House Bill Would Extend Provisions for 10 Months
Senators are split three ways on how to procede with the forthcoming extension of the most controversial portions of the Patriot Act, with questions over adding some nominal oversight to the process and length of the extension causing serious rifts.
Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D – VT) has the most modest extension of the three, seeking to extend the provisions through 2013 and promising some oversight over how the US surveils its citizenry.
This bill was quickly slammed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R – IA) who introduced an alternative bill that would extend the provisions for all of eternity and would prohibit any additional oversight of the spying activity. Sen. McConnell (R – KY) backed Grassley’s version, insisting that the “threat of oversight” would burden the never-ending war on terror. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D – CA) sought a compromise bill, which would use Leahy’s 2013 date but Grassley’s total lack of oversight.
The fighting is all quite interesting (and ominous) but will likely be meaningless as the House version of the bill is seeking to avoid the sort of major political battle of the others and will simply extend the provisions, oversight-free of course, for 10 more months.
Source
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The Media in America: Selling Views, Calling it News
By Prof. John Kozy
Sometime in the 1960s, I took part in a university symposium along with three other faculty members—a political scientist, a historian, and a journalism professor. The topic was Freedom of the Press—Good or Bad.
During the sixties, the Cold War was being fought mightily. The Soviet Union's news agencies, TASS and Pravda, were continually attacked by the American "free press" as untrustworthy. A common claim was that a controlled press could never be trusted while a free press could, and my three colleagues on the panel supported that view. I did too, but only partially.
A controlled press, I argued, most certainly could not be trusted when reporting on governmental actions or policies, but I pointed out that much news is not affected by government, and I saw no reason to be suspicious of a controlled press' reporting on such matters. But I also argued that there was good reason to distrust the so called free press no matter what was being reported.
My argument rested upon the observation that a controlled press, being funded by its controlling government, had no need to attract readers while the so called free press had to rely on readers to remain economically viable. The free press had to market its wares in the same way that any retail company must, and one way to do that was to slant the news in ways that made it attractive to the news organization's target groups which, in a sense, biased all the stories the free press reported. And although the free press claimed to maintain objectivity by balancing the presentation, using two people of divergent political views, I pointed out that it was easy to select the two people in ways that made it seem that one side always prevails, the result being that the media divided itself into ideological groups, not even to mention that large segment of the press openly termed sensational-tabloid.
Although this symposium took place approximately half a century ago, my argument is easier to make today than it was then. The media in America today often openly declare their various points of view, from conservative Fox News to liberal MSNBC.
Distinguished from these "all news" outlets are the more traditional networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC. These can be likened to department stores, in which various products are sold throughout each day, so called news being only one of them. These networks have their departments—the game show department, the reality show department, the sports department, the business department, the celebrity department, and, of course, the "news" department.
What either type of medium does, however, is similar. Just as Macy's sells products of various kinds, the news sells stories, and each outlet distinguishes itself from the others by the slant in which each frames their products. Just as McDonalds distinguishes its burgers from those sold by BurgerKing, ABC distinguishes its stories from those told by NBC. In short, in the free press, the news is sold by slanting it in ways that make it appealing to the target audiences, and the slanting often takes up more time than telling the story does. An anchor often tells a story and then so called experts are used to embellish it by providing the slant. Unfortunately, the "experts" used often know nothing more about the issues discussed than the average viewer/listener does. The news, which many believe should consist of facts, becomes mere opinion.
Everyone must remember that there is no Hippocratic Oath for journalists; a person does not have to swear to report events truthfully to be a journalist. In fact, less is required of a journalist than of the plumber you call to unstop your toilet. In short, today's American journalist can be likened to the teenager on roller skates who brings the hot dog you ordered to your car at Sonic or the clerk behind the counter at Macy's. So anyone who criticizes the mainstream press for not being truthful, neutral, or objective is misguided. That's not what the mainstream press sells and criticizing it is as unreasonable as criticizing McDonalds for not selling lamb chops.
That the media need to differentiate products from those of competitors also limits the kinds of stories that can be reported. If adding a bias to a story is difficult because of the story's nature, the "free" press tends to ignore it. For instance, when the Iranian opposition engaged in anti-governmental demonstrations after the last election, the American press made much of it because the story could easily be presented as an oppressive government's suppression of dissent. But the demonstrations against austerity policies taking place in Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, France, and Greece have gone unreported because those demonstrations cannot be presented as demonstrations against oppressive governments. Similarly, the killing of Christians in Iraq and Egypt have gone unreported because they cannot be slanted to make them seem justified. If slanted any other way, they would provide anti-war Americans with another reason to argue against the wars. Furthermore, it is difficult to sensationalize stories about foreigners Americans know nothing of. So, for instance, stories about the antics of Italy's Berlusconi would have little attraction to American viewers/listeners. Ever since it joined Mrs. Merkel’s German government, the fortunes of the pro-business Free Democrats have been dramatically changed from a party that won 15 percent during the federal elections of September 2009 to below 5 percent today, because of an increasing negative attitude of Germans for business since the current economic collapse began, a story that cannot easily be told to Americans because of American pro-business attitudes.
Snardfarker.ning.com claims that there are five reasons that the mainstream media is worthless. (1) Self-Censorship by journalists who are afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. "There's the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources. . . . There's the fear of being labeled partisan if one's bullshit-calling isn't meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum." (2) Censorship by higher-ups. "If journalists do want to speak out about an issue, they also are subject to tremendous pressure by their editors or producers to kill the story." (3) To drum support for war. "Why has the American press consistently served the elites in disseminating their false justifications for war? One of the reasons is because the large media companies are owned by those who support the militarist agenda or even directly profit from war and terror (for example, NBC . . . was owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors in the world -- which directly profits from war, terrorism and chaos)." (4) Access. "For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post . . . offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to 'those powerful few' Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper's own reporters and editors." And (5) Censorship by the Government. "the government has exerted tremendous pressure on the media to report things a certain way. Indeed, at times the government has thrown media owners and reporters in jail if they've been too critical." These reasons are true to some extent, but the ultimate reason is merely the need to grow the bottom line, to make money which is, after all, the reason the media exists in America.
The consequence of all of this is that Americans have become mentally isolated. The world beyond America's borders is an amorphous, unknown land. As Zbigniew Brzezinski has recently said, "most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant." What people don't realize is how much of this ignorance is the result of the American "free" press' need to slant its reporting. Brzezinski finds this "unhealthy," and he is right, since America's "foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued." And this ignorance makes it easy for the government to convince the people that some disastrous policy is appropriate.
Americans who are critical of the mainstream press have an idealized notion of what the press is. They indict the press for not being what the press should be but is not and never has been. The press' need to sell its products makes it impossible to be what it should be.
Unfortunately, the alternative press has adopted many of the mainstream press' models. There are sites devoted exclusively to ideological stories—conservative, liberal, libertarian, pro and anti war, global warming, carbon taxation, and more—all in an attempt to attract readers. So the truth doesn't emerge there either. How then can we find it?
There was once a small segment of the "free" press called investigative journalism which has now become almost entirely extinct. Perhaps this has happened because of the difficulty of prying information out of governmental agencies and corporate entities. About the only way to get that hidden information is to have it leaked by some whistleblower to some site that can protect the anonymity of the leaker. WikiLeaks is a start, but many such sites are needed if all the lies and disinformation is to be revealed. And, yes, it is likely that governments and even corporations will create pseudo-leaking sites to try to obfuscate the truth revealed by any leaker. But if the sites can, as WikiLeaks does, disseminate actual source documents that any reader can judge the authenticity of for her/himself, much more of the truth will emerge than can emerge now.
Slanted journalism must, of course, be debunked. Many alternative journalists already do this quite well, but sites like WikiLeaks are also necessary to combat the increasing secrecy that even the "free" press must contend with. Slanted reporting must be debunked, and leaking and whistleblowing must be encouraged and protected if the truth is ever to get a change of emerging from the darkness of insidious secrecy.
America's journalists are not "newshounds." Although I suspect that each and every one of them will consider this an insult, they are nothing more than salesclerks, hocking the products their employers want to sell. The pretty faces—well at least not ugly—that now function as most news anchors are no different than the pretty models used to sell other products. The American "free" press is comprised of nothing more than a number of retail outlets which sell stories slanted to please their target audiences. As such, they exist merely to sell snake oil.
Source
Sometime in the 1960s, I took part in a university symposium along with three other faculty members—a political scientist, a historian, and a journalism professor. The topic was Freedom of the Press—Good or Bad.
During the sixties, the Cold War was being fought mightily. The Soviet Union's news agencies, TASS and Pravda, were continually attacked by the American "free press" as untrustworthy. A common claim was that a controlled press could never be trusted while a free press could, and my three colleagues on the panel supported that view. I did too, but only partially.
A controlled press, I argued, most certainly could not be trusted when reporting on governmental actions or policies, but I pointed out that much news is not affected by government, and I saw no reason to be suspicious of a controlled press' reporting on such matters. But I also argued that there was good reason to distrust the so called free press no matter what was being reported.
My argument rested upon the observation that a controlled press, being funded by its controlling government, had no need to attract readers while the so called free press had to rely on readers to remain economically viable. The free press had to market its wares in the same way that any retail company must, and one way to do that was to slant the news in ways that made it attractive to the news organization's target groups which, in a sense, biased all the stories the free press reported. And although the free press claimed to maintain objectivity by balancing the presentation, using two people of divergent political views, I pointed out that it was easy to select the two people in ways that made it seem that one side always prevails, the result being that the media divided itself into ideological groups, not even to mention that large segment of the press openly termed sensational-tabloid.
Although this symposium took place approximately half a century ago, my argument is easier to make today than it was then. The media in America today often openly declare their various points of view, from conservative Fox News to liberal MSNBC.
Distinguished from these "all news" outlets are the more traditional networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC. These can be likened to department stores, in which various products are sold throughout each day, so called news being only one of them. These networks have their departments—the game show department, the reality show department, the sports department, the business department, the celebrity department, and, of course, the "news" department.
What either type of medium does, however, is similar. Just as Macy's sells products of various kinds, the news sells stories, and each outlet distinguishes itself from the others by the slant in which each frames their products. Just as McDonalds distinguishes its burgers from those sold by BurgerKing, ABC distinguishes its stories from those told by NBC. In short, in the free press, the news is sold by slanting it in ways that make it appealing to the target audiences, and the slanting often takes up more time than telling the story does. An anchor often tells a story and then so called experts are used to embellish it by providing the slant. Unfortunately, the "experts" used often know nothing more about the issues discussed than the average viewer/listener does. The news, which many believe should consist of facts, becomes mere opinion.
Everyone must remember that there is no Hippocratic Oath for journalists; a person does not have to swear to report events truthfully to be a journalist. In fact, less is required of a journalist than of the plumber you call to unstop your toilet. In short, today's American journalist can be likened to the teenager on roller skates who brings the hot dog you ordered to your car at Sonic or the clerk behind the counter at Macy's. So anyone who criticizes the mainstream press for not being truthful, neutral, or objective is misguided. That's not what the mainstream press sells and criticizing it is as unreasonable as criticizing McDonalds for not selling lamb chops.
That the media need to differentiate products from those of competitors also limits the kinds of stories that can be reported. If adding a bias to a story is difficult because of the story's nature, the "free" press tends to ignore it. For instance, when the Iranian opposition engaged in anti-governmental demonstrations after the last election, the American press made much of it because the story could easily be presented as an oppressive government's suppression of dissent. But the demonstrations against austerity policies taking place in Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, France, and Greece have gone unreported because those demonstrations cannot be presented as demonstrations against oppressive governments. Similarly, the killing of Christians in Iraq and Egypt have gone unreported because they cannot be slanted to make them seem justified. If slanted any other way, they would provide anti-war Americans with another reason to argue against the wars. Furthermore, it is difficult to sensationalize stories about foreigners Americans know nothing of. So, for instance, stories about the antics of Italy's Berlusconi would have little attraction to American viewers/listeners. Ever since it joined Mrs. Merkel’s German government, the fortunes of the pro-business Free Democrats have been dramatically changed from a party that won 15 percent during the federal elections of September 2009 to below 5 percent today, because of an increasing negative attitude of Germans for business since the current economic collapse began, a story that cannot easily be told to Americans because of American pro-business attitudes.
Snardfarker.ning.com claims that there are five reasons that the mainstream media is worthless. (1) Self-Censorship by journalists who are afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. "There's the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources. . . . There's the fear of being labeled partisan if one's bullshit-calling isn't meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum." (2) Censorship by higher-ups. "If journalists do want to speak out about an issue, they also are subject to tremendous pressure by their editors or producers to kill the story." (3) To drum support for war. "Why has the American press consistently served the elites in disseminating their false justifications for war? One of the reasons is because the large media companies are owned by those who support the militarist agenda or even directly profit from war and terror (for example, NBC . . . was owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors in the world -- which directly profits from war, terrorism and chaos)." (4) Access. "For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post . . . offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to 'those powerful few' Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper's own reporters and editors." And (5) Censorship by the Government. "the government has exerted tremendous pressure on the media to report things a certain way. Indeed, at times the government has thrown media owners and reporters in jail if they've been too critical." These reasons are true to some extent, but the ultimate reason is merely the need to grow the bottom line, to make money which is, after all, the reason the media exists in America.
The consequence of all of this is that Americans have become mentally isolated. The world beyond America's borders is an amorphous, unknown land. As Zbigniew Brzezinski has recently said, "most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant." What people don't realize is how much of this ignorance is the result of the American "free" press' need to slant its reporting. Brzezinski finds this "unhealthy," and he is right, since America's "foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued." And this ignorance makes it easy for the government to convince the people that some disastrous policy is appropriate.
