Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America

No longer can we use the term "main stream media." Our media has been co-opted by big corporations and should just be called "big media" or "corporate media." When the Carlyle group is represented on the board of directors of the New York Times, we can easily see that independent coverage is at risk.

In a review from Powell's:

To criticize what the media has become is to criticize the Republican deregulation of that medium and their retreat from the public good.

An accounting of the debasing of popular culture might focus on the government's retreat from television. In 1961 John Kennedy's FCC chairman, Newton Minow, went before the National Association of Broadcasters and described television as a "vast wasteland." He vowed to "uphold and protect the public interest" and voiced his disagreement with those who "say the public interest is merely what interests the public." Kennedy's FCC sought to limit advertising to children and increase educational programming. But by the '80s, Reagan's FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, derided the idea of the public interest. Television, he said, was only a "toaster with pictures." Reagan's FCC sought to limit government control of broadcasters.

We saw FOX propagandizing for the Iraq war, but now it never shows the war. FOX shows Hilton Paris and the runaway bride, the missing girl in Aruba and shark attacks -- but nothing on the ongoing war in Iraq. Yes, they are like a toaster with pictures.

Sidney Blumenthal has written about the natural instability in Iraq and why the present government cannot hope to be accepted as truly Iraqi by the majority, the Sunnis.

From the creation of the Iraqi state in 1921 to the army's coup of 1958, Iraq had 58 governments. In 1968, the Baathist Party led by Saddam staged another coup. Some periods of this prolonged instability were less unstable than others, but the instability was chronic and profound. The overthrow of Saddam appears to have returned Iraq to its "natural" unstable state. But in fact the instability runs even deeper.

The Baathists, of course, were Sunnis. Saddam was a Sunni. Before him, the monarchs, beginning with Faisal I, were Sunnis. Before Faisal, the Ottomans, who ruled beginning in the 15th century, were Sunnis. Shiites have never ruled the country until now. Why should the Sunnis, after 600 years of control, accede to the dominance of Shiites?

The present Iraqi government is a ramshackle affair of Shiites and Kurds. The Kurds have no interest in a central authority, and play the game only to solidify their autonomy. The Shiites are maintained as dominant only by the presence of the U.S. occupation army and their sectarian militias. They will never disband those militias in favor of a national army unless they can run the army like an expanded version of the Shiite militias. Prime Minister al-Jaafari and the other Shiite leaders, including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, have all been Iranian agents or allies, recipients of Iranian largess in one form or another. Shiite Iraqis are natural friends and allies of Shiite Iran. Iraq under the Shiites does not have to be remade in Iran's image to serve Iranian interests. Whether or not sharia (Islamic) law is imposed, Iraqi Sunnis will never see Shiites as Iraqi patriots or nationalists but, instead, as being in league with Iraq's traditional and worst enemy.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.
Robert Lewis Stevenson.

I just took a survey for Ode about fear and inspiration. There are so many things we have to be fearful about that it's exhausting. The EPA is testing pesticides on people without their informed consent. They asked people to take gel-tabs filled with pesticides with their morning orange juice. How can that sort of inhumanity be practiced by the United States?

We now routinely torture in Abu Graib, Guantanamo and our gulags. We ship people other countries to have them tortured. Alberto Gonzales said the Geneva Convention was quaint. I believe that the long history and application of the Geneva Convention belies that. How can my country be practicing these things?

There are many inspirations. I have a progressive friend who has decided to run for office. We're starting up a Friday Night at the Progressive Movies here in town. We've started a Progressive Toastmasters Club. I have new friends and everywhere I look the progressives are learning to make their voices heard.

And focusing on our fears plays into the hands of the evil empire.

Isn't it ironic -- the USSR didn't survive -- but neither did we. We became the evil empire. I've read about major transformations in other countries and wondered about the people living there. Remember all the "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" in China, where people informed on family members who were re-educated or executed? Or the inflation that hit Argentina. How could people survive when their savings turned into dust? And then they had their "dirty war" where perhaps 20,000 people were taken by the government and never returned. And now here we are , five years into our neo-con future. Where is this one going to end? How many families will have broken by then?

