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The US government only cares about the right of the people to express dissent against foreign leaders they disapprove of. In fact, no more than a month after Hillary Clinton gave that speech, she gave another address condemning foreign governments for silencing dissent. During that speech, Army veteran and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern turned his back. For that silent, peaceful, non-disruptive act he was dragged from the room and assaulted.

This is the definition of hypocrisy. Hillary Clinton witnessed the scene happening directly in front of her and never said a word. These are the kind of people we have leading America today.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/15/headlines/friend_of_suspected_wikileaks_source_alleges_torture

Where's USAID in Chechnya?

Providing support for the IRC to help farmers, small businesses, and vocational training?

Where's USAID for Palestine (oops, sorry, the "Israeli Palestinian Occupied Territories")?

Funding improvements in infrastructure, schools, agriculture, hospitals, and water distribution in both Gaza and the West Bank?

where are the FUCKING WMDs THE US WENT TO WAR OVER IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE?

They weren't there. Even Bush admitted it -- several times. Or perhaps you missed out on that point?

What if the US itself has demonstrable disinterest in human rights and only dresses its interests up to look like it does? Where's USAID in Chechnya? Where's USAID for Palestine (oops, sorry, the "Israeli Palestinian Occupied Territories")? Where's the war on traffic accidents, underage smoking, underage drinking, peanut allergies and a pile of other things that kill a thousandfold more every year than terrorism?

Oh, and before we forget, where are the FUCKING WMDs THE US WENT TO WAR OVER IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE? Come now, the Iraq war was and is a gigantic money spinner for the huge number of politicians heavily invested in the military industry. It had nothing to do with "preventing genocide" or "fighting oppression".

Cut it out with the "we need to act against immoral leaders". The US is the least moral country in the world. It has no business riding a high horse. It has no respect for democracy, which was nicely outlined by Noam Chomsky in this interview.

with regard to the right wing ('fair and balanced') reporting of the health care debate. Is it really that strange to see another multi-billion dollar industry (substituting telecoms for health insurers/pharma corps) following the same pattern, with the right wing political/media apparatus peppering it's coverage with inaccuracies, slants and whiffs of 'big government' conspiracies?

Much of the language used to shape that debate was actually formed by PR agencies hired by large health insurers as revealed by Wendell Potter (former VP and head of corporate communications for large health insurers CIGNA and Humana) in his book Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans (Nov 2010) . Publicly funded health care was to be branded as "socialism" and a government intrusion. Here is an interview with Mr. Potter.
Republican talking points followed this pattern and then Fox reporters/anchors were ordered to use the same language in their reporting by Fox's managing editor, Bill Sammons.

from Leaked email: Fox boss caught slanting news reporting (Dec 9, 2010):

As far back as March 2009, Fox personalities had sporadically referred to the "government option."

Two months prior to Sammon's 2009 memo, Republican pollster Frank Luntz appeared on Sean Hannity's August 18 Fox News program. Luntz scolded Hannity for referring to the "public option" and encouraged Hannity to use "government option" instead.

Luntz argued that "if you call it a 'public option,' the American people are split," but that "if you call it the 'government option,' the public is overwhelmingly against it." Luntz explained that the program would be "sponsored by the government" and falsely claimed that it would also be "paid for by the government."

"You know what," Hannity replied, "it's a great point, and from now on, I'm going to call it the government option."

Well one outlet that doesn't take any corporate/foundation funding is: http://www.democracynow.org/ Any community-sponsored outlet is generally a good bet.

But as far as what we should "rally around," I think your question is missing the point. It isn't that the NYT, Slashdot, Fox, are 100% full of lies. There's obviously some truth/stories in there. You just need to figure out how to read them. Reading Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky and Herman is a great way to start to learn how to separate truth from falsehood.

And it's entirely possible that Democracy Now (not that I think this is at all likely) will be subverted by corporate goons tomorrow. So it's not like DN is infallible or anything. You just have to use your best judgment about how and where you consume news. As soon as you trust anyone else to carry out that task for you, you risk being deceived.

Very good interview done within the last few days. Why can't we have this guy running the country, not the bozo teams we get over and over?

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_wikileaks_cables_reveal_profound

Chomsky made his name by coming up with a linguistics theory that was profound at the time, and popular for a time, but has been shown to highly flawed as people started testing the theory against some of the more oddball languages and doing clinical research. He gained followers in the education/intellectual circles, got invited to write some editorials, and became one of the intellectual "big guns" the left looks to because he is eloquent, not because he actually knows what he's talking about.

Yes, he's a good communicator, but haven't we learned we need more than good public speakers (Obama, Palin, Hitler, etc) to lead us?

Very good interview done within the last few days. Why can't we have this guy running the country, not the bozo teams we get over and over?

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_wikileaks_cables_reveal_profound

>Have we compensated the Americans of Japanese heritage who were rounded up into concentration camps during WWII?

Actually yes, to the tune of $1.6 billion to >82,000 interees and their heirs, back in 1999:

http://www.democracynow.org/1999/2/18/wwii_reparations_japanese_american_internees

Knowing the names of all donors to a charity would allow a government (or someone else) to profile people. Knowing everyone a charity talks to helps to profile social networks, especially when you can do this or lots of charities. There obviously is interest in profiling all sorts of progressive groups:
    http://www.democracynow.org/2003/10/9/peace_group_infiltrated_by_government_agent

Can this be done in other ways? Probably. But collecting all this data in Google makes it easier.