Americans who are critical of the mainstream press have an idealized notion of what the press is. They indict the press for not being what the press should be but is not and never has been. The press' need to sell its products makes it impossible to be what it should be.
Unfortunately, the alternative press has adopted many of the mainstream press' models. There are sites devoted exclusively to ideological stories—conservative, liberal, libertarian, pro and anti war, global warming, carbon taxation, and more—all in an attempt to attract readers. So the truth doesn't emerge there either. How then can we find it?
There was once a small segment of the "free" press called investigative journalism which has now become almost entirely extinct. Perhaps this has happened because of the difficulty of prying information out of governmental agencies and corporate entities. About the only way to get that hidden information is to have it leaked by some whistleblower to some site that can protect the anonymity of the leaker. WikiLeaks is a start, but many such sites are needed if all the lies and disinformation is to be revealed. And, yes, it is likely that governments and even corporations will create pseudo-leaking sites to try to obfuscate the truth revealed by any leaker. But if the sites can, as WikiLeaks does, disseminate actual source documents that any reader can judge the authenticity of for her/himself, much more of the truth will emerge than can emerge now.
Slanted journalism must, of course, be debunked. Many alternative journalists already do this quite well, but sites like WikiLeaks are also necessary to combat the increasing secrecy that even the "free" press must contend with. Slanted reporting must be debunked, and leaking and whistleblowing must be encouraged and protected if the truth is ever to get a change of emerging from the darkness of insidious secrecy.
America's journalists are not "newshounds." Although I suspect that each and every one of them will consider this an insult, they are nothing more than salesclerks, hocking the products their employers want to sell. The pretty faces—well at least not ugly—that now function as most news anchors are no different than the pretty models used to sell other products. The American "free" press is comprised of nothing more than a number of retail outlets which sell stories slanted to please their target audiences. As such, they exist merely to sell snake oil.
Source
Police Brutality in the USA: Americans, Too Are Oppressed
By Paul Craig Roberts
Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists, as the greatest threat to the American public. Rogelio Serrato is the latest case to be in the news of an innocent person murdered by the police. Serrato was the wrong man, but the Monterey County, California, SWAT team killed the 31-year old father of four and left the family home a charred ruin.
The fact that SWAT teams often go to the wrong door shows the carelessness with which excessive force is used. In one instance the police even confused the town’s mayor with a drug dealer, broke into his home, shot dead the family’s pet dogs, and held
the mayor and his wife and children at gun point. But most cases of police brutality never make the news.
Most who suffer abuse from the police don’t bother to complain. They know that to make an enemy of the police brings a lifetime of troubles. Those who do file complaints find that police departments tend to be self-protective and that the naive and gullible public tends to side with the police.
However, you can find plenty of examples of police brutality on youtube, more than you can watch in a lifetime. I have just searched google for “youtube police brutality” and the result is: “497,000 results.” There’s everything from police shooting a guy in a wheelchair to body slamming a befuddled 89-year old great grandmother to tasering kids and mothers with small children. The fat goon cops love to beat up on women, kids, and old people.
The 497,000 google results may contain duplicates as more than one person might have posted a video of the same event, and the incidents occurred over more than one year. However, probably only a small percentage of incidents are captured on video by onlookers, and many incidents of police brutality have no witnesses. What the videos reveal is that a large percentage of police move with alacrity to assault the public. The number of incidences could be very high. One million annually would not be an exaggeration.
In contrast, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2009 (the most recent year for which data is compiled), there were 806,000 aggravated assaults (not including assaults by police against the public) by criminals against the public, of which 216,814 were committed by hands and feet and not by weapons. (In the U.S. if you merely push a person or grab his arm, you have committed assault. “Freedom and democracy” America uses any excuse to multiply the number of felons.)
Considering the data, one might conclude that the police are a greater danger to the public than are criminals.
Indeed, the trauma from police assault can be worse than from assault by criminals. The public thinks the police are there to protect them. Thus, the emotional and psychological shock from assault by police is greater than the trauma from being mugged because you stupidly wandered into the wrong part of town.
Why are the police so aggressive toward the public?
In part because their ranks attract bullies, sociopaths and psychopaths. Even normal cops are proud of their authority and expect deference. Even cops who are not primed to be set off can turn nasty in a heartbeat.
In part because police are not accountable. The effort decades ago to have civilian police review boards was beat back by “law and order” conservatives.
In part because the police have been militarized by the federal government, equipped with military weapons, and trained to view the public as the enemy.
In part because the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes have made every American a suspect. The only civil liberty that has any force in the U.S. today is the law against racial discrimination. This law requires that every American citizen be treated as if he were a Muslim terrorist. The Transportation Security Administration rigorously enforces the refusal to discriminate between terrorist and citizen at airports and is now taking its gestapo violations of privacy into every form of travel and congregation: trucking, bus and train travel, sports events, and, without doubt, shopping centers and automobile traffic. http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2011/02/01/tsa-invades-roads-highways-with-vipr-checkpoints/
This despite the fact that there have been no terrorist incidents that could be used to justify such an expansive intrusion into privacy and freedom of movement.
The TSA has not caught a single terrorist. However, it has abused and inconvenienced several hundred thousand innocent American citizens.
The abuse happens, because people with authority are dying to use the authority. The absence of terrorists means that the TSA turns innocent Americans into terrorists. There have been so many absurd cases. One woman traveling with her ill and dying mother, who required special food, had contacted the TSA prior to the flight, explained the situation, and was given permission to take the special food onboard. But when she went through “security,” the food was taken away, and when she protested she was arrested and hauled off, leaving the elderly mother in a wheelchair deserted.
Others have been arrested because a member of the household used a suitcase or carry bag to take guns and ammunition to the gun club or on a hunting trip and forgot to remove all the ammo, or the explosives test detected gunpowder residuals. Boy Scouts forgot to remove pocket knives from backpacks that they took on camping trips. Lactating mothers forced to give up breast milk. And so on.
These are the “great dangers” that the TSA protect the american sheeple from, and the sheeple submit, even servilely thanking their oppressors for protecting them.
Submission is what the government and the police want. Anyone who argues with TSA or the police will be abused. An American who stands up for his rights is likely to be beaten to a pulp. TSA has announced that such Americans are “suspects” and will be held in indefinite detention.
And “our” government assures us that we have “freedom and democracy.” We have a police state, and everyone who forgets it is in deep trouble.
The Amerikan police state is closely allied with police states all over the world--Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Middle East and former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire in Central Asia. The U.S. government never lifts a finger in behalf of democracy anywhere. In fact, the U.S. government quickly moves to overthrow democracy wherever it rears its head, as the U.S. recently did in Honduras. Before Honduras it was Palestine where the U.S. overturned the election that brought Hamas to power. Now Washington is targeting Lebanon where Hisbollah has gained.
Everywhere on earth the U.S.government prefers an autocracy that it can purchase to free elections that bring to power candidates unwilling to serve as American puppets.
The U.S. government is the most determined foe of democracy in the world. Yet, Washington lectures China, which has more civil liberties than Bush/Cheney/Obama permit Americans.
If americans ever find the emotional strength to acknowledge the oppression under which they live, they, too, will be in the streets.
Source
Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists, as the greatest threat to the American public. Rogelio Serrato is the latest case to be in the news of an innocent person murdered by the police. Serrato was the wrong man, but the Monterey County, California, SWAT team killed the 31-year old father of four and left the family home a charred ruin.
The fact that SWAT teams often go to the wrong door shows the carelessness with which excessive force is used. In one instance the police even confused the town’s mayor with a drug dealer, broke into his home, shot dead the family’s pet dogs, and held
the mayor and his wife and children at gun point. But most cases of police brutality never make the news.
Most who suffer abuse from the police don’t bother to complain. They know that to make an enemy of the police brings a lifetime of troubles. Those who do file complaints find that police departments tend to be self-protective and that the naive and gullible public tends to side with the police.
However, you can find plenty of examples of police brutality on youtube, more than you can watch in a lifetime. I have just searched google for “youtube police brutality” and the result is: “497,000 results.” There’s everything from police shooting a guy in a wheelchair to body slamming a befuddled 89-year old great grandmother to tasering kids and mothers with small children. The fat goon cops love to beat up on women, kids, and old people.
The 497,000 google results may contain duplicates as more than one person might have posted a video of the same event, and the incidents occurred over more than one year. However, probably only a small percentage of incidents are captured on video by onlookers, and many incidents of police brutality have no witnesses. What the videos reveal is that a large percentage of police move with alacrity to assault the public. The number of incidences could be very high. One million annually would not be an exaggeration.
In contrast, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2009 (the most recent year for which data is compiled), there were 806,000 aggravated assaults (not including assaults by police against the public) by criminals against the public, of which 216,814 were committed by hands and feet and not by weapons. (In the U.S. if you merely push a person or grab his arm, you have committed assault. “Freedom and democracy” America uses any excuse to multiply the number of felons.)
Considering the data, one might conclude that the police are a greater danger to the public than are criminals.
Indeed, the trauma from police assault can be worse than from assault by criminals. The public thinks the police are there to protect them. Thus, the emotional and psychological shock from assault by police is greater than the trauma from being mugged because you stupidly wandered into the wrong part of town.
Why are the police so aggressive toward the public?
In part because their ranks attract bullies, sociopaths and psychopaths. Even normal cops are proud of their authority and expect deference. Even cops who are not primed to be set off can turn nasty in a heartbeat.
In part because police are not accountable. The effort decades ago to have civilian police review boards was beat back by “law and order” conservatives.
In part because the police have been militarized by the federal government, equipped with military weapons, and trained to view the public as the enemy.
In part because the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes have made every American a suspect. The only civil liberty that has any force in the U.S. today is the law against racial discrimination. This law requires that every American citizen be treated as if he were a Muslim terrorist. The Transportation Security Administration rigorously enforces the refusal to discriminate between terrorist and citizen at airports and is now taking its gestapo violations of privacy into every form of travel and congregation: trucking, bus and train travel, sports events, and, without doubt, shopping centers and automobile traffic. http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2011/02/01/tsa-invades-roads-highways-with-vipr-checkpoints/
This despite the fact that there have been no terrorist incidents that could be used to justify such an expansive intrusion into privacy and freedom of movement.
The TSA has not caught a single terrorist. However, it has abused and inconvenienced several hundred thousand innocent American citizens.
The abuse happens, because people with authority are dying to use the authority. The absence of terrorists means that the TSA turns innocent Americans into terrorists. There have been so many absurd cases. One woman traveling with her ill and dying mother, who required special food, had contacted the TSA prior to the flight, explained the situation, and was given permission to take the special food onboard. But when she went through “security,” the food was taken away, and when she protested she was arrested and hauled off, leaving the elderly mother in a wheelchair deserted.
Others have been arrested because a member of the household used a suitcase or carry bag to take guns and ammunition to the gun club or on a hunting trip and forgot to remove all the ammo, or the explosives test detected gunpowder residuals. Boy Scouts forgot to remove pocket knives from backpacks that they took on camping trips. Lactating mothers forced to give up breast milk. And so on.
These are the “great dangers” that the TSA protect the american sheeple from, and the sheeple submit, even servilely thanking their oppressors for protecting them.
Submission is what the government and the police want. Anyone who argues with TSA or the police will be abused. An American who stands up for his rights is likely to be beaten to a pulp. TSA has announced that such Americans are “suspects” and will be held in indefinite detention.
And “our” government assures us that we have “freedom and democracy.” We have a police state, and everyone who forgets it is in deep trouble.
The Amerikan police state is closely allied with police states all over the world--Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Middle East and former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire in Central Asia. The U.S. government never lifts a finger in behalf of democracy anywhere. In fact, the U.S. government quickly moves to overthrow democracy wherever it rears its head, as the U.S. recently did in Honduras. Before Honduras it was Palestine where the U.S. overturned the election that brought Hamas to power. Now Washington is targeting Lebanon where Hisbollah has gained.
Everywhere on earth the U.S.government prefers an autocracy that it can purchase to free elections that bring to power candidates unwilling to serve as American puppets.
The U.S. government is the most determined foe of democracy in the world. Yet, Washington lectures China, which has more civil liberties than Bush/Cheney/Obama permit Americans.
If americans ever find the emotional strength to acknowledge the oppression under which they live, they, too, will be in the streets.
Source
Friday, February 4, 2011
Dr Andrew Wakefield answers critics in video interview, says BMJ has been hijacked by false journalism
(NaturalNews) In a video interview with NaturalNews, Dr Andrew Wakefield, the doctor accused by the British Medical Journal of falsifying the data in a study questioning the safety of MMR vaccines, asserts that the BMJ has been "hijacked" by a politically-motivated journalist making utterly false allegations.
Dr Wakefield has been grilled in the mainstream media in a series of interviews which largely consist of uninformed journalists like Anderson Cooper and George Stephanopoulos hurling rapid-fire accusations without giving Dr Wakefield an opportunity to answer any of them. The mainstream media interviews have taken on the resemblance of theatrical productions rather than serious journalism.
In an effort to give Dr Wakefield a fair opportunity to answer his critics, we invited him for an interview on NaturalNews. He graciously accepted, and we filmed a series of three conversations which will be aired here on NaturalNews via our popular video website www.NaturalNews.TV
The first of these three is available right now at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=60825...
"[The data] were faithfully reproduced in the Lancet paper, and they were made in the most scrupulous, meticulous way. Those are the facts. Brian Deer knew those facts. When he made his allegations to the BMJ, he knew those facts. Did he disclose them to the BMJ? More importantly, did the BMJ, as a peer reviewed scientific journal, did they check the facts? Because the facts were fully available to them in the book Callous Disregard."
