Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

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All the recent natural disasters, compounded with ongoing International terror strikes and American leadership errors, are giving me a bad case of the Doomsday Blues. Let’s face it, with rampant population and its resulting poverty, global warming and its resulting catastrophes, and WMDs and their resulting mass destruction, it seems like without a whole lot of peace, love and understanding… we’re fucked!

I’ve been writing about the blending of media and politics, and it seems as though some really wealthy, powerful guys are thinking, “Hey, we didn’t amass a big fortune just to have the world blow up in my face!” So, wouldn’t it be great if Bill Gates and Paul Allen used their massive wealth to steer America back on track by the next big election? OK, we should also add Bill Joy, Steve Jobs and their companies to pitch in to redesign a smarter, better Operating System for the USA.

Meanwhile, a group of philanthropic statesmen are really doing something. They’ve organized NTI, The Nuclear Threat Initiative and produced a docudrama Last Best Chance which imagines the results of al Qaeda operatives striking with nuclear weapons. It gives some hope that successful influential people are working on solving hard problems.

Al Gore remarks on threats to American democracy and the marketplace of ideas at a conference at The Media Center at the American Press Institute.

Read or listen to the entire address. Here are a few quotes:

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

Keep in mind, your thoughts and opinions matter. Just because an event is not on major television, does not mean it did not happen. It still is valid, it exists. If it is covered on television, most likely it is not news and information with clarity, but planned out entertainment, advertising and propaganda.

The access to digital cameras and electronic publishing has produced a huge wave of amateur photographers posting on the web, including soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Abu Ghraib was just the tip of a bloody nasty iceberg.

Last week SF Chronicle columnist Neva Chonin published an article “Porn Wars, Part II”, pointing out a website and this backstory:

“For a year now, American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been posting photographs of corpses — insurgent corpses, civilian corpses, unidentifiable piles of guts in various stages of mutilation — on the site in return for free access to its porn cache.”

Caution: this website is for mature adults with strong stomachs. The combat images are labelled “General” others “Gory.” The gory ones show the true horrors suffered by humanity as a result of the weapons of war and violence. A dose of this might shock some folks out of their abstract theorizing over the merits of fighting this foreign war.

These photographs should serve as a reminder of the consequences of armed combat. Look at the carnage before leaping into war. Incredibly, Vietnam was not enough of a history lesson to radical conservatives. They see the Vietnam era as “America’s Second Civil War,” and new war in Iraq will provide vindication. I’ll talk in simple Texan language, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Which one of the above had more impact on world affairs in 2000? Why did the media focus on Monica and ignore Osama until it was too late?

Mainstream media deserves a major share in the blame game for ignoring the developing global terrorism stories connecting the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania, and the U.S.S. Cole bombing leading up to the 9/11/2001 terrorism attacks on U.S. soil. Instead, the press chose to host a juicy media circus, pandering to lowest common denominator advertising ratings driven tastes and engaging in wag the dog games with national security. Most Americans had never heard of al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden until the days after 9/11.

To her credit Molly Ivins has written an exemplary article asking for a Media Accountability Day and providing attention to Project Censored. Their Top Ten Stories not covered by Corporate Media:

1. Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government
2. Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Deathtoll
3. Another Year of Distorted Election Coverage
4. Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In
5. U.S. Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia
6. The Real Oil for Food Scam
7. Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood
8. Iraqi Farmers Threatened By Bremer’s Mandates
9. Iran’s New Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency
10. Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy

Yes, there are smart, studious people out there who do not appreciate being sold on repetitive simplistic sound bite themes, and then hood winked, having the wool pulled over their eyes, jerked around, blown off… you get the idea. Some of them are graduate students at top universities, such as Al Franken’s research team of 14 Harvard students who fact-checked statements made by the right wing media. Franken and his team dissects these loud mouthed phoneys, who broadcoast unaccountable idealogical opinions, sold as facts in, Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

A friend who watches precious metals carefully, e-mailed me some warnings about the U.S. economy, as reflected in the rising price of gold, not to mention black gold:

“That gold is above $450 for many days is significant. That was a level that the NY manipulating banks working with the Federal Reserve were able to hold for a long time. Anyone who thought that Greenspan would not raise rates when this major mechanism failed was knaive of hearts and mines.