Although, I suggest everyone assume eveything they do online is monitored, especially if they are interested in progressive things. Use the channels to communciate indirectly with the watchers, to try to lift their hearts and consciousnesses. :-) I make that point here:
    http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/ae28e8971f8f9669?hl=en

There may be other concerns. Let's say you were running a shelter for victims of domestic violence, rape, or some other form of abuse. Do you want all those case reports (or even just names) on Google servers? Although, no matter where you put them, there could be a privacy issue, so one might think Google might be better run than some smaller provider or inexperienced in-house IT?

So, one must weigh the pros vs. the cons.

This probably shows how long it takes the White House to announce something new after some activists give them the idea -- see when they were given the idea here:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/9/unity_college_students_bill_mckibben_launch
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/13/headlines#11

So you can see that it takes approximately 24 days from when the activists make a statement of their intentions for the press (non-mainstream press unless they do something wacky or are connected with ad dollars.)

Uh, I don't mean to insult the students by calling them activists, that word has negative connotations here in the USA.

This probably shows how long it takes the White House to announce something new after some activists give them the idea -- see when they were given the idea here:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/9/unity_college_students_bill_mckibben_launch
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/13/headlines#11

So you can see that it takes approximately 24 days from when the activists make a statement of their intentions for the press (non-mainstream press unless they do something wacky or are connected with ad dollars.)

Uh, I don't mean to insult the students by calling them activists, that word has negative connotations here in the USA.

Amy Goodman does a fair job as well in my opinion. Of course she doesn't have the same reach as Jon Stewart, but she's there, telling it like it is, and has been for some time.

He [Ford] relies on his thug, Harry Bennett, to enforce shop floor discipline with--that one historian compared to a totalitarian state. And so, in many ways, Fordlandia is Ford's attempt to recapture a lost innocence or this mantle of being history's redeemer. Ford revolutionizes capitalism, but then he spends most of the rest of his life trying to put the genie back into the bottle. In some ways, he's the--you could think of him as the sorcerer's apprentice. He attempts any number of experiments at social reform in the United States. He sets up these small, what he calls, village industries in northern Michigan that tries to balance agriculture and industry. Now, these were no match to the raw power of industrial capitalism. And he increasingly becomes idiosyncratic and quirky in his social vision. And Fordlandia, in many ways, is a kind of terminus of a lifetime of quite idiosyncratic ideas of how to organize society.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And he was into not only controlling the workers on the shop floor, but also their lives in general.

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And he conducted--he had his employees surveiled, watched what they were doing, how they were enjoying themselves. And did he carry that over into Brazil, as well?

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, it was a combination of intense paternalism and intense surveillance, with the surveillance half increasing as the paternalist part fails in the United States.

In Brazil, it was a program of social regulation. He exported Prohibition. He didn't like drinking, even though it wasn't a Brazilian law. Or he tried to regulate the diet of Brazilian workers. He had very--you know, he had them eat--he was a health food nut, so he had them eating whole rice and whole wheat bread and canned Michigan peaches and oatmeal. He also tried to regulate their recreational time.

".. it's really quite fantastic that Gates and Mullen, Gates being the former head of the CIA during Iran-Contra and the overseer of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mullen being the military commander for Iraq and Afghanistan -- I'm not sure what his further background is -- who have ordered assassinations every day, are trying to bring people on board to look at a speculative understanding of whether we might have blood on our hands. These two men arguably are wading in the blood from those wars

I think a response that would be less destructive would be to take reverse-course on the approach they're taking now. Best description I've seen from Julian Assange himself:

However, there are countries, Western countries, even countries in NATO, that are strongly supportive of what we do politically. And, for example, the UK has announced--UK Parliament has announced two inquiries into Afghanistan, one on the civilian casualties and the other on what is the exit strategy and how to get out of it. The Dutch government just formally announced its exit from Afghanistan. And other governments around the world involved in the ISAF coalition have, in bigger and small ways, announced that they are trying to do something about the revelations in this material.

And all of them are taking note of what the United States' attitude is, which is, instead of immediately saying these relevations are a serious concern, we never wanted to harm Afghan civilians or to bribe the media, as an example of one of the revelations in there, and we intend to launch an immediate investigation to understand this and compensate those people accordingly and change our procedures--that's what the rest of the world wants to hear. That's what Afghanistan, the people of Afghanistan want to hear. But instead they heard a personal attack on me and on our organization and an announcement that they would be going after the whistleblower or whistleblowers involved in this. And now we see them living up to those words and stalking around Boston, spying and harassing MIT graduates, and trunking around the United Kingdom, where they raided Manning, the alleged whistleblower, for a video release called "Collateral Murder," in her home in Wales.

".. we've got to be careful, Amy. Mullen actually was quite crafty in his words. He said "might already have" blood on my hands .. it's really quite fantastic that Gates and Mullen, Gates being the former head of the CIA during Iran-Contra and the overseer of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mullen being the military commander for Iraq and Afghanistan -- I'm not sure what his further background is -- who have ordered assassinations every day, are trying to bring people on board to look at a speculative understanding of whether we might have blood on our hand"

link

these folks, random U.S. citizens, etc. why would they give pause for this guy?

I have an email folder full of emails from NPR on how they wanted to support low power radio.

You are full of shit.

I have dealt with both organizations. Clear channel is full of entitled ass holes who think cities should do what they say because they own the radio stations.

Sorry but I'm not "full of shit".

I remember the fight and here is a great article from Democracy Now that details NPR's attempts to derail low power radio.

http://www.democracynow.org/2000/9/25/why_is_npr_fighting_public_radio

I've not only "dealt with" both organizations I've *worked* for both of them. They are different sides of the same coin with the main difference being NPR is full of sanctimonious self-absorbed assholes who will never admit they consider themselves privileged. Meanwhile they continue to suck the public tit for all it is worth.