Dr Wakefield also explains how this desperate move by the BMJ to attack Dr Wakefield has eroded the credibility of the publication:
"They have been hijacked by a freelance journalist who is not expert in any of these fields. They have handed over their journal to this man and allowed him to publish knowingly false allegations, and they have gone along with it. In my opinion, they [the BMJ] have blown their scientific credibility. In their desperation... their fundamental belief that vaccines must be safe, [they say] please don't tell me this terrible disease has been caused by the physician, don't tell me that. Tell me anything but that, and we will take any information, even information from Brian Deer, that will convince us it's safe, and we will publish that, because that conforms with our belief system. That makes us feel more comfortable. That makes us feel that we, as a profession, are not culpable in this extraordinary disorder."
In this interview, Dr Wakefield also discusses the motivation for the BMJ to grasp at any effort to discredit those who question the safety of vaccines:
"They are so keen to prove me wrong, to prove the parents wrong, and to exonerate the medical profession, their political friends, their pharmaceutical friends, whoever it is, that they have gone ahead in this reckless way and done this. And now, based upon the clear, unambiguous, historical factual records, then I can come out and talk to you like this and say this without any fear of retribution from the BMJ because they've got themselves into this mess. The facts are the facts."
He goes on to say about the BMJ, "An investigation will be forced upon them."
A true scientist is one who pursues the evidence without regard to the political climate. Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams famously said, and Dr Wakefield has been accused of falsifying them simply because the facts he discovered were not to the liking of those who run today's medical monopoly.
I see in Dr Wakefield the kind of thinker who has historically played a key role in scientific revolutions, when one era of outmoded "scientific thinking" was replaced with a new era of deeper human understanding.
Dr Wakefield was also very polite, thoughtful and kind in our interactions. Experiencing this myself, I find it astonishing that people like Anderson Cooper never had the journalistic honesty to give Dr Wakefield an opportunity to tell his story in a fair interview. Then again, we all probably know why the mainstream media isn't interested in the actual scientific facts here: All the major media outlets are funded in large part by the pharmaceutical interests!
Dr Wakefield speaks on this issue, saying:
"Will the mainstream media now take this real story, the real facts, and actually do their job as journalists and report the facts? Will they report the truth? I doubt it. Why? Because they're owned. Their salaries are paid, albeit indirectly, in large part by pharmaceutical revenues. And the first thing that will happen when they try and do a story which deconstructs these arguments, the BMJ's arguments, and actually reconstructs them in light of the truth, [is that] there will be a call from their advertisers, saying [no]. So what will the mainstream media do? Will it live up to its job, its duty to the people to report the truth, or will it show complete disinterest? Anderson Cooper has been presented with the same nine questions. What was your story based upon? Show us the facts. Did you do your homework? Now are you going to pay similar attention to these documented historical facts? We shall see."
Watch the full interview yourself at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=60825...
Remember, this is only the first in a series of three interviews with Dr Andrew Wakefield. We intend to publish the other two interviews next week here on NaturalNews. There is much more to this story than is being dumbed down in the conventional press -- this story may ultimately turn out to reveal the BMJ engaging in the most colossal mistake in the history of peer-reviewed "science" publications. The editors of BMJ must be sitting in a room right now, reviewing the facts of the case, with their jaws dropping to the floor as they realize they've been had by Brian Deer. There were duped -- exploited by an individual with a political agenda -- to engage in the printing of outright falsehoods in the name of the British Medical Journal.
As you will see in these three interviews, the BMJ has given us a milestone in the history of the end of the dark chapter of chemical-based medicine: This "scientific" publication has revealed, for the whole world to see, that the Emperor of Vaccines wears no clothes, and that those who defend the Emperor will stoop to any level to defend their fictions, even at the cost of revealing their own lack of scientific credibility.
To debate with the conclusions of a physician is one thing; to outright destroy the career and reputation of a man engaged in what can only be called "unpopular" but important scientific investigation is the action of a dogmatic, unscientific institution which can tolerate no real questions at all.
That's not science. It's dogma. And in its desperation to vilify Wakefield, the BMJ has proven to the whole world, once and for all, that the vaccine industry is so afraid of the weakness of its position that it must resort to publishing false accusations in the name of science in order to try to fend off real scientific skepticism.
In seeking to destroy Dr Wakefield, in other words, the British Medical Journal, we will shortly observe, has only succeeded in destroying its own credibility. This story continues in the weeks and months ahead...
Watch this video interview now at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=60825...
Dr Wakefield has been grilled in the mainstream media in a series of interviews which largely consist of uninformed journalists like Anderson Cooper and George Stephanopoulos hurling rapid-fire accusations without giving Dr Wakefield an opportunity to answer any of them. The mainstream media interviews have taken on the resemblance of theatrical productions rather than serious journalism.
In an effort to give Dr Wakefield a fair opportunity to answer his critics, we invited him for an interview on NaturalNews. He graciously accepted, and we filmed a series of three conversations which will be aired here on NaturalNews via our popular video website www.NaturalNews.TV
The first of these three is available right now at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=60825...
"An investigation will be forced upon them."
In this video interview, Dr Wakefield says that BMJ is factually incorrect in accusing Wakefield of falsifying the study data in his 1998 paper published in The Lancet."[The data] were faithfully reproduced in the Lancet paper, and they were made in the most scrupulous, meticulous way. Those are the facts. Brian Deer knew those facts. When he made his allegations to the BMJ, he knew those facts. Did he disclose them to the BMJ? More importantly, did the BMJ, as a peer reviewed scientific journal, did they check the facts? Because the facts were fully available to them in the book Callous Disregard."
Dr Wakefield also explains how this desperate move by the BMJ to attack Dr Wakefield has eroded the credibility of the publication:
"They have been hijacked by a freelance journalist who is not expert in any of these fields. They have handed over their journal to this man and allowed him to publish knowingly false allegations, and they have gone along with it. In my opinion, they [the BMJ] have blown their scientific credibility. In their desperation... their fundamental belief that vaccines must be safe, [they say] please don't tell me this terrible disease has been caused by the physician, don't tell me that. Tell me anything but that, and we will take any information, even information from Brian Deer, that will convince us it's safe, and we will publish that, because that conforms with our belief system. That makes us feel more comfortable. That makes us feel that we, as a profession, are not culpable in this extraordinary disorder."
In this interview, Dr Wakefield also discusses the motivation for the BMJ to grasp at any effort to discredit those who question the safety of vaccines:
"They are so keen to prove me wrong, to prove the parents wrong, and to exonerate the medical profession, their political friends, their pharmaceutical friends, whoever it is, that they have gone ahead in this reckless way and done this. And now, based upon the clear, unambiguous, historical factual records, then I can come out and talk to you like this and say this without any fear of retribution from the BMJ because they've got themselves into this mess. The facts are the facts."
He goes on to say about the BMJ, "An investigation will be forced upon them."
Why the mainstream media won't conduct an honest, intelligent interview with Dr Wakefield
What struck me in this experience of interviewing Dr Wakefield is that this man has deeply-held compassion for the lives of children, and he combines that with rare courage and a commitment to real scientific thinking that dares to ask unpopular questions in the search for the truth.A true scientist is one who pursues the evidence without regard to the political climate. Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams famously said, and Dr Wakefield has been accused of falsifying them simply because the facts he discovered were not to the liking of those who run today's medical monopoly.
I see in Dr Wakefield the kind of thinker who has historically played a key role in scientific revolutions, when one era of outmoded "scientific thinking" was replaced with a new era of deeper human understanding.
Dr Wakefield was also very polite, thoughtful and kind in our interactions. Experiencing this myself, I find it astonishing that people like Anderson Cooper never had the journalistic honesty to give Dr Wakefield an opportunity to tell his story in a fair interview. Then again, we all probably know why the mainstream media isn't interested in the actual scientific facts here: All the major media outlets are funded in large part by the pharmaceutical interests!
Dr Wakefield speaks on this issue, saying:
"Will the mainstream media now take this real story, the real facts, and actually do their job as journalists and report the facts? Will they report the truth? I doubt it. Why? Because they're owned. Their salaries are paid, albeit indirectly, in large part by pharmaceutical revenues. And the first thing that will happen when they try and do a story which deconstructs these arguments, the BMJ's arguments, and actually reconstructs them in light of the truth, [is that] there will be a call from their advertisers, saying [no]. So what will the mainstream media do? Will it live up to its job, its duty to the people to report the truth, or will it show complete disinterest? Anderson Cooper has been presented with the same nine questions. What was your story based upon? Show us the facts. Did you do your homework? Now are you going to pay similar attention to these documented historical facts? We shall see."
Watch the full interview yourself at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=60825...
Remember, this is only the first in a series of three interviews with Dr Andrew Wakefield. We intend to publish the other two interviews next week here on NaturalNews. There is much more to this story than is being dumbed down in the conventional press -- this story may ultimately turn out to reveal the BMJ engaging in the most colossal mistake in the history of peer-reviewed "science" publications. The editors of BMJ must be sitting in a room right now, reviewing the facts of the case, with their jaws dropping to the floor as they realize they've been had by Brian Deer. There were duped -- exploited by an individual with a political agenda -- to engage in the printing of outright falsehoods in the name of the British Medical Journal.
As you will see in these three interviews, the BMJ has given us a milestone in the history of the end of the dark chapter of chemical-based medicine: This "scientific" publication has revealed, for the whole world to see, that the Emperor of Vaccines wears no clothes, and that those who defend the Emperor will stoop to any level to defend their fictions, even at the cost of revealing their own lack of scientific credibility.
To debate with the conclusions of a physician is one thing; to outright destroy the career and reputation of a man engaged in what can only be called "unpopular" but important scientific investigation is the action of a dogmatic, unscientific institution which can tolerate no real questions at all.
That's not science. It's dogma. And in its desperation to vilify Wakefield, the BMJ has proven to the whole world, once and for all, that the vaccine industry is so afraid of the weakness of its position that it must resort to publishing false accusations in the name of science in order to try to fend off real scientific skepticism.
In seeking to destroy Dr Wakefield, in other words, the British Medical Journal, we will shortly observe, has only succeeded in destroying its own credibility. This story continues in the weeks and months ahead...
Watch this video interview now at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=60825...
Obama gun ban? Not so outrageous now
After more than two years of relative quiet regarding gun-control issues, the Obama administration, through its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, has begun laying the groundwork for a massive gun ban.
Last week the ATF released a "study" discussing the suitability of certain "non-sporting" shotguns for importation and sale in the U.S. The "study" suggests that shotguns with military-type features are not suitable for sporting purposes and therefore do not qualify for legal importation.
Unfortunately this "sporting purpose" language appears in several places in federal gun laws. These laws have been used successfully to ban several specific styles of shotguns in the past – not just banned from import or banned from sale, but banned from possession without special government permission and taxes.
The Armsel Striker and its various derivatives, for example, were little-known, repeating, 12-gauge shotguns capable of firing 12 shots as fast as the shooter could pull the trigger. In 1994 the ATF declared that these shotguns and their clones were not suitable for sporting purposes.
The National Firearms Act, or NFA, and Gun Control Act, or GCA, say that, with the exception of shotguns that are generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes, any firearm with a bore greater than one half inch is a "destructive device." A destructive device, or DD, is restricted almost exactly like a machinegun. To own one you must undergo a background investigation and get the permission of your local chief law enforcement official and also pay a special $200 transfer tax.
By declaring that the Striker was not suitable for sporting purposes, ATF removed the guns from the shotgun exception, automatically relegating them to DD status. People who already owned these guns were given a window during which they were required to register them, destroy them or turn them over to ATF.
With this new ATF "study," the Obama administration appears to be lining up dominoes in preparation to knock more down. As ATF pointed out in their reclassification of the Striker, the "sporting purpose" language in the NFA and GCA is virtually identical to the definition of destructive device, and therefore reclassifying a gun to a DD for import purposes also reclassifies it for GCA and NFA purposes.
While the telegraphed message from ATF is, "Prepare for new import restrictions on military looking shotguns," the message gun owners and respecters of the Constitution should be hearing is, "ATF is about to ban military-looking shotguns!"
Any such ban will be retroactive and could require all current owners of any shotgun on the ban list to go through all of the investigation and permitting processes and pay the $200 tax if they wish to keep the guns, though it is likely that they would wave the tax to help encourage compliance.
By re-opening this Pandora's Box of "sporting purpose" tests for shotguns, ATF could easily trip into the issue of "pistol-grip" shotguns as well. Shotguns with no shoulder stock but only a pistol grip have become very popular home defense and wilderness utility firearms.
Over a decade ago ATF relabeled these guns as "pistol-grip firearms" rather than shotguns, because under the legal definition in both the GCA and NFA a shotgun is designed to be fired from the shoulder and these guns are clearly not. So even though the actions and capabilities are the same, because the shoulder stock is removed, the official ATF classification of these firearms is no longer "shotgun." This is particularly significant in light of the direction ATF is going with their "study," because if shotguns with pistol-grips and no shoulder stock are not "shotguns," then they are by default, under the definitions of NFA and GCA and the logic of ATF, "destructive devices."
Reclassifying a few thousand Striker and similar shotguns is one thing. Reclassifying the several hundred thousand military-look shotguns likely to fall under the pending import ban would be a pretty massive undertaking. But reclassifying and dealing with all of the paperwork and necessary enforcement action for the millions of pistol-grip shotguns would be completely impossible without something akin to martial law.
The conclusion of all of this ATF posturing and preparation is hard to predict, and it could take years for it all to play out, but in the meantime ATF and the Obama administration have successfully instigated a new consumer rush for military-looking shotguns in anticipation of a ban and dramatically increased prices.
For over two years gun owners and rights advocates have been ridiculed and denigrated by the press and pundits for demonstrating an irrational and baseless fear that Barack Obama was going to "take away their guns." These ever so reasonable and rational journalists and commentators would virtually roll their eyes as they reported on the crazy paranoia fueling record gun sales. They would go on to repeat comments from Obama during the campaign and as president expressing his belief in, and support for, the Second Amendment. Some would even dredge up a clip of Vice President Joe Biden declaring that his running mate wasn't going to take peoples' guns – including Biden's own Berretta shotgun.
