful propaganda campaigns. They actually started with the stolen 2000 election and when no one complained and the media fell in line, they knew anything they tried would be an easy sell.
Now we have the makings of another "event" in the Syrian/North Korean connection to nuclear weapons. Where have we seen similar pictures of sinister use buildings before? Look at that structure they were showing on TV, it's not much more than a Home Depot with windows and this is the laboratory for developing a nuclear weapon? Well, the sorry thing about this is millions of the brainwashed will fall in line and take up the chant: "bomb, bomb, bomb--Iran? Syria?" It is long past time to call bullshit on the MSM and break them up into itty, bitty pieces?

canuckchuck April 24th, 2008 1:03 pm
Anyone remember at the start of the Iraqi War disinformation campaign, Rumsfeild announcing the creation of The Office for Domestic Strategic Disinformation? (AKA PROPOGANDA?)
Its first official act was to claim that the idea had been abandoned.

Hey - you noticed that too!

Quoting from the article, "The quest for quality journalism and for the truth about the fast sell on the Iraq war just hit a new low."

I agree, but also suggest carefully checking out the following "new" low of U.S. journalism's quality, and, of course, of the U.S. govt.

"9/11 Contradictions:
When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker?",
by David Ray Griffin, April 24 2008,

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8788

The very least we gather from that article, in addition to plenty of prior others that have covered enough on the whereabouts of Cheney, as well as Rumsfeld, the morning of 9-11; well, it's that the 9/11 Commission clearly did very deliberately lie, that the U.S. news media has like totally ignored the strong contradictions, strongly convincing they are too, and that they're in on or part of the "game" of the Bush-Cheney administration, their whole GWoT.

Everyone, including Cheney, has accounts placing Cheney in the "bunker" relatively long before the 9/11 Commission unjustifiably reported; like nearly 45 minutes before the Commission's claim. All except for the 9-11 Commission have Cheney in the "bunker" sometime prior to the plane striking the Pentagon on 9-11.

It had to be deliberate, for the 9-11 Commission did the above [after] the testimony of Norman Mineta, whose words are strongly convincing and surely truth. And his words are sufficiently backed by Richard Clarke's account; although Mineta's seems, or else is, strongest of all.

And the 9-11 Commission got much more ... dead wrong; evidently enough also deliberately.

What's that called? Deliberate cover-up! Minimally. Treason! Certainly, too. And ... etcetera.

It's no surprise at all what's reported in the article by Josh Silver. It's been known for years already that Pentagon'ers were working for these corporate msm U.S. news media outlets, "businsses", so all we've gotten now is additional proof; and it's welcome, just that it is not much for [news] in terms of timeliness.

Cover-ups are a regular habit with U.S. msm news media. It may be sometimes due to incompetence, but this surely does not always match with reality; and there's been a LOT of such mismatching over the past eight years.

" canuckchuck April 24th, 2008 1:03 pm

Anyone remeber at the start of the Iraqi War disinformation campaign, Rumsfeild announcing the creation of The Office for Domestic Strategic Disinformation? (AKA PROPOGANDA?)"

The correct title appears to be Office for Stategic Influence, OSI; based on a Web search I just performed due to not having heard of or seen the above title before. Searching on the one above does, did anyway, quickly provide links to articles on the OSI.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Office_of_Strategic_Influence

QUOTE:

The Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was "established shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a response to concerns in the administration that the United States was losing public support overseas for its war on terrorism, particularly in Islamic countries." public relations campaigns. [1]

...

OSI, headed by Air Force Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden, began "circulating classified proposals calling for aggressive campaigns that use[d] not only the foreign media and the Internet, but also covert operations." Worden envisioned "a broad mission ranging from 'black' campaigns that use[d] disinformation and other covert activities to 'white' public affairs that rely on truthful news releases," according to Pentagon officials. "'It goes from the blackest of black programs to the whitest of white,' a senior Pentagon official said." [3]

...

On February 26, 2002, Rumsfeld announced that the OSI was closed, telling reporters that "The office has clearly been so damaged that it is pretty clear to me that it could not function effectively, ... So it is being closed down." [5]

Rendon Group

"The Pentagon had hired the Rendon Group, an international communications firm, to help the new office. ..."[6]

OSI Reborn

Some argue that due to its nature and stated purpose, the (non-)existence of such an agency would be hard to determine. OSI is said to have been reorganized, with all its original functions reassigned to the Office of Global Communications, [Information Awareness Office] (IAO), and the newly reactivated Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team (Counter-Information Team)." [7][8][9]

...