1) Recruiting people does not mean you share their ideological views. Indeed, one of the selling points of Kagan (according to her supporters) is that in spite of her supposed liberal views she was able to recruit people from across the ideological spectrum, including conservatives, to Harvard Law School.

2) As the Solicitor General, you are a lawyer for the government. You argue their cases. We should not confuse positions she took as the Solicitor General with her own personal opinions on the cases.

If anyone wants the real story on Kagan (she's woefully unprepared for the Supreme Court) please read what Glenn Greenwald has recently been writing about her http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/13/kagan and a debate yesterday http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/10/progressives_divided_over_obamas_nomination_of

Another right-wing move by President Hope. I guess the lobbyists really got what they paid for when they backed Obama.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Other than a few barely-acknowledged bill-of-rights issues, the US Constitution is universally ignored by most of the populace and pretty much all of the lawmakers. It's not even taught in law school anymore (just all the case law that provides cover for ignoring what the Constitution says).

Oh now that is bullshit.

the only way your argument works is if you are the type of person who ignores any amendments made to the Constitution even though ANY amendment is constitutional so long as it's passed according to the rules setup in the constitution itself.

You can't ignore them just because you personally don't think they are correct.

Oh, really? Are you sure about that? Certainly the Speaker of the House ignores it. Others don't think they are supposed to be the least bit concerned about it. Often the POTUS just signs executive orders to bypass all the rules whenever they want to create new rules

Bachmann: Sir, in the Constitution. What in the Constitution could you point to, to give authority to the treasury for the extraordinary actions that have been taken.

Geithner: Every action that the treasury and the fed and the FDIC is.been using authority granted by this bodyby the Congress.

Bachmann: And in the Constitution, what could you point to?

Geithner: Under the laws of the land, of course.

Then there are the Constitution-free zones

Napolitano on ignoring the Constitution also, the transcript.

How on earth do they make up laws like "Asset Forfeiture" and still claim to be constrained by the Constitution? They can't

But you don't get to decide that! That's what people such as yourself don't seem to want to understand.

You always throw up completely anecdotal "examples" of your claims of the "vast conspiracy" to ignore the constitution, but you seem to forget the little part in the constitution that says (Article Three Section 2, precisely):

"The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects."

That means that the judgement as to whether anything is or is not constitutional is not in the purview of ANYONE other than the Supreme Court of the United States ...that includes anyone playing arm-chair constitutional scholar.

If anyone feels anything is not being done in accordance with the United States Constitution, then you have a SUPREME RESPONSIBILITY to attempt (they would have to agree to hear it) bring the matter before the Supreme Court.

The fact that no one has tells me volumes.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Other than a few barely-acknowledged bill-of-rights issues, the US Constitution is universally ignored by most of the populace and pretty much all of the lawmakers. It's not even taught in law school anymore (just all the case law that provides cover for ignoring what the Constitution says).

Oh now that is bullshit.

the only way your argument works is if you are the type of person who ignores any amendments made to the Constitution even though ANY amendment is constitutional so long as it's passed according to the rules setup in the constitution itself.

You can't ignore them just because you personally don't think they are correct.

Oh, really? Are you sure about that? Certainly the Speaker of the House ignores it. Others don't think they are supposed to be the least bit concerned about it. Often the POTUS just signs executive orders to bypass all the rules whenever they want to create new rules

Bachmann: Sir, in the Constitution. What in the Constitution could you point to, to give authority to the treasury for the extraordinary actions that have been taken.
Geithner: Every action that the treasury and the fed and the FDIC is.been using authority granted by this bodyby the Congress.
Bachmann: And in the Constitution, what could you point to?
Geithner: Under the laws of the land, of course.

Then there are the Constitution-free zones

Napolitano on ignoring the Constitution also, the transcript.

How on earth do they make up laws like "Asset Forfeiture" and still claim to be constrained by the Constitution? They can't

DIANE RAVITCH: “The Billionaires Boys Club” is a discussion of how we’re in a new era of the foundations and their relation to education. We have never in the history of the United States had foundations with the wealth of the Gates Foundation and some of the other billionaire foundations—the Walton Family Foundation, The Broad Foundation. And these three foundations—Gates, Broad and Walton—are committed now to charter schools and to evaluating teachers by test scores. And that’s now the policy of the US Department of Education. We have never seen anything like this, where foundations had the ambition to direct national educational policy, and in fact are succeeding... http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/5/protests

Same is true in South Jersey, where we did get a whole lot of snow this year.

It's kind of obvious that global warming will lead initially to more snow. That's independent of the origins of this year's snows.. whether global warming was involved or not. The colder you get, the less water vapor in the air. More heat means more energy in the system which means more potential snow. Based on the studies of average temperature, the global average from the 1850s throught to 2005 is 1.36F. That's not the difference between snow and now snow, except in rare conditions. On the other hand, a fraction of that warming the tropical Pacific can cause an El Niño episode, which has a very dramatic effect on weather for the whole USA. More energy in the system leads to more variation and more severe weather, not anything you'd easily call out as "warming".

And just a little extra energy alone isn't the reason we went from a usual 10-15" of snow for a whole season to over 70"... so far. The weather is definitely weird this year. We usually get a cold snap in late December maybe through mid January, with temps down to the 10F's or so... this year, not so much. It's hovered in the upper 20Fs and lower 30Fs. But the storms! The three huge blizzards were due to nor'easters... big circulating storms, kind of like a small hurricane, that basically hover around the coast and bring all kind of precipitation inland a bit. That's why, for the first time ever in my recollection, we got much more snow than most of Eastern PA. Thing is, a nor'easter is usually a fall and spring storm, not so much a winter thing. Is that the end result of more energy in the system?