I heard something today: To make peace, don't talk to your friends, talk to your enemies.

This is a good explanation to the stunningly unreasonable dictum that Republicans trot out -- that the reason we have not been attacked here again is that we've "taken the fight to the enemy." There was some idiot who had a letter to the editor saying this just a week or so ago.

TomPaine.com - Rove Tries To Change The Subject: "Finally Karl, please “understand” that the reason we have not suffered a repeat attack on our homeland is because Bin Laden no longer needs to attack us. Those of us with a pure and comprehensive “understanding of 9/11” know that Bin Laden committed the 9/11 attacks so he could increase recruitment for al Qaeda and increase worldwide hatred of America. That didn't happen. Because after 9/11, the world united with Americans and al Qaeda's recruitment levels never increased.

It was only after your invasion of Iraq, that Bin Laden's goals were met. Because of your war in Iraq two things happened that helped Bin Laden and the terrorists: al Qaeda recruitment soared and the United States is now alienated from and hated by the rest of the world. In effect, what Bin Laden could not achieve by murdering my husband and 3,000 others on 9/11, you handed to him on a silver platter with your invasion of Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with 9/11."

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/03/17/media/index3.html

Violence has clearly been decreasing in the Western world for the last 500 years; as far as we can tell from uneven record-keeping, the murder rate in medieval Europe was several times higher than it is today, even in relatively violent societies like the U.S. While the 20th century has seen some spikes in violent crime -- correlating less to the arrival of television than to the proportion of young men in the population -- the downward trend since about 1980 has reinforced the general tendency. As Rhodes puts it, "We live in one of the least violent eras in peacetime human history."

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2000/06/violent_media.html

Weighing in on Newsweek

There are many international sources for the Quran being defiled at Guantanamo and denials by the U.S. military mean little; our government holds prisoners in violation of international law and denies them access to independent counsel or human rights groups. Their dismissal of such charges cannot be believed, as they have created an atmosphere of unrestrained torture.

(Washington Post, 3/26/03; London Guardian, 12/3/03; Daily Mirror, 3/12/04; Center for Constitutional Rights, 8/4/04; La Gazette du Maroc, 4/12/05; New York Times, 5/1/05; BBC, 5/2/05; cites compiled by Antiwar.com, 5/16/05).

What we're seeing is the right wing media creating a controversy where none exists.
What they want us to believe is that anonymous sources are fine, as long as they are promoting rather than challenging official government policy. It's all right for your reporting to be completely wrong, as long as your errors are in the service of power.

How can Newsweek be blamed for violence in Iraq when the US has conducted an illegal war there? How minuscule the Newsweek article is in relation to the egregious damage the US has intentionally performed.

The corrupt economic policies of the neo-con Republicans have resulted in a diminished American dream, a future of McJobs for our children and seniors alike.

"One cannot but wonder at this constantly
recurring phrase 'getting something for nothing,'
as if it were the peculiar and perverse ambition
of disturbers of society. Except for our animal
outfit, practically all that we have is handed to
us gratis. Can the most complacent reactionary
flatter himself that he invented the art of writing
or the printing press, or discovered his religious,
economic and moral convictions, or any of the
devices which supply him with meat and raiment
or any of the sources of such pleasures as he may
derive from literature or the fine arts? In short,
civilization is little else than getting something for
nothing."
--James Harvey Robinson,
historian, (1863-1936)

Salon.com | Holy warriors: "In the name of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, democracy without end. Amen."

Salon.com | Holy warriors: "But what would Madison say?

This is what Madison wrote in 1785: 'What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.'

What would John Adams say? This is what he wrote Jefferson in 1815: 'The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?'

Benjamin Franklin? 'The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.'

And Jefferson, in 'Notes on Virginia,' written in 1782: 'It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desireable? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.'"