END QUOTE.

Wikipedia has no pages for an office with a title matching the one used by canuckchuck, so OSI must be what he's speaking of.

Unless he means the Office of Special Plans, which was established by Rumsfeld, or else the Bush-Cheney part of the administration. It provided Rumsfeld with support for the lies he wanted to try to get "Americans" to believe, so it was about deliberate deceit; but I suppose it wasn't as much focused on propaganda campaigns as the OSI, and with its new titles, has been or is.

Many Offices in the USA, ya know.

Gordon,

Good videos. I couldn't understand the language spoken by the foreign journalist, but we can see the Vet groups marching behind her and hear them saying 1, 2, 3, 4 ...

That U.S. news media people were present and withheld reporting this news is to be obviously deliberate; and we could, I suppose, add flagrant. After all, they were present and did no reporting of what they had to know about, for the subject was minimally obvious that the many leading the march are U.S. military or war veterans.

The media did basically no reporting on the Winter Soldiers testimonies, and this must be deliberate.

And if it's deliberate, then it's to aid crime, supreme international crime, as well as if not supreme, then close to it, nationally. Considerably serious crime it makes, I believe. And it leads to the offence of treason, which is no minor matter.

A link to an article on 9-11 and at Global Research in my first post, above, is another example of U.S. news media again participating in cover-up at quite supreme extent.

Hey Folks,

Yahoo News has an editorial by Brent Bozo the Turd ranting about how magnanimous ABC was to host an unsolicited(yeah, right) debate between
Democratic candidates...and in prime time. The mega-evil leftists are trying
to censor this gesture of corporate magnanimity.

Up until this time, I had thought Brent Bozell, though I disagree with him about nearly everything, was capable of reason. I have concluded that he is as psychotic as Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin.

Corporations are devoted to letting us have many points of view...or should
I say, whiffs of the many shades and variations and "bouquets" of the same old bullshit.

Look at it this way.

Our government is part of a single global corporation.

At the top is the elite who are the corporations board of directors. They vote for the CEO, who is our President, and ignore their wishes of the customers. The shareholders get to determine who is in Congress.

The corporation has many divisions, the MIC, Media, Security, Police, Agri-business, Big Oil, Banking, etc.

The media does what the CEO and board want them to do.

The company's goal is to eat up all the other smaller corporations inside and outside the US, until we are just one big company, call it One World Government. Inc.

The elite and the shareholders get rich off the customers. Since it is essentially a monopoly, it is the price maker. It does whatever it wants. If you can't afford to eat, starve, or give up everything you own to collect food stamps. If you cant afford health care but are sick, fine, you can die, or give up everything you own to get treated. To make sure you are poor, they send your jobs to other countries where labour is cheaper, then send back what they produce to let you buy on credit, and when you can not pay your debt because you lost your job, you lose everything you own. You are of course giving up what you own to them.

At the end of the cycle, the global corporation owns everything of value, and the means of production. Communism as envisioned by Karl Marx.

What does this mean for you. They don't need profit, they own everything. You can not eat, drink or do anything w/o their credit. You consume valuable resources, some of which are finite.

So the Chairman of the Board calls a meeting, and says, Mission Accomplished, great job guys and gals. But what to do about the surplus he asks. We only need X number of workers to keep us living in style, and Y number of entertainers to keep us "entertained". Why bother keeping 6.6 billion consumers, when we only need 600 million to keep us 6 million happy?.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out what is coming when they figure out there is no good answer to "Why"?.

Ghawar: Television viewers, either by nature or by conditioning, are ignoramuses, and they need to be told so; they need to be confronted and blamed

That doesn't work because it inflames the fight response. Besides, all of your interaction should be positive if at all possible. This is important because the general solution to the cause of 90% of all human-induced problems (elite aggression against people) similarly includes shifting individual association away from elites, i.e. we have to chastise anyone who associates with elites but we better do it nicely.

kivals: Sure, a common person might rise to hold a powerful position in the USA, if that person follows all the rules of the controlling elites, but the same is true in China.