I'm sure people who actually know this stuff, actual scientists, not just we computer geeks, have their opinions. "Near-normal amounts of precipitation are expected over the eastern third of the country, as well as over the Pacific Northwest and Northern Plains, while drier-than-normal conditions are forecast to occur over the Southwest and the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes."... wait, that was the Farmer's Almanac, for the 2009-2010 winter season. So here's an actual climate scientist: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/climate_scientist_record_setting_mid_atlantic

And hey, why trust me... I'm just a computer engineer with a guitar. But man, if you can't trust Bill Nye the Science Guy, there's just something wrong about you. Here's Bill, speaking about the snow storms, and questioning the patriotism of the "science deniers": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm05Mcah0i8

The point is, unless you have the "world is black and white" vision of a radical right teabagger, or maybe you've lived in California your whole life and have never seen snow beyond "the ski slopes", you understand that snow != cold. Sure, you need a little cold to get snow, but if you have lots of cold, no snow. Sure, some northern climes look very snowy this time of year, but that's the effect of many tiny bits of snow without a melt. Here, we usually melt out a few days after any snowstorm... this year, with 30" in the same week, it's taking JUST a bit longer. Up at my brother-in-law's place in up-state New York, the snow they get in December is probably going to hang around until March. So they don't have much falling at any given time, but it accumulates.

Simple enough, when you actually live it every year.

Yeah, you probably also prefer the more balanced approach of Fox News.

Actually, I loathe Faux News. I prefer Democracy Now.

But you're right, in part, in that this does not invalidate spirituality. But it does explain spirituality.

No, not even close. Your POV appears to be very biased.

Not that any of the grandparents implied that spirituality isn't real. Just your personal view of spirituality as some sort of mystic out-of-body experience.

You assume a great deal.

But you know, I'm with you, fuck blind faith. In any form.

Thing is, we must train ourselves to recognize it first. I'd say you've got your work cut out for you. But then again, don't we all? :)

I am well aware of anti-science movements on the left (like the anti-biotechnology campaigns), but the right really runs it into the ground.

As data I would submit Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science (or all Mooney's articles that you can read free with a Google search).

During the Bush Administration, Science magazine had unprecedented editorials charging the Administration with anti-science bias. One of the more outspoken scientists was Peter Agre, who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the water channel. Another was Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of telomerase (and worked, using her expertise as a scientist, on the President's Council on Bioethics, and was kicked off for disagreeing with the Republican party line). I can remember problems with Carter administration policies, but we've never had as anti-science an Administration as this.

I'll admit my bias. I read the Wall Street Journal editorial page every day, and I constantly see their attacks on science-based policy.

I particularly follow health policy and the pharmaceutical industry, and the WSJ editorial page attacks FDA regulation all the time, even the regulations that are solidly based on science. I just read an opinion piece attacking Medicare in hysterical terms for not reimbursing coronary CT scans for heart disease. Then I read an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about heart disease, which mentioned that there was no evidence for the value of coronary CT scans, although randomized controlled trials are ongoing.

In contrast, I follow http://www.democracynow.org/ (IMO the best news source on the left), and they regularly run stories in which they take some poorly-informed anti-science accusations on the left, and debunk them with authoritative experts.

I don't think the facts support your hypothesis. But I'm always open to new facts.

People who get all their news from The New York Times and NPR as every bit as ignorant as those who get all their news from Fox and The Wall Street Journal.

And vice versa.

There's an important point about journalism that you're getting exactly wrong.

I've been reading the New York Times and Wall Street Journal daily for 35 years. Both newspapers are supposed to be writing their news stories (as distinct from the editorial pages) in a way that gets all sides of the story, preferably in the same story, or at least over a series of stories. That's what journalists mean by objectivity or balance.

They've done a fair job. I think the WSJ used to do a better job of giving all sides, which is why I bought it, but in recent times they've become more alike and Murdoch has been doing unprecedented interference in the news reporting.

Even a Wikipedia story has a section called "Controversy." A news story that gives both sides, or different sides, is going to inform you better than a story that only gives one side.

I also think it's good to read the left and right extremes. My best source on the left is http://www.democracynow.org./ For the right, I read the WSJ editorial page, but they're not the principled conservatives they used to be.

I've been following the situation in Haiti via Democracy now and they have covered this topic extensively on their daily newscast. They even flew some reporters there for a few days. I highly recommend to subscribe to their tv/radio podcast (is free). I also recommend to read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" for a good background on disaster relief operations.

My conclusion is that the whole violence situation has been fabricated. For example, the prison escape that you mention, they had an interview with a local civil rights activist who said that about 80% of the prisoners where in prison without charges. Political prisoners of the coup regime are being held for years without trial. According to him the case could be made that the mass escape had actually been a good thing.

Everybody interviewed during the first days were saying that there was no insecurity problem. There was no need for massive deployment of soldiers. The guy in charge of the main hospital n Port-au-Prince was even complaining that the arrival of troops had interfered with the functioning of the hospital.

Tons of help has been shipped there but almost none has arrived to the people. Lots of volunteer nurses and doctors have arrived but they don't have access to any electricity or medical supplies. They are doing tabletotop amputations with tools acquired at the local hardware store and without anesthesia. Most of which unnecessary as they would have been avoided if they had had antibiotics on the first place.

The USA controls the airport and are preventing some of the planes with aid to land. Tons of aid has arrived but is just staying at the airport, or being delivered to ... the USA embassy. The little aid that is being delivered is being handed out by armed personnel who have been told the people out there are dangerous and they throw them food from a distance. People are getting really pissed of at being treated like dogs and/or very frustrated of not receiving any help.

It's the perfect recipe for violence and has been perfectly executed according to a plan. And it is starting to work: there are the first reports of insecurity at night, women being raped. Communities are just asking for proper lightening at night in their camps site to prevent this from happening. Nobody wants guns.