What was most astounding about these reports was how the talking heads would often segue directly into a story about the Brady Campaign Against Guns being frustrated that Obama had failed to live up to campaign promises to restore the Clinton ban on "assault weapons."
Apparently, to the media, "taking away your guns" is an all-or-nothing matter. They seem to think that gun owners and supporters of liberty would only have reason for concern if the president and Congress were trying to take away all guns from everyone (except, of course, government enforcers) and that banning "assault weapons" or "cheap handguns" or private transfers of firearms does not constitute "taking your guns away."
Source
Last week the ATF released a "study" discussing the suitability of certain "non-sporting" shotguns for importation and sale in the U.S. The "study" suggests that shotguns with military-type features are not suitable for sporting purposes and therefore do not qualify for legal importation.
Unfortunately this "sporting purpose" language appears in several places in federal gun laws. These laws have been used successfully to ban several specific styles of shotguns in the past – not just banned from import or banned from sale, but banned from possession without special government permission and taxes.
The Armsel Striker and its various derivatives, for example, were little-known, repeating, 12-gauge shotguns capable of firing 12 shots as fast as the shooter could pull the trigger. In 1994 the ATF declared that these shotguns and their clones were not suitable for sporting purposes.
The National Firearms Act, or NFA, and Gun Control Act, or GCA, say that, with the exception of shotguns that are generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes, any firearm with a bore greater than one half inch is a "destructive device." A destructive device, or DD, is restricted almost exactly like a machinegun. To own one you must undergo a background investigation and get the permission of your local chief law enforcement official and also pay a special $200 transfer tax.
By declaring that the Striker was not suitable for sporting purposes, ATF removed the guns from the shotgun exception, automatically relegating them to DD status. People who already owned these guns were given a window during which they were required to register them, destroy them or turn them over to ATF.
With this new ATF "study," the Obama administration appears to be lining up dominoes in preparation to knock more down. As ATF pointed out in their reclassification of the Striker, the "sporting purpose" language in the NFA and GCA is virtually identical to the definition of destructive device, and therefore reclassifying a gun to a DD for import purposes also reclassifies it for GCA and NFA purposes.
While the telegraphed message from ATF is, "Prepare for new import restrictions on military looking shotguns," the message gun owners and respecters of the Constitution should be hearing is, "ATF is about to ban military-looking shotguns!"
Any such ban will be retroactive and could require all current owners of any shotgun on the ban list to go through all of the investigation and permitting processes and pay the $200 tax if they wish to keep the guns, though it is likely that they would wave the tax to help encourage compliance.
By re-opening this Pandora's Box of "sporting purpose" tests for shotguns, ATF could easily trip into the issue of "pistol-grip" shotguns as well. Shotguns with no shoulder stock but only a pistol grip have become very popular home defense and wilderness utility firearms.
Over a decade ago ATF relabeled these guns as "pistol-grip firearms" rather than shotguns, because under the legal definition in both the GCA and NFA a shotgun is designed to be fired from the shoulder and these guns are clearly not. So even though the actions and capabilities are the same, because the shoulder stock is removed, the official ATF classification of these firearms is no longer "shotgun." This is particularly significant in light of the direction ATF is going with their "study," because if shotguns with pistol-grips and no shoulder stock are not "shotguns," then they are by default, under the definitions of NFA and GCA and the logic of ATF, "destructive devices."
Reclassifying a few thousand Striker and similar shotguns is one thing. Reclassifying the several hundred thousand military-look shotguns likely to fall under the pending import ban would be a pretty massive undertaking. But reclassifying and dealing with all of the paperwork and necessary enforcement action for the millions of pistol-grip shotguns would be completely impossible without something akin to martial law.
The conclusion of all of this ATF posturing and preparation is hard to predict, and it could take years for it all to play out, but in the meantime ATF and the Obama administration have successfully instigated a new consumer rush for military-looking shotguns in anticipation of a ban and dramatically increased prices.
For over two years gun owners and rights advocates have been ridiculed and denigrated by the press and pundits for demonstrating an irrational and baseless fear that Barack Obama was going to "take away their guns." These ever so reasonable and rational journalists and commentators would virtually roll their eyes as they reported on the crazy paranoia fueling record gun sales. They would go on to repeat comments from Obama during the campaign and as president expressing his belief in, and support for, the Second Amendment. Some would even dredge up a clip of Vice President Joe Biden declaring that his running mate wasn't going to take peoples' guns – including Biden's own Berretta shotgun.
What was most astounding about these reports was how the talking heads would often segue directly into a story about the Brady Campaign Against Guns being frustrated that Obama had failed to live up to campaign promises to restore the Clinton ban on "assault weapons."
Apparently, to the media, "taking away your guns" is an all-or-nothing matter. They seem to think that gun owners and supporters of liberty would only have reason for concern if the president and Congress were trying to take away all guns from everyone (except, of course, government enforcers) and that banning "assault weapons" or "cheap handguns" or private transfers of firearms does not constitute "taking your guns away."
Source
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Egyptian Intifada reveals Washington’s true Zionist colors
By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Feb 3, 2011 (Veterans Today) – Fed up with the political repression and economic malaise that have been central features of President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-rule, the Egyptian people have hit the streets in the hundreds of thousands for the last ten days to demand Mubarak’s removal from power.
After a week of hemming and hawing, the Obama administration on Wednesday declared that Egypt’s transition to a new government “must begin now.” But many of the Egyptians at the forefront of the ongoing protests reject Washington’s stated support for political change, saying that the US — despite its democratic pretensions — has no real desire to see an end of the Israel-friendly regime in Cairo.
“Washington’s stated support for ‘political reform’ in Egypt is intended for media consumption,” Abdelhalim Kandil, prominent Egyptian opposition figure and active demonstrator, told Veterans Today. “Regardless of what it says publicly, the US — along with its best friend in the region, Israel — is keen to see the Mubarak regime remain firmly in power.”
On January 25, popular demonstrations originally organized to protest police abuses and official corruption quickly snowballed beyond anyone’s expectations. Thousands of protesters — tens of thousands in some areas — turned out across the country to demand free elections and the termination of Egypt’s draconian Emergency Law. In addition to these political grievances, demonstrators also demanded relief from crushing inflation and rampant unemployment.
“The vast majority of those participating in the demonstrations are ordinary Egyptians fed up with the political and economic status quo,” Sarah Ramadan, 20-year-old political activist from Cairo, told Veterans Today.
For the next nine days, demonstrations staged countrywide grew in size and intensity, with the biggest being held in Cairo’s centrally-located Tahrir Square. As security forces used increasingly violent methods to quell the protests, offices of Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) — along with many local police stations — were burnt to the ground in provinces across Egypt.
On Friday evening, the Egyptian army was deployed on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. But despite the imposition of government curfews, demonstrators remained on the streets, vowing to step up their protests until their demands for Mubarak’s ouster were met. Hundreds of protesters have been killed so far and thousand injured in violent clashes with police. Exact casualty figures, however, remain unavailable.
On Saturday, Mubarak dismissed his government — which had been dominated by a clique of unpopular business tycoons — and appointed a new prime minister. In a first since becoming president in 1981, Mubarak also appointed a vice-president, fulfilling a longstanding demand of the Egyptian opposition. The new VP, General intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, would be tasked with “holding dialog” with various opposition forces, the president said.
In a televised address on Wednesday night, Mubarak stressed his commitment to the nation’s “security and independence” so as to “ensure a peaceful transfer of power in circumstances that protect Egypt and the Egyptians.” He went on to say he would not seek a sixth term as president in upcoming elections slated for later this year, and promised to amend articles of the constitution that regulate the electoral process.
“I will entrust the new government to perform in ways that will achieve the legitimate rights of the people and that its performance should express the people and their aspirations of political, social and economic reform and to allow job opportunities and combating poverty, realizing social justice,” Mubarak stated. “In this context, I charge the police apparatus to carry out its duty in serving the people, protecting the citizens with integrity and honor with complete respect for their rights, freedom and dignity.”
The promises, however, failed to satisfy demonstrators, leaders of whom say they want nothing less than the removal of Mubarak and anyone associated with his longstanding regime.
“We will not stop demonstrating until our demands are met,” Mahmoud Adel al-Heta, a 23-year-old political activist and protester, told Veterans Today. “These demands include the immediate departure of the Mubarak regime; the formation of a popular committee mandated with drawing up a new national constitution; the holding of free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections; and the immediate formation of a transitional government.”
Shortly after Mubarak’s address, US President Barack Obama — under intense pressure to make a show of support for Egyptian democratic aspirations — issued a statement in which he said that Mubarak “recognizes that the status quo is not sustainable and a change must take place.” He added that political transition “must be meaningful, it must be peaceful and it must begin now.”
“Furthermore, the process must include a broad spectrum of Egyptian voices and opposition parties,” Obama added. “It should lead to elections that are free and fair. And it should result in a government that’s not only grounded in democratic principles but is also responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people.”
But many of the Egyptian activists at the center of the storm showed contempt for Washington’s tepid show of support, saying that the US commitment to Egypt’s “stability” — and, by extension, Israeli security — far outweighs its commitment to Egyptian democracy.
“The Obama administration’s stated commitment to democracy pales in comparison to its commitment to Israel’s wellbeing,” said Kandil. “Washington has always pretended to support democratic reform in Egypt, but it will never bring serious pressure to bear on the ruling regime, which represents a vital aspect of Israeli security.”
“US administrations come and go, but US Middle East policy remains the same, and the chief aspect of that policy is ensuring Israel’s perpetual domination over the region — not fostering democracy in the Arab world,” he added. “The Zionist lobby’s extensive control over US policymaking, coupled with the Zionist ownership of most US media, has led to a situation in which successive US administrations end up putting Israel’s interests before those of the US itself.”
A number of other Egyptian demonstrators who spoke to Veterans Today echoed this view.
“Despite statements by the White House that appear to support our uprising, we’re fully aware that the US has an interest in keeping the Mubarak regime — or something else very much like it — in control of Egypt,” said Khaled al-Sayyed, a 22-year-old protester who has participated in the Tahrir Square demonstrations for the last ten days, told Veterans Today. “We are also aware that Washington’s primary concern is the security of Israel, which the Mubarak regime has faithfully served for the last 30 years. We therefore completely reject any US interference in Egypt’s domestic affairs.”
“At the end of the day, the US supports the Mubarak regime because the ‘stability’ of Egypt — the biggest country in the Arab world — is in Israel’s interest,” concurred Adel al-Heta. “Everyone knows that Washington’s declared support for democracy in the Middle East is only for show.”
Egypt has had diplomatic relations with the Zionist state since the signing of the Camp David peace accords in 1979. Since then, the US has provided Egypt with some $28 billion in development aid and a further $1.3 billion in annual military assistance, making Egypt the second largest recipient of US largesse after Israel. The only other Arab country to have official relations with the Zionist state is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which signed its own peace deal with Tel Aviv in 1994.
In return for the kindness, the Mubarak regime has continued to implement a number of policies advantageous to Israel, despite widespread public opposition. These include assisting Israel in its four-year-old siege of the Gaza Strip — which has subjected the strip’s 1.5 million people to humanitarian catastrophe — and selling Egyptian natural gas to Tel Aviv at prices lower than those at which it is sold to the poverty-stricken Egyptian public.
Many observers believe that free elections in Egypt would likely yield a dramatic reorientation of Egyptian policy vis-à-vis the self-proclaimed Jewish state — one much more in line with public opinion.
“Despite the peace treaty, most Egyptians continue to see Israel as an enemy due to its continued occupation and theft of Palestinian land and its homicidal policies against the Palestinians,” said Kandil. “A democratically-elected Egyptian government would, in accordance with the will of the Egyptian people, oppose Israel and support the Palestinian resistance — and Washington knows that.”
Even before the uprising in Egypt, public statements emanating from Israeli officialdom indicated Tel Aviv’s approval of — and support for — the Mubarak regime.
To cite one recent example, certain Israeli officials expressed satisfaction with the results of Egypt’s parliamentary polls late last year, in which Mubarak’s ruling NDP won 97 percent of the national assembly in elections widely recognized as having been rigged. At the time, former Israeli ambassador to Egypt Eli Shaked described the NDP’s electoral victories as “positive from an Israeli point of view.”
Shaked explained: “I prefer this kind of non-democratic Egypt ruled by moderate, sensible people rather than an Egypt ruled by radical fundamentalists like the Muslim Brotherhood. It is not to the benefit of Israel to have this kind of regime in Egypt. We should pray for Mubarak to live until he is 120 years old.”
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/ex-israeli-envoy-hails-ndp-suppression-islamists-analysts-fear-popular-backlash
Notably, on January 28 — as demonstrations in Egypt entered their fourth day — Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a member of Israel’s Knesset and former defense minister, likewise expressed support for the beleaguered Egyptian president, playing down the threat posed to the Mubarak regime by the rapidly burgeoning uprising.
“I have no doubt that the situation in Egypt is under control. The [Egyptian] intelligence services, which are sophisticated, expected this after what happened in a different situation in Tunisia,” he was quoted as saying by Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post.
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=205576
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has instructed his ministers to refrain from commenting publicly on events in Egypt. But on Monday, reports emerged that the Israeli Foreign Ministry had directed its diplomats in the US, Canada, China, Russia and Europe to impress upon their host nations the importance of Egypt’s stability.