In the "good ol USA" the myth is that anyone can achieve anything, all the way up to "leader of the free world" if they "work hard enough". But today one has to sell one's soul and learn to play the ever increasingly corrupt games to get "to the top" ruling tiers. The general solution that covers 90% of the human-induced problems is to shift individual exchange/association away from the elites so that most activities take place at the local level where corruption cannot thrive, like fungus cannot survive in the sunshine.

Kivals hit the nail on the head with his comments. Our cherished freedom of speech doesn't amount to much when our airwaves pump our minds full of rubbish and the most the majority of us can do is regurgitate corporate fecal matter.

There's that old saying, something like this, "The media treats the American people like mushrooms. They keep us in the dark and every so often throw crap at us." I get the feeling that most Americans are starting to like the crap.

"The quest for quality journalism..."

...is wasted time, when it's television you are staring at, in your quest.

It is now long past the point of obvious, that if you seek objective journalistic reporting on the activities of our Congress and the administration of our Federal Government, then you must read that journalism, either in a newspaper you know and trust, or (now more than ever) on the Internet Wire.

Television is not now (nor has it ever been I think) a medium of reliable and timely truth, regarding the making of our Laws or the administration of our U.S. Government.

Television is too ratings-driven focus-group-tested visually fixated and over-run with beauty contest runners-up former cheerleaders and toothepaste commercial models who can read a teleprompter and look squinty-eyed furrowed-brow serious while doing so.

And oh yeah, television broadcasters are privately-owned privately-controlled companies, with the interests of their ownership apparent in all that they broadcast, like say, a financial (or maybe just personal-political) interest in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, apparent in the defense contractor-employed retired miltary hired cheerleaders they put on television, to sell the American People that invasion and occupation.

But you knew this already, didn't you... because you have eyes, and have used them to stare at television (overlong perhaps), haven't you?

I recognized the symphony of pro war generals and colonels as a coordinated propaganda campaign in 2002. Didn't you?

The point that if the networks were actually free independent news organizations it would be impossible that they all cover the same stories every night is an excellent observation. Some guy will make a wooden wagon and pull it with a mule through Pittsburgh and all three networks will cover the guy in their evening 22 minutes of crap. Who is coordinating things so that such an obscure event is even known to all the networks in advance? There are stories like that all the time, or at least I saw them back, years ago, when I was still occasionally watching network news just to see what lies they were spewing on that particular day.

There is so much information available via the Internet now that I never spend any time with those network propaganda shows at all any more.

That is not the only thing that "didn't happen"

NYC police acquitted of killing groom-to-be

Three New York City police officers were acquitted Friday of killing an unarmed groom-to-be in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/25/police-shooting.html

Vaudree -- The __ P O L I C E __ S T A T E _ is closing it's _ g r i p _ … and __ l o o s i n g __ it's __ g r i p __ too

It's also depressing to note that right-wing radio continues to monopolize the air waves and scum like Rush Limbaugh are allowed to spread lies, misrepresentations. You get either gospel singers or psychopathic broadcasters like Rush and Hannity or are filled with Fox so called balanced reporting. These liars should be taken off the air and why doesn't the Federal Trade C. do its job? and stop this contamination. The public have a right to know the truth about their government and all of its policies. American democracy is but a memory while lies and propaganda fill the tv and radio wave. I guess we will have to say now Heil Bush, or something akin.

ALternative media isnt. Attack the Corporate Media and MAKE IT THE ISSUE. If you think that only the internet is tha answer you have not been following the insane campaign.

NOTHING ON THE LEFT OF CORPORATE INERNET IS GETTING TO BE AN ISSUE. IF ANYTHING THE DIALOGE IS FURTHER RIGHT THAN EVER.

The internet is not enough. We have to ACTIVELY DELIEGITIMATE THE CORPORATE MEDIA.

We enjoyed this article very much, not because one enjoys bad news. We enjoyed it because we watched the initial stages including live news coverage of the Iraq bombings (like everyone else). For days and weeks we watched the military analysts making predictions based on assumptions, using dubious probability and statistics and discovered it was all fake news. [The type of live news coverage one finds in VNR] Where a known news network anchor drivels out a story which is actually a paid advertisement pretending to be "news". In any case proud to say, not once did we believe these military crackpots, (about Iraquis wanting freedom, democracy, and liberation from an oppressive tyrant. Not once.

http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html
SRD