Local communities had all the experience required to get organized, and all the means except petrol. If they had just been handed some gas they would have used their own trucks to get water for the victims and relocate the people to less hit areas.

As usual when there is a natural disaster the disaster capitalists have stepped in to size the opportunity to steal as much as possible from the local people (they call it privatization). It is crucial that local communities are prevented from self organizing. There is also the issue of preventing any good PR from "hostile" regimes: cuba had already 400 doctors in the ground when the earthquake struck, and they sent more help immediately, Venezuela also sent aid, so did China while the USA was still "planning". In their military effort to prevent good PR for other governments they missed a golden opportunity to create good PR for the USA: the Guantanamo base is just around the corner and they could have sent emergency aid from there during the first hours. They didn't.

There is also the issue of racism. With Haiti being the first and only independent state created by a slave revolution, it is even more pressing to keep them poor, otherwise they would set a bad precedent. God forbid people from realizing that a bunch of negroes are capable of running a country. The USA has recently done two cups against a democratically elected government in Haiti (both times led by Jean-Bertrand Aristide) and it has had very good reasons to do so.

Here is a sample of democracy now reporting:

Security “Red Zones” in Ha

I've been following the situation in Haiti via Democracy now and they have covered this topic extensively on their daily newscast. They even flew some reporters there for a few days. I highly recommend to subscribe to their tv/radio podcast (is free). I also recommend to read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" for a good background on disaster relief operations.

My conclusion is that the whole violence situation has been fabricated. For example, the prison escape that you mention, they had an interview with a local civil rights activist who said that about 80% of the prisoners where in prison without charges. Political prisoners of the coup regime are being held for years without trial. According to him the case could be made that the mass escape had actually been a good thing.

Everybody interviewed during the first days were saying that there was no insecurity problem. There was no need for massive deployment of soldiers. The guy in charge of the main hospital n Port-au-Prince was even complaining that the arrival of troops had interfered with the functioning of the hospital.

Tons of help has been shipped there but almost none has arrived to the people. Lots of volunteer nurses and doctors have arrived but they don't have access to any electricity or medical supplies. They are doing tabletotop amputations with tools acquired at the local hardware store and without anesthesia. Most of which unnecessary as they would have been avoided if they had had antibiotics on the first place.

The USA controls the airport and are preventing some of the planes with aid to land. Tons of aid has arrived but is just staying at the airport, or being delivered to ... the USA embassy. The little aid that is being delivered is being handed out by armed personnel who have been told the people out there are dangerous and they throw them food from a distance. People are getting really pissed of at being treated like dogs and/or very frustrated of not receiving any help.

It's the perfect recipe for violence and has been perfectly executed according to a plan. And it is starting to work: there are the first reports of insecurity at night, women being raped. Communities are just asking for proper lightening at night in their camps site to prevent this from happening. Nobody wants guns.

Local communities had all the experience required to get organized, and all the means except petrol. If they had just been handed some gas they would have used their own trucks to get water for the victims and relocate the people to less hit areas.

As usual when there is a natural disaster the disaster capitalists have stepped in to size the opportunity to steal as much as possible from the local people (they call it privatization). It is crucial that local communities are prevented from self organizing. There is also the issue of preventing any good PR from "hostile" regimes: cuba had already 400 doctors in the ground when the earthquake struck, and they sent more help immediately, Venezuela also sent aid, so did China while the USA was still "planning". In their military effort to prevent good PR for other governments they missed a golden opportunity to create good PR for the USA: the Guantanamo base is just around the corner and they could have sent emergency aid from there during the first hours. They didn't.

There is also the issue of racism. With Haiti being the first and only independent state created by a slave revolution, it is even more pressing to keep them poor, otherwise they would set a bad precedent. God forbid people from realizing that a bunch of negroes are capable of running a country. The USA has recently done two cups against a democratically elected government in Haiti (both times led by Jean-Bertrand Aristide) and it has had very good reasons to do so.

Here is a sample of democracy now reporting:

Security “Red Zones” in Ha

Ever since, natural disasters are treated as terrorist attacks: "security" is more important than helping victims. Remember Katerina/NOLA.

Security Red Zones in Haiti Preventing Large Aid Groups from Effectively Distributing Aid
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/22/security_red_zones_in_haiti_preventing

Well , their suicide sets a good example for a dated corrupt media. A good idea defended by the founding fathers and others was reduced to a shallow meaningless lie of propaganda for government, liberal causes and big business. What doesn't evolve as necessary, dies as superfluous tripe. It won't be missed.

It won't die. It's too important to the ubiquitous propaganda effort required to keep Objective Reality subdued down to a mere nagging thought at the back of everybody's mind. My guess is that this NYT thing is a ploy which fits somehow into the whole internet crackdown which has been brewing in the wings. (The Obama White House, being just one player, is preparing some pretty crazy legislation to be unleashed on the world stage.)

Somewhat more real news comes from places like http://www.democracynow.org/ --Which while it doesn't touch certain things, is a helluva lot less doped up than the NYT.

-FL

http://democracynow.org/

PBS and NPR are largely funded by corporate underwriting. But trumpeting that isn't in line with their image. If you really want news media that's funded without government or corporate influence, send a check to Amy Goodman or your local Pacifica radio station.

The best Internet journalism that I follow is http://www.democracynow.org/ Notice how Democracy Now interviews people on the other side all the time.

Don't forget the Columbia Review of Journalism, http://www.cjr.org/

I've been a journalist since 1978, and the most important thing I learned was to go back to the source and check my facts. Most bloggers don't check their facts. But don't feel bad. A lot of New York Times reporters don't check their facts either.