Yahoo! News - Rove Decries Media Approach to Government: "Rove Decries Media Approach to Government

By STEPHEN MANNING, Associated Press Writer

CHESTERTOWN, Md. - The media have started applying the horse race style of campaign coverage to daily reporting on government, leading to adversarial reporting that can obscure the truth just to create conflict, President Bush's chief political strategist said Monday.



Speaking at a forum at Washington College, Karl Rove said the influx of media outlets and the shrinking shelf life of news in a 24-hour news cycle are to blame.

'We are substituting the shrill and rapid call of the track announcer for calm judgment, fact and substance,' Rove told the crowd of roughly 600 students and local residents.

Naming specific reporters and news organizations, Rove said the media unfairly created the impression that President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, introduced early in his first term, was stalled in Congress at every step before its passage.

But the legislation was passed by the House and Senate with wide margins and was signed by Bush less than a year after it was introduced, Rove said. He said the media have taken a similar approach to the current debate over Social Security.

'What really gets me is how short the time horizon is for many members of the media of coming to a conclusion of whether something will pass,' he said.

Another example is the 'obsessive reliance' on polls to create news and political predictions, he said. He cited the media's early reliance on ultimately misleading exit polls from Election Day 2004 that appeared to show Sen. John Kerry headed for a presidential win.

'It is as if they (reporters) believe that all polls are created equal,' he said. 'But it ain't so.'

Rove is widely considered to be the driving force behind Bush's 2000 election victory and his win last year over Kerry. Now a deputy chief of staff, Rove is one of the president's closest and most trusted advisers.

Rove countered the general notion among conservatives that mainstream media outlets skew liberal. He said the press corps is 'less liberal than it is oppositional' and admitted to being a listener of National Public Radio.

Of his boss, Rove said the idea that Bush is not an intellectual is incorrect, citing his Ivy League education and saying 'there's always a book on his night stand.'

'He's one of the most intelligent, curious, intellectually tough people I know, yet the country misunderestimates him continually,' Rove said, playing on one of Bush's more memorable verbal gaffes."

Yahoo! News - New pope intervened against Kerry in US 2004 election campaign

Great. The new pope is the one who tried to influence the US election against John Kerry.

Cinematical
Cannes Film Festival List

The New York Times > International > International Special > Europeans Fast Falling Away From Church: "Only 21 percent of Europeans say that religion is 'very important' to them, according to the often-cited European Values Study, conducted in 1999 and 2000 and published two years ago. A similar survey in the United States by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life put the number at nearly 60 percent."

washingtonpost.com: Fox's Sandstorm

William Raspberry says Fox is causing people to think all news reporting is as biased as Fox.

Have you heard people say, 'Well both sides do it." in relation to politics? (Of course, it's not true that both sides have a Tom Delay, that both sides refuse to let opposition into their scripted rallies, that both sides hurl massive giveaways to corporations at the expense of the American people. "Both sides do it" is a Republican rationalization for whatever their current mess is.)

Raspberry is warning that Fox's virulent partisanship makes viewers think other media is similarly biased to the left. The sad thing is that I wish we did have a liberal media.

Why the Liberals Can't Keep Air America From Spiraling In: "
Sure, talk radio is partisan, sometimes overheated. But it's also a source of argument and information. Together with Fox News and the blogosphere, it has given the right a chance to break through the liberal monoculture and be heard. For that, anyone who supports spirited public debate should be grateful. "

Conservative guy says Air American is going down. He says we already have the liberal media so we don't can't fuel a market for radio.

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!

Inequality.org Facts and Figures

The poor get poorer. The wealthier get poorer -- except for that magic 1% at the very top who are lapping it up.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Radical in the White House: "Roosevelt referred to his proposals in that speech as 'a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race or creed.'

Among these rights, he said, are:

'The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.

'The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

'The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.

'The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.

'The right of every family to a decent home.

'The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

'The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.

'The right to a good education.'

I mentioned this a few days ago to an acquaintance who is 30 years old. She said, 'Wow, I can't believe a president would say that.'"

Tom Delay's House of Scandal

This is a really well-done website. Click on "How tangled up with Delay is your member?" for Washington and read about our Republican representatives and how they've voted.