“We are closely monitoring events in Egypt and the region and are making efforts to preserve its security and stability,” Netanyahu had been quoted as saying one day earlier.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8293536/Egypt-crisis-Israel-rallies-to-support-of-Egyptian-regime.html
According to Kandil, such gestures of support for Mubarak on the part of Israeli officialdom “reveal the Mubarak regime’s extreme importance to Israeli strategic interests.” He went on to recall statements by Ben-Eliezer last year in which the latter referred to the Egyptian president as “a strategic treasure” for Israel.
The regime’s apparent intimacy with Israel, meanwhile, has not been lost on protesters. “Oh Mubrak, Oh Mubarak, they’re waiting for you in Tel Aviv,” they could be heard chanting in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “I had to speak to him in Hebrew because he didn’t understand Arabic.”
Most recently, on Thursday afternoon, Iranian satellite news network Press TV reported that a group of demonstrators in Cairo had “captured a member of the Israeli General Staff Reconnaissance Unit” who was attempting to infiltrate the demonstrations. While the network showed amateur video purportedly taken of the event, this remains unconfirmed.
As of press time on Thursday evening local time, the anti-Mubarak demonstrations were still going strong, despite fresh violence that saw at least five protesters killed in Tahrir Square — and thousands injured — within the last two days. Nevertheless, demonstrators plan to redouble their efforts, and even larger protests are expected after Friday prayers tomorrow at noon.
“Egypt’s Intifada we will continue until our demands are met,” said al-Sayyed, “first and foremost of which is the removal of Mubarak and virtually everyone close to his dictatorial regime.”
Source
Jimmy Carter Sued for $5 Million for Criticism of Israel
Book's Criticism 'Violates NY Consumer Protection Law' Insists Lawyer
In a move that calls back to the attempt by Texas cattlemen to sue Oprah Winfrey for “defamation of beef.” an Israeli lawyer has filed a class-action lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter, seeking $5 million in damages because his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” allegedly defamed Israel.
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner insisted that Carter’s book violated New York State’s Consumer Protection Laws by asserting things, largely that Israel was not inherently reasonable and Syria was not inherently unreasonable, that “even a child” knows is untrue.
The suit went on to condemn Carter, saying he had an “agenda of anti-Israel propaganda” and condemned publisher Simon and Shuster for advertising the book as a work on non-fiction. The legal complaint insists Carter has the right to publish a book “to put forward his virulent anti-Israel bias” but insisted that such a book could only be sold as a work of fiction.
Lawsuits against authors alleging “defamation” of the government or a key ally, though common in some Mideast dictatorships, have never been particularly common nor successful in the United States. Likewise, it does not appear that New York’s Consumer Protection Law explicitly forbids criticism of Israel in a work of non-fiction, though if true this would surely make for an interesting Constitutional challenge to such a law.
Simon and Schuster spokesman Adam Rothberg condemned the lawsuit as a “chilling attack on free speech” and promised that the company would oppose it in court. Former President Carter has yet to comment.
Source
In a move that calls back to the attempt by Texas cattlemen to sue Oprah Winfrey for “defamation of beef.” an Israeli lawyer has filed a class-action lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter, seeking $5 million in damages because his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” allegedly defamed Israel.
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner insisted that Carter’s book violated New York State’s Consumer Protection Laws by asserting things, largely that Israel was not inherently reasonable and Syria was not inherently unreasonable, that “even a child” knows is untrue.
The suit went on to condemn Carter, saying he had an “agenda of anti-Israel propaganda” and condemned publisher Simon and Shuster for advertising the book as a work on non-fiction. The legal complaint insists Carter has the right to publish a book “to put forward his virulent anti-Israel bias” but insisted that such a book could only be sold as a work of fiction.
Lawsuits against authors alleging “defamation” of the government or a key ally, though common in some Mideast dictatorships, have never been particularly common nor successful in the United States. Likewise, it does not appear that New York’s Consumer Protection Law explicitly forbids criticism of Israel in a work of non-fiction, though if true this would surely make for an interesting Constitutional challenge to such a law.
Simon and Schuster spokesman Adam Rothberg condemned the lawsuit as a “chilling attack on free speech” and promised that the company would oppose it in court. Former President Carter has yet to comment.
Source
Mossad Losing its Reputation of Invincibility
By Richard Walker
There was a time when the very mention of Mossad, Israel’s premier spy agency, sent shivers through its friends and enemies alike. It had an almost mythical status and its highly trained assassins were the stuff of Hollywood legend. Mossad agents, both men and women, would be parachuted into a country or would arrive on its coastline from a submarine or fishing trawler. Teams providing technical back-up and other logistical support, including vehicles and escape routes, would already be in place.
Kidon, as the agency’s assassins were known, would use guns, knives, chemical weapons or secret means of assassination, which left few forensic traces. They even knew how to conceal a bomb in a target’s phone and activate it with a phone call.
Mossad spies also had a legendary status. Some were sleeper agents for decades, living a lie in other communities and waiting for a phone call or coded letter to activate them.
It has therefore come as a shock to the Israeli public and spy watchers across the globe that Mossad is showing signs it is no longer the invincible agency it was once cracked up to be.
A former British intelligence officer, who spoke to AMERICAN FREE PRESS on condition of anonymity, felt Mossad had fallen into the trap of thinking it was so superior to its enemies that it did not need to worry about them. In this officer’s view, it failed to recognize that Israel has fewer friends across the globe and therefore the Mossad’s mistakes, which might have been glossed over in the past, are now more likely to make headlines.
“Mossad was never going to maintain the level of success it once had because countries it targeted in the past have improved their intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities,” he said. “Mossad has taken on more tasks than it can handle with the assets available to it. There is a finite limit to the number of jobs any agency can handle because training agents for work in the field is a costly, time-consuming job and top-class talent is limited. Few people realize that Israel’s growing dependency on the CIA for running ops in the Middle East is a sign of Mossad’s limitations,” the former intelligence officer explained.
The assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai in 2010 was an operation the former intel officer singled out as an example of Mossad’s decline. The 11-person hit team that carried out the Dubai killing was caught on camera and the agents’ identities were compromised.
So, too, was the way they operated, using fake passports and credit cards supplied by private American financial institutions. The operational base used for the hit was located in Europe, not Israel, but even some of the people who ran it are now known to the German authorities.
The former British spy has this to say about the Dubai hit: “It was a disaster and it did a lot of damage to Mossad. Having those operatives on camera and later on an Interpol wanted list means their training was wasted. They are of no further value in the field. For that to happen was proof, if anybody needed it, that Mossad had become sloppy and overconfident.”
There is now evidence Mossad has recently been dealt an even bigger blow by the exposure of 10 of its spies in Iran, where it has been busy running a dirty war with the direct assistance of the CIA and U.S. Special Operations agencies. One element of this undercover war has been the targeted assassinations and abductions of Iranian scientists and other Iranian nuclear experts.
Some of the Mossad-CIA operatives used in Iran were trained at a joint Mossad-CIA facility within an Israeli base close to Herzliya on the Mediterranean Sea coastline. The base is classified within CIA files as one
of a number of U.S. military-intelligence sites in Israel.
The sites have numbers from 51 through 56. Most of the sites contain military and technical equipment to be used in the event of a war with Iran but the one at Herzliya is also reserved for managing combined CIA Mossad operations aimed at Iran.
The Mossad and the CIA appear to have underestimated their Iranian counterparts because it took just one year for Iran’s internal security apparatus to unmask the spy network, which Iran says was involved in killing one of its scientists. Among the spies seized was a young man who admitted he was trained by the Mossad in electronic surveillance and counter surveillance, as well as in techniques for attaching bombs to cars.
Israel did not deny Iran’s claims about the spy network. In the past year, Iranian intelligence has also captured and executed leaders and senior fighters of the Jundallah terror network, which has been used by America and Israel against Iran. [See AFP issue 1/2, 2011 for more.—Ed.]
Much to the displeasure of Mossad and the CIA, Pakistan has begun handing over Jundallah fighters it has captured to the Iranian military, as well.
Source
There was a time when the very mention of Mossad, Israel’s premier spy agency, sent shivers through its friends and enemies alike. It had an almost mythical status and its highly trained assassins were the stuff of Hollywood legend. Mossad agents, both men and women, would be parachuted into a country or would arrive on its coastline from a submarine or fishing trawler. Teams providing technical back-up and other logistical support, including vehicles and escape routes, would already be in place.
Kidon, as the agency’s assassins were known, would use guns, knives, chemical weapons or secret means of assassination, which left few forensic traces. They even knew how to conceal a bomb in a target’s phone and activate it with a phone call.
Mossad spies also had a legendary status. Some were sleeper agents for decades, living a lie in other communities and waiting for a phone call or coded letter to activate them.
It has therefore come as a shock to the Israeli public and spy watchers across the globe that Mossad is showing signs it is no longer the invincible agency it was once cracked up to be.
A former British intelligence officer, who spoke to AMERICAN FREE PRESS on condition of anonymity, felt Mossad had fallen into the trap of thinking it was so superior to its enemies that it did not need to worry about them. In this officer’s view, it failed to recognize that Israel has fewer friends across the globe and therefore the Mossad’s mistakes, which might have been glossed over in the past, are now more likely to make headlines.
“Mossad was never going to maintain the level of success it once had because countries it targeted in the past have improved their intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities,” he said. “Mossad has taken on more tasks than it can handle with the assets available to it. There is a finite limit to the number of jobs any agency can handle because training agents for work in the field is a costly, time-consuming job and top-class talent is limited. Few people realize that Israel’s growing dependency on the CIA for running ops in the Middle East is a sign of Mossad’s limitations,” the former intelligence officer explained.
The assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai in 2010 was an operation the former intel officer singled out as an example of Mossad’s decline. The 11-person hit team that carried out the Dubai killing was caught on camera and the agents’ identities were compromised.
So, too, was the way they operated, using fake passports and credit cards supplied by private American financial institutions. The operational base used for the hit was located in Europe, not Israel, but even some of the people who ran it are now known to the German authorities.
The former British spy has this to say about the Dubai hit: “It was a disaster and it did a lot of damage to Mossad. Having those operatives on camera and later on an Interpol wanted list means their training was wasted. They are of no further value in the field. For that to happen was proof, if anybody needed it, that Mossad had become sloppy and overconfident.”
There is now evidence Mossad has recently been dealt an even bigger blow by the exposure of 10 of its spies in Iran, where it has been busy running a dirty war with the direct assistance of the CIA and U.S. Special Operations agencies. One element of this undercover war has been the targeted assassinations and abductions of Iranian scientists and other Iranian nuclear experts.
Some of the Mossad-CIA operatives used in Iran were trained at a joint Mossad-CIA facility within an Israeli base close to Herzliya on the Mediterranean Sea coastline. The base is classified within CIA files as one
of a number of U.S. military-intelligence sites in Israel.
The sites have numbers from 51 through 56. Most of the sites contain military and technical equipment to be used in the event of a war with Iran but the one at Herzliya is also reserved for managing combined CIA Mossad operations aimed at Iran.
The Mossad and the CIA appear to have underestimated their Iranian counterparts because it took just one year for Iran’s internal security apparatus to unmask the spy network, which Iran says was involved in killing one of its scientists. Among the spies seized was a young man who admitted he was trained by the Mossad in electronic surveillance and counter surveillance, as well as in techniques for attaching bombs to cars.
Israel did not deny Iran’s claims about the spy network. In the past year, Iranian intelligence has also captured and executed leaders and senior fighters of the Jundallah terror network, which has been used by America and Israel against Iran. [See AFP issue 1/2, 2011 for more.—Ed.]
Much to the displeasure of Mossad and the CIA, Pakistan has begun handing over Jundallah fighters it has captured to the Iranian military, as well.
Source
The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything
By Tim O'Shea
Aldous Huxley's inspired 1956 essay detailed the vivid, mind-expanding, multisensory insights of his mescaline adventures. By altering his brain chemistry with natural psychotropics, Huxley tapped into a rich and fluid world of shimmering, indescribable beauty and power. With his neurosensory input thus triggered, Huxley was able to enter that parallel universe described by every mystic and space captain in recorded history. Whether by hallucination or epiphany, Huxley sought to remove all controls, all filters, all cultural conditioning from his perceptions and to confront Nature or the World or Reality first-hand - in its unpasteurized, unedited, unretouched, infinite rawness.
Those bonds are much harder to break today, half a century later. We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Who cares, right?
It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. In an effort to save time, I would like to provide just a little background on the handling of information in this country. Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given popular opinion.
If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong. We call that
Conventional Wisdom.
In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it.
Examples:
* Pharmaceuticals restore health
* Vaccination brings immunity
* The cure for cancer is just around the corner
* Menopause is a disease condition
* When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics
* When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol
* Hospitals are safe and clean.
* America has the best health care in the world.
* Americans have the best health in the world.
* Milk is a good source of calcium.
* You never outgrow your need for milk.
* Vitamin C is ascorbic acid.
* Aspirin prevents heart attacks.
* Heart drugs improve the heart.
* Back and neck pain are the only reasons for spinal adjustment.
* No child can get into school without being vaccinated.
* The FDA thoroughly tests all drugs before they go on the market.
* Back and neck pain are the only reason for spinal adjustment.
* Pregnancy is a serious medical condition
* Chemotherapy and radiation are effective cures for cancer
* When your child is diagnosed with an ear infection, antibiotics should be given
immediately 'just in case'
* Ear tubes are for the good of the child.
* Estrogen drugs prevent osteoporosis after menopause.
* Pediatricians are the most highly trained of al medical specialists.
* The purpose of the health care industry is health.
* HIV is the cause of AIDS.
* AZT is the cure.
* Without vaccines, infectious diseases will return
* Fluoride in the city water protects your teeth
* Flu shots prevent the flu.
* Vaccines are thoroughly tested before being placed on the Mandated Schedule.
* Doctors are certain that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh any possible risks.
* There is a power shortage in California.