Every journalist learns quickly that you hear some shocking story, you call up the accused to check it out, and the story often turns out to be misleading, misinterpreted, wrong or downright lie (think weapons of mass destruction).

I write about medicine. I once did a story on needle exchange programs. http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/needlex.htm The scientific evidence seemed overwhelming that needle exchanges saved lives, but a lot of doctors, and politicians, were obstructing them. I spoke to Herbert Kleber, who was supposed to be one of the bad guys who was obstructing them. To my surprise, he had changed his position because of the weight of the scientific evidence. Happens all the time. But I see bloggers attacking people for things they don't actually believe, because they didn't check their facts.

We old guys have been working to develop what you now call the Internet for >60 years. Independent journalists like George Seldes and I.F. Stone used to do a great job, and we were looking forward to the great day when a lone journalist could publish a newsletter without printing and postage costs. It's been good and bad.

The most obvious flaw that I notice in blogs is that most of them -- but not all -- don't check their facts. It's a big game of telephone. Some blogger cuts and pastes a paragraph from another blog, which came from another blog ... which came from the New York Times. I can read the NYT myself. If you want to add value to that story, you can check the NYT's facts, and in my experience, you have a pretty good chance of finding them wrong. Make a fucking phone call to the original source and see if the NYT got it right. Or check out a different source. If you want a lesson in journalism, examine their health care reform coverage.

It's like replicating DNA. A bunch of enzymes copies a stand of DNA, and then another bunch of enzymes checks the duplicated strand to make sure it's copied right. If you don't have error-checking enzymes, you wind up with (sometimes disastrous) mistakes.

There are a lot of blogs that are written by people who have such a good command of the facts, have such expertise, that they're not likely to make mistakes -- they've already checked out the facts, for their academic work or their books, like Juan Cole and Glen Greenwald.

But most journalists aren't experts. They have to check their facts with the experts. That's the game. No matter how smart I am, I interview and quote somebody who knows more than me.

The best Internet journalism that I follow is http://www.democracynow.org/ Notice how Democracy Now interviews people on the other side all the time.

A blogger who does nothing more than copy a story from a major news source like the NYT, or, even worse, from a blogger who wouldn't meet the reliable source standards of Wikipedia, is just adding noise, not useful information.

If you want to add useful information to the Internet, you're not going to find it on the Internet, obviously. Call up an expert and get some new information. And then call up an expert who disagrees with him, to make sure he hasn't given you a sales job.

• National Security Adviser James Jones Disputes NYT Report on Iran Nukes
• The Iranian government has said it will allow UN inspectors access to a newly disclosed nuclear enrichment facility on October 25.
• Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter Warns Against "Politically Motivated Hype" on Iran Nuke Program

• National Security Adviser James Jones Disputes NYT Report on Iran Nukes
• The Iranian government has said it will allow UN inspectors access to a newly disclosed nuclear enrichment facility on October 25.
• Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter Warns Against "Politically Motivated Hype" on Iran Nuke Program

• National Security Adviser James Jones Disputes NYT Report on Iran Nukes
• The Iranian government has said it will allow UN inspectors access to a newly disclosed nuclear enrichment facility on October 25.
• Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter Warns Against "Politically Motivated Hype" on Iran Nuke Program

in the grand scheme of things, personal infidelity is probably not the biggest "crime" a public official can commit.

Like Eliot Spitzer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer After Spitzer was forced out, he was replaced by David Patterson, a nice guy, whose main virtue was his ability to get along with the Republicans, who promptly paid him back by throwing the New York State legislature into chaos http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/11/ny Tom Robbins said in the Village Voice that the exercise was paid for by billionaire Tom Golisano after Spitzer wouldn't agree to cut state taxes for billionaires. http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-01/columns/senate-coup-plotters-hidden-agenda/

Spitzer's name was exposed during a supposedly confidential investigation by Republican federal prosecutors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Siegelman As it turned out, they didn't have evidence of a crime to charge him with.

The supposed victim of this affair, Spitzer's wife, didn't want him to resign. Why should she? What good does it do her to have her husband lose his job?

I'd choose a president who respects civil liberties & human rights and acts in the interest of the public, but happens to be a philander, over a president who is completely devoted to his wife, but is willing to step on civil liberties, support torture, or sell out the American public to corporate interests.

Well the way the Republicans get away with destroying civil liberties, supporting torture, and selling the American public out to corporate interests is by distracting voters with sex scandals.

What amazes me is that supposedly intelligent people, like New York Times columnists, let the Republicans put this over on them twice (with Clinton and again with Spitzer). It's hard to believe that they're so stupid. I wonder if there's another reason.

Spitzer was a victim, BTW, of the indiscriminate financial reporting laws which give the attorney generals indiscriminate power to go after anyone they want, including the other party. The only consolation is that Spitzer played this game himself, so there is a defense of of being hoisted on his own petard.

The constitution was written in the 18th century, of course internet is not specifically mentioned, this is ridiculous literalism.

The US Constitution is a concrete document, even if you and others want to make it say what it does not say. And it does provide a method by which it make be changed, by amendments. And unlike constitutions others have written, I'm looking at the 1000 plus page EU constitution, the US Constitution including the amendments can fit on only a few pages and is a limit on what the federal government can do not what it must do.

local news are published locally

Except there is little local news now. A lot of the print news comes from services like the Associated Press. For radio large businesses such as Clear Channel tape shows which they then distribute to the various stations they own. Take for example the stations in a North Dakota town. Clear Channel owned all 6 non-religious commercial radio stations, all of which were on autopilot. When a train derailed leaking toxic chemicals there was nobody at the stations to broadcast a warning. In other disasters such as when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans it was hams, shortwave radio broadcasters, who helped not Clear Channel or other commercial broadcasters.

