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FEMA Sorry for Faking News Briefing
theodp writes "The Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 2 official apologized Friday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters. All the while, real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions. In the briefing, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA's deputy administrator, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency's response to this week's California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005."
What are the CRIMINAL penalties for this Fraud? I would think that 18 USC 371 would apply, as FEMA engaged in this deception in part to deprive Congress of it's lawful role in oversight?
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So, I guess this means that FEMA's lesson from Katrina was that they needed better press coverage?
Anyway, besides Jeff Gannon, we've seen this before. Here's another case:
March 29, 2005
Despite a rising chorus of condemnation from journalists and media critics, the George W. Bush administration shows no signs of abandoning its distribution of taxpayer-funded "news" to U.S. newspapers, radio and television stations.
Free press advocates are up in arms about what they say is the covert dissemination of propaganda by government agencies.
In one case, the administration -- seeking to build support among black families for its education reform plans -- paid a prominent African American pundit, Armstrong Williams, 240,000 dollars to promote the "No Child Left Behind" law on his nationally syndicated television show and through his newspaper column, and to urge other black journalists to do the same.
Two other nationally known journalists, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, have also admitted accepting thousands of dollars to endorse government programs.
Since 2001, the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service has fielded 40 reporters, producers and public affairs specialists to create "good military news" to be beamed to home audiences via local news stations. The service's "good news" segments have reportedly reached 41 million Americans via local newscasts -- in most cases, without the station acknowledging their source.
More than 20 different federal agencies used taxpayer funds to produce television news segments promoting Bush administration policies. These "video news releases," or VNRs, were broadcast on hundreds of local news programs. without disclosing their source....
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0329-12.htm
This isn't the first time FEMA has done this sort of thing. The more I've researched this agency, from it's creation through all of it's efforts, it's resources, it's inclusion in executive orders and laws which affect the very core of our ideals and constitutional republic, it's subterfuge and misconduct, it's public face as portrayed in the media vs the reality of it's mandate, and how very little the general public knows about that mandate - the more I find to be concerned about.
While researching FEMA initially I was looking to disprove disturbing things I had heard and read; it was not a case where I went looking to substantiate fears, if anything I went into the research with a "FEMA are the good guys" bias, but what I found was far worse than I imagined it could be, and I am genuinely concerned for the security of my country.
I have posted before about FEMA and the executive orders which created and empower it. Rather than repeat any of that, I would urge anyone reading this to look into FEMA and it's mandate and actions on their own. Google it, especially the executive orders and the current anti-terror laws which have removed a lot of your rights.
"If and when martial law comes to America at large, it will be under the auspices of the shadowy Federal Emergency Management Agency ("FEMA"), a massive, secretive agency operated from a huge, fortified bunker in Virginia, and established by unconstitutional means to carry out an unconstitutional and indeed anti-constitutional program."
- excerpt from RICO complaint pending against Bush II admin (I am not claiming that the RICO case is with or without merit, only that the particular statement quoted is accurate in my opinion).
I am not advocating an armed revolution. I *am* advocating passive demonstrations against these abhorrent policies, typified by FEMA's sham news conference.
My Kent State example was not that demonstrators should have shot back at Guardsmen, but that the "Peace Movement" had neither the courage nor even the integrity to continue regardless of personal danger -- courage that the union movement and civil rights movement found. Those movemenets did not take arms against the government, they persisted until the government's cupidity was profoundly unmasked, and the voters changed the government's policies.
I am the last to advocate war. I am a Viet Nam vet. I have seen war. You will not like it.
But no empire lasts forever; it looks like the US Empire is falling faster than any before it. Look to the history of Great Britain after World War Two for a clue as to what will happen to the US -- that is, IF we find an undiscovered stash of oil on the order of the one in the North Sea that has been keeping GB monetarily afloat for decades.
But that's another story.
Hint: it might be a crime for a US citizen to advocate taking up arms against his government. It might be called treason.
The government has managed the news for quite some time, in all manner of creative ways. FEMA simply got caught. Don't think for a moment that this is the first time something like this has been done either by FEMA or by the government in general. They have long been of the mind that the citizens (and the fourth estate, and the constitution) are an inconvenience, rather than supervisory bodies and limits they are responsible to.
Just spend a little time with Google looking for managed news, faked news, and government.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.