* There is a meningitis epidemic in California.
* The NASDAQ is a natural market controlled only by supply and demand.
* Chronic pain is a natural consequence of aging.
* Soy is your healthiest source of protein.
* Insulin shots cure diabetes.
* After we take out your gall bladder you can eat anything you want
* Allergy medicine will cure allergies.
This is a list of illusions, that have cost billions and billions to conjure up. Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading? Or why most people in this country think generally the same about most of the above issues?
HOW THIS WHOLE SET-UP GOT STARTED
In Trust Us We're Experts, Stauber and Rampton pull together some compelling data describing the science of creating public opinion in America. They trace modern public influence back to the early part of the last century, highlighting the work of guys like Edward L. Bernays, the Father of Spin. From his own amazing chronicle Propaganda, we learn how Edward L. Bernays took the ideas of his famous uncle Sigmund Freud himself and applied them to the emerging science of mass persuasion. The only difference was that instead of using these principles to uncover hidden themes in the human unconscious, the way Freudian psychology does, Bernays used these same ideas to mask agendas and to create illusions that deceive and misrepresent, for marketing purposes.
THE FATHER OF SPIN
Bernays dominated the PR industry until the 1940s, and was a significant force for another 40 years after that. (Tye) During all that time, Bernays took on hundreds of diverse assignments to create a public perception about some idea or product. A few examples: As a neophyte with the Committee on Public Information, one of Bernays' first assignments was to help sell the First World War to the American public with the idea to "Make the World Safe for Democracy." (Ewen)
A few years later, Bernays set up a stunt to popularize the notion of women smoking cigarettes. In organizing the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City, Bernays showed himself as a force to be reckoned with. He organized the Torches of Liberty Brigade in which suffragettes marched in the parade smoking cigarettes as a mark of women's liberation. Such publicity followed from that one event that from then on women have felt secure about destroying their own lungs in public, the same way that men have always done.
Bernays popularized the idea of bacon for breakfast. Not one to turn down a challenge, he set up the advertising format along with the AMA that lasted for nearly 50 years proving that cigarettes are beneficial to health. Just look at ads in issues of Life or Time from the 40s and 50s.
During the next several decades Bernays and his colleagues evolved the principles by which masses of people could be generally swayed through messages repeated over and over hundreds of times. One the value of media became apparent, other countries of the world tried to follow our lead. But Bernays really was the gold standard. Josef Goebbels, who was Hitler's minister of propaganda, studied the principles of Edward Bernays when Goebbels was developing the popular rationale he would use to convince the Germans that they had to purify their race. (Stauber)
SMOKE AND MIRRORS
Bernay's job was to reframe an issue; to create a desired image that would put a particular product or concept in a desirable light. Bernays described the public as a 'herd that needed to be led.' And this herdlike thinking makes people "susceptible to leadership." Bernays never deviated from his fundamental axiom to "control the masses without their knowing it." The best PR happens with the people unaware that they are being manipulated.
Stauber describes Bernays' rationale like this: "the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in a democratic society." Trust Us p 42
These early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing a moral service for humanity in general - democracy was too good for people; they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. Here's a paragraph from Bernays' Propaganda: "Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."
A tad different from Thomas Jefferson's view on the subject:
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not take it from them, but to inform their discretion."
Inform their discretion. Bernays believed that only a few possessed the necessary insight into the Big Picture to be entrusted with this sacred task. And luckily, he saw himself as one of that few.
HERE COMES THE MONEY
Once the possibilities of applying Freudian psychology to mass media were glimpsed, Bernays soon had more corporate clients than he could handle. Global corporations fell all over themselves courting the new Image Makers. There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to be sold to a susceptible public. Over the years, these players have had the money to make their images happen. A few examples:
Philip Morris Pfizer Union Carbide Allstate Monsanto Eli Lilly tobacco industry Ciba Geigy lead industry Coors DuPont Chlorox Shell Oil Standard Oil Procter & Gamble Boeing General Motors Dow Chemical General Mills Goodyear
THE PLAYERS
Dozens of PR firms have emerged to answer that demand. Among them:
Burson-Marsteller Edelman Hill & Knowlton Kamer-Singer Ketchum Mongovin, Biscoe, and Duchin BSMG Buder-Finn
Though world-famous within the PR industry, these are names we don't know, and for good reason. The best PR goes unnoticed. For decades they have created the opinions that most of us were raised with, on virtually any issue which has the remotest commercial value, including: pharmaceutical drugs vaccines medicine as a profession alternative medicine fluoridation of city water chlorine household cleaning products tobacco dioxin global warming leaded gasoline cancer research and treatment pollution of the oceans forests and lumber images of celebrities, including damage control crisis and disaster management genetically modified foods aspartame food additives; processed foods dental amalgams
LESSON #1
Bernays learned early on that the most effective way to create credibility for a product or an image was by "independent third-party" endorsement. For example, if General Motors were to come out and say that global warming is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers, people would suspect GM's motives, since GM's fortune is made by selling automobiles. If however some independent research institute with a very credible sounding name like the Global Climate Coalition comes out with a scientific report that says global warming is really a fiction, people begin to get confused and to have doubts about the original issue.
So that's exactly what Bernays did. With a policy inspired by genius, he set up "more institutes and foundations than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined." (Stauber p 45) Quietly financed by the industries whose products were being evaluated, these "independent" research agencies would churn out "scientific" studies and press materials that could create any image their handlers wanted. Such front groups are given high-sounding names like:
Temperature Research Foundation International Food Information Council Consumer Alert The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition Air Hygiene Foundation Industrial Health Federation International Food Information Council Manhattan Institute Center for Produce Quality Tobacco Institute Research Council Cato Institute American Council on Science and Health Global Climate Coalition Alliance for Better Foods
Sound pretty legit don't they?
CANNED NEWS RELEASES
As Stauber explains, these organizations and hundreds of others like them are front groups whose sole mission is to advance the image of the global corporations who fund them, like those listed on page 2 above. This is accomplished in part by an endless stream of 'press releases' announcing "breakthrough" research to every radio station and newspaper in the country. (Robbins) Many of these canned reports read like straight news, and indeed are purposely molded in the news format. This saves journalists the trouble of researching the subjects on their own, especially on topics aboutwhich they know very little. Entire sections of the release or in the case of video news releases, the whole thing can be just lifted intact, with no editing, given the byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station - and voilá! Instant news - copy and paste. Written by corporate PR firms.
Does this really happen? Every single day, since the 1920s when the idea of the News Release was first invented by Ivy Lee. (Stauber, p 22) Sometimes as many as half the stories appearing in an issue of the Wall St. Journal are based solely on such PR press releases.. (22) These types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately researched stories. Unless you have done the research yourself, you won't be able to tell the difference.
THE LANGUAGE OF SPIN
As 1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays gained more experience, they began to formulate rules and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation. Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR:
* technology is a religion unto itself * if people are incapable of rational thought, real democracy is dangerous * important decisions should be left to experts * when reframing issues, stay away from substance; create images * never state a clearly demonstrable lie
Words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact. Here's an example. A front group called the International Food Information Council handles the public's natural aversion to genetically modified foods. Trigger words are repeated all through the text. Now in the case of GM foods, the public is instinctively afraid of these experimental new creations which have suddenly popped up on our grocery shelves which are said to have DNA alterations. The IFIC wants to reassure the public of the safety of GM foods, so it avoids words like:
Frankenfoods Hitler biotech chemical DNA experiments manipulate money safety scientists radiation roulette gene-splicing gene gun random
Instead, good PR for GM foods contains words like:
hybrids natural order beauty choice bounty cross-breeding diversity earth farmer organic wholesome.
It's basic Freudian/Tony Robbins word association. The fact that GM foods are not hybrids that have been subjected to the slow and careful scientific methods of real cross-breeding doesn't really matter. This is pseudoscience, not science. Form is everything and substance just a passing myth. (Trevanian)
Who do you think funds the International Food Information Council? Take a wild guess. Right - Monsanto, DuPont, Frito-Lay, Coca Cola, Nutrasweet - those in a position to make fortunes from GM foods. (Stauber p 20)
CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD PROPAGANDA
As the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some of the gems:
- dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling
- speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words
- when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract
- get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people...anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand
- the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you
- when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable
- when minimizing outrage, point out the benefits of what just happened
- when minimizing outrage, avoid moral issues
Keep this list. Start watching for these techniques. Not hard to find - look at today's paper or tonight's TV news. See what they're doing; these guys are good!
SCIENCE FOR HIRE
PR firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation of news releases. They have learned how to attach the names of famous scientists to research that those scientists have not even looked at. (Stauber, p 201) This is a common occurrence. In this way the editors of newspapers and TV news shows are often not even aware that an individual release is a total PR fabrication. Or at least they have "deniability," right?
Stauber tells the amazing story of how leaded gas came into the picture. In 1922, General Motors discovered that adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower. When there was some concern about safety, GM paid the Bureau of Mines to do some fake "testing" and publish spurious research that 'proved' that inhalation of lead was harmless. Enter Charles Kettering.
Founder of the world famous Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute for medical research, Charles Kettering also happened to be an executive with General Motors. By some strange coincidence, we soon have the Sloan Kettering institute issuing reports stating that lead occurs naturally in the body and that the body has a way of eliminating low level exposure. Through its association with The Industrial Hygiene Foundation and PR giant Hill & Knowlton, Sloane Kettering opposed all anti-lead research for years. (Stauber p 92). Without organized scientific opposition, for the next 60 years more and more gasoline became leaded, until by the 1970s, 90% or our gasoline was leaded.
Finally it became too obvious to hide that lead was a major carcinogen, and leaded gas was phased out in the late 1980s. But during those 60 years, it is estimated that some 30 million tons of lead were released in vapor form onto American streets and highways. 30 million tons.
That is PR, my friends.
JUNK SCIENCE
In 1993 a guy named Peter Huber wrote a new book and coined a new term. The book was Galileo's Revenge and the term was junk science. Huber's shallow thesis was that real science supports technology, industry, and progress. Anything else was suddenly junk science. Not surprisingly, Stauber explains how Huber's book was supported by the industry-backed Manhattan Institute.
Huber's book was generally dismissed not only because it was so poorly written, but because it failed to realize one fact: true scientific research begins with no conclusions. Real scientists are seeking the truth because they do not yet know what the truth is.
True scientific method goes like this:
1. form a hypothesis
2. make predictions for that hypothesis
3. test the predictions
4. reject or revise the hypothesis based on the research findings
Boston University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms, that must be nourished, supported, and cultivated with resources for making them grow and flourish." (Stauber p 205) Great ideas that don't get this financial support because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious - these ideas wither and die.
Another way you can often distinguish real science from phony is that real science points out flaws in its own research. Phony science pretends there were no flaws.
THE REAL JUNK SCIENCE
Contrast this with modern PR and its constant pretensions to sound science. Corporate sponsored research, whether it's in the area of drugs, GM foods, or chemistry begins with predetermined conclusions. It is the job of the scientists then to prove that these conclusions are true, because of the economic upside that proof will bring to the industries paying for that research. This invidious approach to science has shifted the entire focus of research in America during the past 50 years, as any true scientist is likely to admit.
Stauber documents the increasing amount of corporate sponsorship of university research. (206) This has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists lament that research has become just another commodity, something bought and sold. (Crossen)
THE TWO MAIN TARGETS OF "SOUND SCIENCE"
It is shocking when Stauber shows how the vast majority of corporate PR today opposes any research that seeks to protect: Public Health and The Environment
It's a funny thing that most of the time when we see the phrase "junk science," it is in a context of defending something that may threaten either the environment or our health. This makes sense when one realizes that money changes hands only by selling the illusion of health and the illusion of environmental protection. True public health and real preservation of the earth's environment have very low market value.
Stauber thinks it ironic that industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science are usually non-scientists themselves. (255) Here again they can do this because the issue is not science, but the creation of images.
THE LANGUAGE OF ATTACK
When PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and alternative medicine people, they again use special words which will carry an emotional punch:
outraged sound science junk science sensible scaremongering responsible phobia hoax alarmist hysteria
The next time you are reading a newspaper article about an environmental or health issue, note how the author shows bias by using the above terms. This is the result of very specialized training.
Another standard PR tactic is to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists themselves to defend a dangerous and untested product that poses an actual threat to the environment. This we see constantly in the PR smokescreen that surrounds genetically modified foods. They talk about how GM foods are necessary to grow more food and to end world hunger, when the reality is that GM foods actually have lower yields per acre than natural crops. (Stauber p 173) The grand design sort of comes into focus once you realize that almost all GM foods have been created by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides so that those plants can withstand greater amounts of herbicides and pesticides. (The Magic Bean)
THE MIRAGE OF PEER REVIEW
Publish or perish is the classic dilemma of every research scientist. That means whoever expects funding for the next research project had better get the current research paper published in the best scientific journals. And we all know that the best scientific journals, like JAMA, New England Journal, British Medical Journal, etc. are peer-reviewed. Peer review means that any articles which actually get published, between all those full color drug ads and pharmaceutical centerfolds, have been reviewed and accepted by some really smart guys with a lot of credentials. The assumption is, if the article made it past peer review, the data and the conclusions of the research study have been thoroughly checked out and bear some resemblance to physical reality.
But there are a few problems with this hot little set up. First off, money. Even though prestigious venerable medical journals pretend to be so objective and scientific and incorruptible, the reality is that they face the same type of being called to account that all glossy magazines must confront: don't antagonize your advertisers. Those full-page drug ads in the best journals cost millions,Jack. How long will a pharmaceutical company pay for ad space in a magazine that prints some very sound scientific research paper that attacks the safety of the drug in the centerfold? Think about it. The editors aren't that stupid.