Falcon

"Saskatchewan was told that it would never get hospital insurance. Yet Saskatchewan people were the first in Canada to establish this kind of insurance, and were followed by the rest of Canada. We didn't have Medicare in those days. They said you couldn't have Medicare - it would interfere with the 'doctor-patient relationship'. But you people in this province demonstrated to Canada that it was possible to have Medicare. Now every province in Canada either has it or is in the process of setting it up."

"Sure things have changed. Hair has gone down and skirts have gone up. But don't let this fool you. Behind the beards and the miniskirts, the long hair, this generation of young people, take it from me, is one of the finest generations of young people that have ever grown up in this country. Sure they're in rebellion against a lot of our standards and values and well they might be. They have got sick and tired of a manipulated society. They understand that a nation's greatness lies not in the quantities of its goods but in the quality of its life."

Speech in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, November 27, 1970
From Doris French Shackleton, Tommy Douglas, p. 309-10.

Tommy Douglas Father of Canadian Healthcare.

(also grandfather to Jack Bauer)

Because it is journalism's job to tell us important things and keep telling us important things, regardless of popular interest. These stories aren't important because of commercial market response. Placing commerce ahead of stories like these is what gets us to where we are now.

The contacts mainstream media covets aren't worth much to begin with. Being a stenographer to power isn't doing journalism and as more media cover-ups, lies, and dismissals are exposed the public has no reason to trust the reports they receive from these organizations. The New York Times both helped push the invasion of Iraq based on cover story lies co-written by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, and the NYT carried David Barstow's Pulitzer-prize winning expose on how the Pentagon propaganda campaign recruited over 75 retired military officers to appear on TV as "analysts" before and during the Iraq war.

Barstow couldn't get the mainstream media interested in his prize-winning story either for being a scathing expose or because he won a prestigious prize for his investigative journalism. Democracy Now! invited him on the air for what became an exclusive interview:

AMY GOODMAN: I think what's so interesting about this story is not only what the Pentagon has done; it's the lack of reporting on this by the networks. Of course, you know, that is your subject here, how the networks use them. How many times have you been invited on the networks--you just won the Pulitzer Prize for this investigation--to explain this story of the networks' use of these pundits?

DAVID BARSTOW: You know, to be honest with you, I haven't received many invitations--in fact, any invitations--to appear on any of the main network or cable programs. I can't say I'm hugely shocked by that.

On the other hand, while there's been kind of deafening silence, as you put it, on the network side of this, the stories have had--sparked an enormous debate in the blogosphere. And to this day, I continue to get regular phone calls from not just in this country but around the world, where other democracies are confronting similar kinds of issues about the control of their media and the influence of their media by the government.

So it's been an interesting experience to see the sort of two reactions, one being silence from the networks and the cable programs, and the other being this really lively debate in the blogosphere.

To date there has been no serious expose of NYT's lies during the run-up to the Iraq invasion. We know they're capable of such an act: they did it for Jayson Blair's stories which were far less important lies that could be framed so as to appear largely the work of one person. Back then there was a full color spread about Blair, his stories, and a follow-up discussion in an auditorium with an audience (CSPAN carried it). But back in 2004, Goodman put the NYT's Iraq run-up lies in perspective as well.

Don't confuse Cindy Sheehan for a liberal, she's just a crazy woman who also happened to be a rather upset mother.

Being a frequent listener to Democracy Now, I've actually heard Cindy Sheehan speak at length on different topics, and disagree with her if you like, but she doesn't deserve to be smeared as a "crazy woman": Should impeachment be off the table

I was particularly impressed with this response:

DAN GERSTEIN: But I think, Cindy--one thing we can definitely agree on is that Congress has been too timid in holding the Bush administration accountable. I don't think, though, that that justifies going to the compensatory extreme of an impeachment process. And to go to a point Ray raised about deterrence, which is an argument that you hear over repeatedly from the impeachment movement, I think, you know, what happened with President Johnson in Vietnam and then Richard Nixon and now George Bush, this idea that, you know, by just beginning impeachment proceedings against George Bush you're going to deter future presidents from engaging in similar actions, I think it is just unrealistic, because, you know, the Nixon case proves it. [...]

CINDY SHEEHAN: I think if Congress had impeached Ronald Reagan for Iran-Contra, we might have had a deterrent effect. I think that if we don't impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney, they've made a mockery of the Constitution, they've trampled on it. If we don't impeach them, take out the clauses or just--we'll just forget we have a Constitution and a representative republic.

"It doesn't mean anything in terms of the quality..."

I respectfully disagree.

If you agree that, NEWS is business and people who understand how the system operates routinely manipulate channels for political purposes. Fitzgerald's act should be reiterated daily so no one grows up thinking they understand anything based on a single source, and so people who received that message yesterday might learn it over time.

As a public service, it does mean something. It reminds us that skepticism is valuable. Fitzgerald may go on to a brilliant career in PR, or, if he continues on this track, he may improve the world with additional acts of artful revelation.

Adbusters http://www.abusters.org/ is a group with similar intent. They attempt to wake us from our inner zombie using the same medium of advertising and propaganda (AP) used by 175 pro-war DoD "experts" to inculcate us to: [War=Peace], [Civilian Death=Collateral Damage], [Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL)=Spreading Democracy]

I am routinely disappointed in the American NEWS media by their attempt to promoter their own employees as experts, without proper disclosure of sources or logical argument of analysis. We need more people with the creativity and dedication to throw the drivel back in the faces of the pompous perpetrators of propaganda.