The whole world is watching as the US flounders in muck like a banana republic, and its president talks about spending vast unexpected sums in addition to huge current debt like a drug addict digging into the home equity line.”

A similar sentiment is expressed at The Binary Circumstance, banner sub-titled, “Things either exist or they don’t”:

“The Bush administration and the Republican Congress do not raise taxes or veto any spending bills which means the only way to pay off the debt is for the government to counterfeit more money.

I think I can hear them starting up those printing presses now.

That means inflation.

Inflation is a hidden tax on wages, savings and the value of the U.S. currency which all decline in relation to hard assets like real estate and gold.”

Here is an interesting article about silver and metal prices by “the Optimist.” He predicts the price of silver will explode.

“For all those readers who have slept through the last week, the Optimist is excited to tell you that the price of gold has surged to $460, its highest price in almost two decades. Speaking of sleeping, however, the price of silver has been disappointingly dull compared to gold. Although everyone knows that silver will more than double from its current price of $7.20, and will eventually multiply by a factor with one or more zeros (i.e., 10, or 100, or 1,000, etc.), the key question everyone asks is when the explosion will happen.”

In a further reality check, the market analysis blog Rampant Speculations’ banner includes a great quote from sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” His article warns,

“The strength in gold and the weakness in high yield bonds of late cannot be good news for the finance based US economy.”

That about sums it up. The only logic I can see behind our leadership in U.S. government is that they prefer fewer rich elite people to compete with.

For historic gold price information, see charts at the Gold Information Network.

“If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When The Levee Breaks I’ll have no place to stay.”
– (Bonham/Jones/Page/Plant/Memphis Minnie)

Environmental Protection? What Did President Bush Do? Read David Remnick‘s coverage…
(excerpt below)

“In an era of tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush consistently slashed the Army Corps of Engineers’ funding requests to improve the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain. This year, he asked for $3.9 million, $23 million less than the Corps requested. In the end, Bush reluctantly agreed to $5.7 million, delaying seven contracts, including one to enlarge the New Orleans levees. Former Republican congressman Michael Parker was forced out as the head of the Corps by Bush in 2002 when he dared to protest the lack of proper funding.”

See also John McPhee’s “The Sunken City”.

Led Zeppelin Lyrics, “When The Levee Breaks.”

Back in the Vietnam era a phrase was coined, and surprisingly it has not come back, or achieved traction again, yet: credibility gap. Harry Shearer was in a radio satire group of that name, and his web site advertises an old anti-Clinton book “It’s the Stupidity, Stupid.” I guess for a pro comic, any President is fair game and I gotta admit, running up these tax break and foreign war deficits requires real men of genius, Mr. 43rd President of the Crude Oil Age!

Some may ask… Is Iraq Vietnam on crack?

For those dumbasses who did vote for Bush, they must be scratching their sorry asses wondering, “How come gas is so high? I thought we were ‘sposed to take over Iraq and get their oil!” Well, there’s a credibility gap for ya, buddy.

There are plenty of more complex gaps for those who do their homework, such as the bait and switch of al Qaeda for Saddam, the phony Niger yellow cake document accompanied by the smoking gun mushroom cloud scare, the missing WMDs, the neglect for wartime planning protocols, the hiring of contractors to sidestep Geneva Convention laws… it goes on and on. People have been asleep at the wheel and they need the sobering slap of hurricane Katrina to wake themselves up. Here’s Condi Rice’s credibility gaps.

When I lived in Jacksonville, FL the regular guy on the street, or golf course, did not see much difference between Osama and Saddam. “They’re both a couple of camel jockeys, what’s the difference?” they’d say using their charming down home Southern comfort logic.

As resources, lives and patience wears thin here in the U.S.A. homeland, ask youselves, “Is this president credible or just an unbelievably incredible Hulk cartoon?” How much B.S.ing are you gonna take?

We’re getting closer to locating God. Following up on a previous Intelligent Design article, members of the Pastafarian religion are using their noodles to add more sauce to the debate.

The long time faithful know righteously that this is only a new religious flavor of the week, and that the true sweet Way of Truth is through The Church of the SubGenius.