Another problem is the conflict of interest thing. There's a formal requirement for all medical journals that any financial ties between an author and a product manufacturer be disclosed in the article. In practice, it never happens. A study done in 1997 of 142 medical journals did not find even one such disclosure. (Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99)
A 1998 study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that 96% of peer reviewed articles had financial ties to the drug they were studying. (Stelfox, 1998) Big shock, huh? Any disclosures? Yeah, right. This study should be pointed out whenever somebody starts getting too pompous about the objectivity of peer review, like they often do.
Then there's the outright purchase of space. A drug company may simply pay $100,000 to a journal to have a favorable article printed. (Stauber, p 204)
Fraud in peer review journals is nothing new. In 1987, the New England Journal ran an article that followed the research of R. Slutsky MD over a seven year period. During that time, Dr. Slutsky had published 137 articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals. NEJM found that in at least 60 of these 137, there was evidence of major scientific fraud and misrepresentation, including:
* reporting data for experiments that were never done * reporting measurements that were never made * reporting statistical analyses that were never done
oEngler
Dean Black PhD, describes what he the calls the Babel Effect that results when this very common and frequently undetected scientific fraudulent data in peer-reviewed journals are quoted by other researchers, who are in turn re-quoted by still others, and so on.
Want to see something that sort of re-frames this whole discussion? Check out the McDonald's ads which often appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Then keep in mind that this is the same publication that for almost 50 years ran cigarette ads proclaiming the health benefits of tobacco. (Robbins)
Very scientific, oh yes.
KILL YOUR TV?
Hope this chapter has given you a hint to start reading newspaper and magazine articles a little differently, and perhaps start watching TV news shows with a slightly different attitude than you had before. Always ask, what are they selling here, and who's selling it? And if you actually follow up on Stauber & Rampton's book and check out some of the other resources below, you might even glimpse the possibility of advancing your life one quantum simply by ceasing to subject your brain to mass media. That's right - no more newspapers, no more TV news, no more Time magazine or Newsweek. You could actually do that. Just think what you could do with the extra time alone.
Really feel like you need to "relax" or find out "what's going on in the world" for a few hours every day? Think about the news of the past couple of years for a minute. Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated headlines and TV news have been "what is going on in the world?" Do you actually think there's been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump, the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts of foreign violence and disaster, and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle before us every day? What about when they get a big one, like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma city bombing? Do we really need to know all that detail, day after day? Do we have any way of verifying all that detail, even if we wanted to? What is the purpose of news? To inform the public? Hardly. The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty so that they'll watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising. Oversimplification? Of course. That's the mark of mass media mastery - simplicity. The invisible hand. Like Edward Bernays said, the people must be controlled without them knowing it.
Consider this: what was really going on in the world all that time they were distracting us with all that stupid vexatious daily smokescreen? Fear and uncertainty -- that's what keeps people coming back for more.
If this seems like a radical outlook, let's take it one step further: What would you lose from your life if you stopped watching TV and stopped reading newspapers altogether?
Would your life really suffer any financial, moral, intellectual or academic loss from such a decision?
Do you really need to have your family continually absorbing the illiterate, amoral, phony, uncultivated, desperately brainless values of the people featured in the average nightly TV program? Are these fake, programmed robots "normal"?
Do you need to have your life values constantly spoonfed to you?
Are those shows really amusing, or just a necessary distraction to keep you from looking at reality, or trying to figure things out yourself by doing a little independent reading?
Name one example of how your life is improved by watching TV news and reading the evening paper. What measurable gain is there for you?
PLANET OF THE APES?
There's no question that as a nation, we're getting dumber year by year. Look at the presidents we've been choosing lately. Ever notice the blatant grammar mistakes so ubiquitous in today's advertising and billboards? Literacy is marginal in most American secondary schools. Three-fourths of California high school seniors can't read well enough to pass their exit exams. ( SJ Mercury 20 Jul 01) If you think other parts of the country are smarter, try this one: hand any high school senior a book by Dumas or Jane Austen, and ask them to open to any random page and just read one paragraph out loud. Go ahead, do it. SAT scales are arbitrarily shifted lower and lower to disguise how dumb kids are getting year by year. (ADD: A Designer Disease) At least 10% have documented "learning disabilities," which are reinforced and rewarded by special treatment and special drugs. Ever hear of anyone failing a grade any more?
Or observe the intellectual level of the average movie which these days may only last one or two weeks in the theatres, especially if it has insufficient explosions, chase scenes, silicone, fake martial arts, and cretinesque dialogue. Radio? Consider the low mental qualifications of the falsely animated corporate simians hired as DJs -- seems like they're only allowed to have 50 thoughts, which they just repeat at random. And at what point did popular music cease to require the study of any musical instrument or theory whatsoever, not to mention lyric? Perhaps we just don't understand this emerging art form, right? The Darwinism of MTV - apes descended from man.
Ever notice how most articles in any of the glossy magazines sound like they were all written by the same guy? And this writer just graduated from junior college? And yet has all the correct opinions on social issues, no original ideas, and that shallow, smug, homogenized corporate omniscience, to assure us that everything is going to be fine... Yes, everything is fine.
All this is great news for the PR industry - makes their job that much easier. Not only are very few paying attention to the process of conditioning; fewer are capable of understanding it even if somebody explained it to them.
TEA IN THE CAFETERIA
Let's say you're in a crowded cafeteria, and you buy a cup of tea. And as you're about to sit down you see your friend way across the room. So you put the tea down and walk across the room and talk to your friend for a few minutes. Now, coming back to your tea, are you just going to pick it up and drink it? Remember, this is a crowded place and you've just left your tea unattended for several minutes. You've given anybody in that room access to your tea.
Why should your mind be any different? Turning on the TV, or uncritically absorbing mass publications every day - these activities allow access to our minds by "just anyone" - anyone who has an agenda, anyone with the resources to create a public image via popular media. As we've seen above, just because we read something or see something on TV doesn't mean it's true or worth knowing. So the idea here is, like the tea, the mind is also worth guarding, worth limiting access to it.
This is the only life we get. Time is our total capital. Why waste it allowing our potential, our personality, our values to be shaped, crafted, and limited according to the whims of the mass panderers? There are many truly important decisions that are crucial to our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, decisions which require information and research. If it's an issue where money is involved, objective data won't be so easy to obtain. Remember, if everybody knows something, that image has been bought and paid for.
Real knowledge takes a little effort, a little excavation down at least one level below what "everybody knows." 1
REFERENCES
Stauber & Rampton Trust Us, We're Experts Tarcher/Putnam 2001
Ewen, Stuart PR!: A Social History of Spin 1996 ISBN: 0-465-06168-0 Published by Basic Books, A Division of Harper Collins
Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations Crown Publishers, Inc. 2001
King, R Medical journals rarely disclose researchers' ties Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99.
Engler, R et al. Misrepresentation and Responsibility in Medical Research
New England Journal of Medicine v 317 p 1383 26 Nov 1987
Black, D PhD Health At the Crossroads Tapestry 1988.
Trevanian Shibumi 1983.
Crossen, C Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America 1996.
Robbins, J Reclaiming Our Health Kramer 1996.
Jefferson, T Writings New York Library of America, p 493; 1984.
O'Shea T The Magic Bean 2000 www.thedoctorwithin.com Alternative Medicine magazine May 2001.
Source
Aldous Huxley's inspired 1956 essay detailed the vivid, mind-expanding, multisensory insights of his mescaline adventures. By altering his brain chemistry with natural psychotropics, Huxley tapped into a rich and fluid world of shimmering, indescribable beauty and power. With his neurosensory input thus triggered, Huxley was able to enter that parallel universe described by every mystic and space captain in recorded history. Whether by hallucination or epiphany, Huxley sought to remove all controls, all filters, all cultural conditioning from his perceptions and to confront Nature or the World or Reality first-hand - in its unpasteurized, unedited, unretouched, infinite rawness.
Those bonds are much harder to break today, half a century later. We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Who cares, right?
It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. In an effort to save time, I would like to provide just a little background on the handling of information in this country. Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given popular opinion.
If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong. We call that
Conventional Wisdom.
In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it.
Examples:
* Pharmaceuticals restore health
* Vaccination brings immunity
* The cure for cancer is just around the corner
* Menopause is a disease condition
* When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics
* When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol
* Hospitals are safe and clean.
* America has the best health care in the world.
* Americans have the best health in the world.
* Milk is a good source of calcium.
* You never outgrow your need for milk.
* Vitamin C is ascorbic acid.
* Aspirin prevents heart attacks.
* Heart drugs improve the heart.
* Back and neck pain are the only reasons for spinal adjustment.
* No child can get into school without being vaccinated.
* The FDA thoroughly tests all drugs before they go on the market.
* Back and neck pain are the only reason for spinal adjustment.
* Pregnancy is a serious medical condition
* Chemotherapy and radiation are effective cures for cancer
* When your child is diagnosed with an ear infection, antibiotics should be given
immediately 'just in case'
* Ear tubes are for the good of the child.
* Estrogen drugs prevent osteoporosis after menopause.
* Pediatricians are the most highly trained of al medical specialists.
* The purpose of the health care industry is health.
* HIV is the cause of AIDS.
* AZT is the cure.
* Without vaccines, infectious diseases will return
* Fluoride in the city water protects your teeth
* Flu shots prevent the flu.
* Vaccines are thoroughly tested before being placed on the Mandated Schedule.
* Doctors are certain that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh any possible risks.
* There is a power shortage in California.
* There is a meningitis epidemic in California.
* The NASDAQ is a natural market controlled only by supply and demand.
* Chronic pain is a natural consequence of aging.
* Soy is your healthiest source of protein.
* Insulin shots cure diabetes.
* After we take out your gall bladder you can eat anything you want
* Allergy medicine will cure allergies.
This is a list of illusions, that have cost billions and billions to conjure up. Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading? Or why most people in this country think generally the same about most of the above issues?
HOW THIS WHOLE SET-UP GOT STARTED
In Trust Us We're Experts, Stauber and Rampton pull together some compelling data describing the science of creating public opinion in America. They trace modern public influence back to the early part of the last century, highlighting the work of guys like Edward L. Bernays, the Father of Spin. From his own amazing chronicle Propaganda, we learn how Edward L. Bernays took the ideas of his famous uncle Sigmund Freud himself and applied them to the emerging science of mass persuasion. The only difference was that instead of using these principles to uncover hidden themes in the human unconscious, the way Freudian psychology does, Bernays used these same ideas to mask agendas and to create illusions that deceive and misrepresent, for marketing purposes.
THE FATHER OF SPIN
Bernays dominated the PR industry until the 1940s, and was a significant force for another 40 years after that. (Tye) During all that time, Bernays took on hundreds of diverse assignments to create a public perception about some idea or product. A few examples: As a neophyte with the Committee on Public Information, one of Bernays' first assignments was to help sell the First World War to the American public with the idea to "Make the World Safe for Democracy." (Ewen)
A few years later, Bernays set up a stunt to popularize the notion of women smoking cigarettes. In organizing the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City, Bernays showed himself as a force to be reckoned with. He organized the Torches of Liberty Brigade in which suffragettes marched in the parade smoking cigarettes as a mark of women's liberation. Such publicity followed from that one event that from then on women have felt secure about destroying their own lungs in public, the same way that men have always done.
Bernays popularized the idea of bacon for breakfast. Not one to turn down a challenge, he set up the advertising format along with the AMA that lasted for nearly 50 years proving that cigarettes are beneficial to health. Just look at ads in issues of Life or Time from the 40s and 50s.
During the next several decades Bernays and his colleagues evolved the principles by which masses of people could be generally swayed through messages repeated over and over hundreds of times. One the value of media became apparent, other countries of the world tried to follow our lead. But Bernays really was the gold standard. Josef Goebbels, who was Hitler's minister of propaganda, studied the principles of Edward Bernays when Goebbels was developing the popular rationale he would use to convince the Germans that they had to purify their race. (Stauber)
SMOKE AND MIRRORS
Bernay's job was to reframe an issue; to create a desired image that would put a particular product or concept in a desirable light. Bernays described the public as a 'herd that needed to be led.' And this herdlike thinking makes people "susceptible to leadership." Bernays never deviated from his fundamental axiom to "control the masses without their knowing it." The best PR happens with the people unaware that they are being manipulated.
Stauber describes Bernays' rationale like this: "the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in a democratic society." Trust Us p 42
These early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing a moral service for humanity in general - democracy was too good for people; they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. Here's a paragraph from Bernays' Propaganda: "Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."
A tad different from Thomas Jefferson's view on the subject:
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not take it from them, but to inform their discretion."
Inform their discretion. Bernays believed that only a few possessed the necessary insight into the Big Picture to be entrusted with this sacred task. And luckily, he saw himself as one of that few.
HERE COMES THE MONEY
Once the possibilities of applying Freudian psychology to mass media were glimpsed, Bernays soon had more corporate clients than he could handle. Global corporations fell all over themselves courting the new Image Makers. There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to be sold to a susceptible public. Over the years, these players have had the money to make their images happen. A few examples:
Philip Morris Pfizer Union Carbide Allstate Monsanto Eli Lilly tobacco industry Ciba Geigy lead industry Coors DuPont Chlorox Shell Oil Standard Oil Procter & Gamble Boeing General Motors Dow Chemical General Mills Goodyear
THE PLAYERS
Dozens of PR firms have emerged to answer that demand. Among them:
Burson-Marsteller Edelman Hill & Knowlton Kamer-Singer Ketchum Mongovin, Biscoe, and Duchin BSMG Buder-Finn
Though world-famous within the PR industry, these are names we don't know, and for good reason. The best PR goes unnoticed. For decades they have created the opinions that most of us were raised with, on virtually any issue which has the remotest commercial value, including: pharmaceutical drugs vaccines medicine as a profession alternative medicine fluoridation of city water chlorine household cleaning products tobacco dioxin global warming leaded gasoline cancer research and treatment pollution of the oceans forests and lumber images of celebrities, including damage control crisis and disaster management genetically modified foods aspartame food additives; processed foods dental amalgams
LESSON #1
Bernays learned early on that the most effective way to create credibility for a product or an image was by "independent third-party" endorsement. For example, if General Motors were to come out and say that global warming is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers, people would suspect GM's motives, since GM's fortune is made by selling automobiles. If however some independent research institute with a very credible sounding name like the Global Climate Coalition comes out with a scientific report that says global warming is really a fiction, people begin to get confused and to have doubts about the original issue.