Nationalism and hubris to the exclusion of principled philosophical action are seeds decline. We write it off as corruption, which it is, however as we have become cynically inured to such behavior, we accept decline as inevitable. I believe most Americans expect better, they just don't know where to find it.

Hey! Pass the Democracy, please!
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Moyers

The Soviet Union continued to obfuscate maps available to civilians up until its demise. A friend who lived there in the '70's commented that he wasn't supposed to take pictures of bridges and the like, either.

You're not supposed to take pictures of bridges and the like here either.

http://i1.democracynow.org/2004/7/1/pakistani_immigrant_being_deported_for_taking

July 01, 2004

Pakistani Immigrant Being Deported for Taking Pictures of NY Reservoir Speaks from Jail

Pakistani immigrant Ansar Mahmood, lost his final judicial appeal this week and is scheduled to be deported. He was first picked up in October 2001 for taking photographs of an upstate New York reservoir. No terror-related charges were ever filed against him but investigators found him in minor violation of immigration law. He joins us from prison where he has been held for nearly three years.

It's utter nonsense. Doctrow is a self important blowhard who, for reasons unknown, people think is actually relevant.

It's hard to see how your criticism is correct. Doctorow hedges a lot in this essay (one's "favorite medium" will be "devoured, transformed, or destroyed". That covers a lot of possibilities). But even if he's wrong in this essay, your criticism is unjustified and overly harsh: Doctorow is a writer making his money from selling books one can download free, something long thought impossible in the 'why pay for what you can get for free' philosophy. He is walking the talk showing us through his example how one can license liberally, make a living with a huge online component to one's work, and sustain this for years on end. Perhaps there's a message in there for the proprietors of movies, newspapers, TV, and music.

That the Internet can't ever replace newspapers and proper reporting.

One hopes the lecturer didn't conflate such different things as you just did. There's nothing categorically improper about the reporting going on online, and there's nothing categorically proper about reporting in print. Newspapers can switch to online publication and offer the same caliber of reporting they offer now. It's not the quality of reporting that prevents newspaper publishers from losing their print publications. The New York Times, for instance, can continue to lie about the most important issue of the day while punishing authors of far less important articles in ridiculous public displays (Judith Miller versus Jayson Blair) whether they do it in print or online. The medium can change and the reportage can remain the same.

"How many bloggers are embedded in Falujah?"

That doesn't strike me as nearly important as asking: How many reporters are independent? How many are not embedded with the military? How many are failing to present a "difficult public face for [their media organization] in a time of war" or judging their effectiveness by comparing to competitors who are "waving the flag at every opportunity"? Phil Donahue's CNBC show was cancelled for the reasons quoted in these last two quotes, according to a leaked internal memo. I don't recall most of the major news outlets telling us much about the millions on the streets of the world protesting the US invasion of Iraq before it began. I recall them getting head counts wrong and ignoring well-spoken war critics lest their contrary views gain mainstream exposure and thus legitimizing them in the views of those who consume nothing but corporate news. I don't recall good corporate news analysis of the run-up to the war before or after Col. Powell's lies to the UN. Instead, I recall seeing a strong imbalance of views on-air favoring pro-war voices. Some of the most valuable journalism about this war has come from unembedded independent journalists on far less-widely seen shows like "Democracy Now!". It seems to me that the medium isn't the critical factor here, what the news organization says is.

Maybe the school officials are getting kickbacks from private juvenile detention centers.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/17/penn_judges_plead_guilty_to_taking

  http://www.prisonradio.org/judges_like_these.htm

Source. In that link, there is a debate between Cleta Mitchell (attorney specializing in election law who has represented several Republican legislators, the National Rifle Association and the National Republican Senatorial Committee) and Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer for ACORN.

Bertha claims the following:

We are nonpartisan. We don't tell people to be one party or another. We just want to make sure that they do vote and that they're not disenfranchised. And so, once we collect cards-and I think your audience ought to know-any time you register someone to vote, you have to turn in every single card, by law, even if it says Mickey Mouse. And what we do is we flag, we tag problematic cards, because we try to confirm and verify that card by calling folks three times. And if we think something even remotely looks suspicious, we tag it, we flag it, we turn it over to election officials. And along with that, we also turn over to election officials the worker that collected those suspicious cards.

Look closely at Cletcha's responses throughout the entire discussion. She never once claimed that they are illegally handing in false registrations. The source of the problem with the false registrations is deeper than you have been led to believe - you are poorly educated on the topic.

If you want me to spell it out for you, I'll do so:

ACORN claims that many citizens who should be eligible to vote aren't eligible because of the restrictions in place of voters needing to provide an ID such as a drivers license. Many poor minorities who are legal citizens of the US don't have such ID's, and thus are prevented from voting. To my knowledge, this is exactly what some loud left-wingers are crying about regarding 2000/2004 being "stolen" - groups of legitimate voters who are known to support their candidate on a larger scale were effectively blocked from voting.

Groups like ACORN are trying to get these laws removed so that the poor minorities aren't blocked from voting.

The problem is that if ACORN get their way, suddenly we can have people (of either side) voting fraudulently without ID. This is, IMO, a terrible idea. We need a better solution.

As for claiming that I made that up instead of just asking for a source... *sigh*. People like you who spend time talking about ACORN turning in fraudulent registrations are getting absolutely nothing accomplished, because you are making a mountain out of a molehill. There are real issues to debate, but you are focusing on the imaginary ones and calling the real ones lies.

And the reports of phosphorous bombs, among other things, are pretty damn credible.

Actually, they are not. Not even the most die-hard leftist at ONU is giving much credit to these alegations.

Amnesty International: Israel used white phosphorus in Gaza civilian areas
White Phosphorous and Dense Inert Metal Explosives: Is Israel Using Banned and Experimental Munitions in Gaza?