So that's exactly what Bernays did. With a policy inspired by genius, he set up "more institutes and foundations than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined." (Stauber p 45) Quietly financed by the industries whose products were being evaluated, these "independent" research agencies would churn out "scientific" studies and press materials that could create any image their handlers wanted. Such front groups are given high-sounding names like:
Temperature Research Foundation International Food Information Council Consumer Alert The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition Air Hygiene Foundation Industrial Health Federation International Food Information Council Manhattan Institute Center for Produce Quality Tobacco Institute Research Council Cato Institute American Council on Science and Health Global Climate Coalition Alliance for Better Foods
Sound pretty legit don't they?
CANNED NEWS RELEASES
As Stauber explains, these organizations and hundreds of others like them are front groups whose sole mission is to advance the image of the global corporations who fund them, like those listed on page 2 above. This is accomplished in part by an endless stream of 'press releases' announcing "breakthrough" research to every radio station and newspaper in the country. (Robbins) Many of these canned reports read like straight news, and indeed are purposely molded in the news format. This saves journalists the trouble of researching the subjects on their own, especially on topics aboutwhich they know very little. Entire sections of the release or in the case of video news releases, the whole thing can be just lifted intact, with no editing, given the byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station - and voilá! Instant news - copy and paste. Written by corporate PR firms.
Does this really happen? Every single day, since the 1920s when the idea of the News Release was first invented by Ivy Lee. (Stauber, p 22) Sometimes as many as half the stories appearing in an issue of the Wall St. Journal are based solely on such PR press releases.. (22) These types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately researched stories. Unless you have done the research yourself, you won't be able to tell the difference.
THE LANGUAGE OF SPIN
As 1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays gained more experience, they began to formulate rules and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation. Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR:
* technology is a religion unto itself * if people are incapable of rational thought, real democracy is dangerous * important decisions should be left to experts * when reframing issues, stay away from substance; create images * never state a clearly demonstrable lie
Words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact. Here's an example. A front group called the International Food Information Council handles the public's natural aversion to genetically modified foods. Trigger words are repeated all through the text. Now in the case of GM foods, the public is instinctively afraid of these experimental new creations which have suddenly popped up on our grocery shelves which are said to have DNA alterations. The IFIC wants to reassure the public of the safety of GM foods, so it avoids words like:
Frankenfoods Hitler biotech chemical DNA experiments manipulate money safety scientists radiation roulette gene-splicing gene gun random
Instead, good PR for GM foods contains words like:
hybrids natural order beauty choice bounty cross-breeding diversity earth farmer organic wholesome.
It's basic Freudian/Tony Robbins word association. The fact that GM foods are not hybrids that have been subjected to the slow and careful scientific methods of real cross-breeding doesn't really matter. This is pseudoscience, not science. Form is everything and substance just a passing myth. (Trevanian)
Who do you think funds the International Food Information Council? Take a wild guess. Right - Monsanto, DuPont, Frito-Lay, Coca Cola, Nutrasweet - those in a position to make fortunes from GM foods. (Stauber p 20)
CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD PROPAGANDA
As the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some of the gems:
- dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling
- speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words
- when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract
- get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people...anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand
- the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you
- when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable
- when minimizing outrage, point out the benefits of what just happened
- when minimizing outrage, avoid moral issues
Keep this list. Start watching for these techniques. Not hard to find - look at today's paper or tonight's TV news. See what they're doing; these guys are good!
SCIENCE FOR HIRE
PR firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation of news releases. They have learned how to attach the names of famous scientists to research that those scientists have not even looked at. (Stauber, p 201) This is a common occurrence. In this way the editors of newspapers and TV news shows are often not even aware that an individual release is a total PR fabrication. Or at least they have "deniability," right?
Stauber tells the amazing story of how leaded gas came into the picture. In 1922, General Motors discovered that adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower. When there was some concern about safety, GM paid the Bureau of Mines to do some fake "testing" and publish spurious research that 'proved' that inhalation of lead was harmless. Enter Charles Kettering.
Founder of the world famous Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute for medical research, Charles Kettering also happened to be an executive with General Motors. By some strange coincidence, we soon have the Sloan Kettering institute issuing reports stating that lead occurs naturally in the body and that the body has a way of eliminating low level exposure. Through its association with The Industrial Hygiene Foundation and PR giant Hill & Knowlton, Sloane Kettering opposed all anti-lead research for years. (Stauber p 92). Without organized scientific opposition, for the next 60 years more and more gasoline became leaded, until by the 1970s, 90% or our gasoline was leaded.
Finally it became too obvious to hide that lead was a major carcinogen, and leaded gas was phased out in the late 1980s. But during those 60 years, it is estimated that some 30 million tons of lead were released in vapor form onto American streets and highways. 30 million tons.
That is PR, my friends.
JUNK SCIENCE
In 1993 a guy named Peter Huber wrote a new book and coined a new term. The book was Galileo's Revenge and the term was junk science. Huber's shallow thesis was that real science supports technology, industry, and progress. Anything else was suddenly junk science. Not surprisingly, Stauber explains how Huber's book was supported by the industry-backed Manhattan Institute.
Huber's book was generally dismissed not only because it was so poorly written, but because it failed to realize one fact: true scientific research begins with no conclusions. Real scientists are seeking the truth because they do not yet know what the truth is.
True scientific method goes like this:
1. form a hypothesis
2. make predictions for that hypothesis
3. test the predictions
4. reject or revise the hypothesis based on the research findings
Boston University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms, that must be nourished, supported, and cultivated with resources for making them grow and flourish." (Stauber p 205) Great ideas that don't get this financial support because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious - these ideas wither and die.
Another way you can often distinguish real science from phony is that real science points out flaws in its own research. Phony science pretends there were no flaws.
THE REAL JUNK SCIENCE
Contrast this with modern PR and its constant pretensions to sound science. Corporate sponsored research, whether it's in the area of drugs, GM foods, or chemistry begins with predetermined conclusions. It is the job of the scientists then to prove that these conclusions are true, because of the economic upside that proof will bring to the industries paying for that research. This invidious approach to science has shifted the entire focus of research in America during the past 50 years, as any true scientist is likely to admit.
Stauber documents the increasing amount of corporate sponsorship of university research. (206) This has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists lament that research has become just another commodity, something bought and sold. (Crossen)
THE TWO MAIN TARGETS OF "SOUND SCIENCE"
It is shocking when Stauber shows how the vast majority of corporate PR today opposes any research that seeks to protect: Public Health and The Environment
It's a funny thing that most of the time when we see the phrase "junk science," it is in a context of defending something that may threaten either the environment or our health. This makes sense when one realizes that money changes hands only by selling the illusion of health and the illusion of environmental protection. True public health and real preservation of the earth's environment have very low market value.
Stauber thinks it ironic that industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science are usually non-scientists themselves. (255) Here again they can do this because the issue is not science, but the creation of images.
THE LANGUAGE OF ATTACK
When PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and alternative medicine people, they again use special words which will carry an emotional punch:
outraged sound science junk science sensible scaremongering responsible phobia hoax alarmist hysteria
The next time you are reading a newspaper article about an environmental or health issue, note how the author shows bias by using the above terms. This is the result of very specialized training.
Another standard PR tactic is to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists themselves to defend a dangerous and untested product that poses an actual threat to the environment. This we see constantly in the PR smokescreen that surrounds genetically modified foods. They talk about how GM foods are necessary to grow more food and to end world hunger, when the reality is that GM foods actually have lower yields per acre than natural crops. (Stauber p 173) The grand design sort of comes into focus once you realize that almost all GM foods have been created by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides so that those plants can withstand greater amounts of herbicides and pesticides. (The Magic Bean)
THE MIRAGE OF PEER REVIEW
Publish or perish is the classic dilemma of every research scientist. That means whoever expects funding for the next research project had better get the current research paper published in the best scientific journals. And we all know that the best scientific journals, like JAMA, New England Journal, British Medical Journal, etc. are peer-reviewed. Peer review means that any articles which actually get published, between all those full color drug ads and pharmaceutical centerfolds, have been reviewed and accepted by some really smart guys with a lot of credentials. The assumption is, if the article made it past peer review, the data and the conclusions of the research study have been thoroughly checked out and bear some resemblance to physical reality.
But there are a few problems with this hot little set up. First off, money. Even though prestigious venerable medical journals pretend to be so objective and scientific and incorruptible, the reality is that they face the same type of being called to account that all glossy magazines must confront: don't antagonize your advertisers. Those full-page drug ads in the best journals cost millions,Jack. How long will a pharmaceutical company pay for ad space in a magazine that prints some very sound scientific research paper that attacks the safety of the drug in the centerfold? Think about it. The editors aren't that stupid.
Another problem is the conflict of interest thing. There's a formal requirement for all medical journals that any financial ties between an author and a product manufacturer be disclosed in the article. In practice, it never happens. A study done in 1997 of 142 medical journals did not find even one such disclosure. (Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99)
A 1998 study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that 96% of peer reviewed articles had financial ties to the drug they were studying. (Stelfox, 1998) Big shock, huh? Any disclosures? Yeah, right. This study should be pointed out whenever somebody starts getting too pompous about the objectivity of peer review, like they often do.
Then there's the outright purchase of space. A drug company may simply pay $100,000 to a journal to have a favorable article printed. (Stauber, p 204)
Fraud in peer review journals is nothing new. In 1987, the New England Journal ran an article that followed the research of R. Slutsky MD over a seven year period. During that time, Dr. Slutsky had published 137 articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals. NEJM found that in at least 60 of these 137, there was evidence of major scientific fraud and misrepresentation, including:
* reporting data for experiments that were never done * reporting measurements that were never made * reporting statistical analyses that were never done
oEngler
Dean Black PhD, describes what he the calls the Babel Effect that results when this very common and frequently undetected scientific fraudulent data in peer-reviewed journals are quoted by other researchers, who are in turn re-quoted by still others, and so on.
Want to see something that sort of re-frames this whole discussion? Check out the McDonald's ads which often appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Then keep in mind that this is the same publication that for almost 50 years ran cigarette ads proclaiming the health benefits of tobacco. (Robbins)
Very scientific, oh yes.
KILL YOUR TV?
Hope this chapter has given you a hint to start reading newspaper and magazine articles a little differently, and perhaps start watching TV news shows with a slightly different attitude than you had before. Always ask, what are they selling here, and who's selling it? And if you actually follow up on Stauber & Rampton's book and check out some of the other resources below, you might even glimpse the possibility of advancing your life one quantum simply by ceasing to subject your brain to mass media. That's right - no more newspapers, no more TV news, no more Time magazine or Newsweek. You could actually do that. Just think what you could do with the extra time alone.
Really feel like you need to "relax" or find out "what's going on in the world" for a few hours every day? Think about the news of the past couple of years for a minute. Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated headlines and TV news have been "what is going on in the world?" Do you actually think there's been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump, the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts of foreign violence and disaster, and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle before us every day? What about when they get a big one, like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma city bombing? Do we really need to know all that detail, day after day? Do we have any way of verifying all that detail, even if we wanted to? What is the purpose of news? To inform the public? Hardly. The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty so that they'll watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising. Oversimplification? Of course. That's the mark of mass media mastery - simplicity. The invisible hand. Like Edward Bernays said, the people must be controlled without them knowing it.
Consider this: what was really going on in the world all that time they were distracting us with all that stupid vexatious daily smokescreen? Fear and uncertainty -- that's what keeps people coming back for more.
If this seems like a radical outlook, let's take it one step further: What would you lose from your life if you stopped watching TV and stopped reading newspapers altogether?
Would your life really suffer any financial, moral, intellectual or academic loss from such a decision?
Do you really need to have your family continually absorbing the illiterate, amoral, phony, uncultivated, desperately brainless values of the people featured in the average nightly TV program? Are these fake, programmed robots "normal"?
Do you need to have your life values constantly spoonfed to you?
Are those shows really amusing, or just a necessary distraction to keep you from looking at reality, or trying to figure things out yourself by doing a little independent reading?
Name one example of how your life is improved by watching TV news and reading the evening paper. What measurable gain is there for you?
PLANET OF THE APES?
There's no question that as a nation, we're getting dumber year by year. Look at the presidents we've been choosing lately. Ever notice the blatant grammar mistakes so ubiquitous in today's advertising and billboards? Literacy is marginal in most American secondary schools. Three-fourths of California high school seniors can't read well enough to pass their exit exams. ( SJ Mercury 20 Jul 01) If you think other parts of the country are smarter, try this one: hand any high school senior a book by Dumas or Jane Austen, and ask them to open to any random page and just read one paragraph out loud. Go ahead, do it. SAT scales are arbitrarily shifted lower and lower to disguise how dumb kids are getting year by year. (ADD: A Designer Disease) At least 10% have documented "learning disabilities," which are reinforced and rewarded by special treatment and special drugs. Ever hear of anyone failing a grade any more?
Or observe the intellectual level of the average movie which these days may only last one or two weeks in the theatres, especially if it has insufficient explosions, chase scenes, silicone, fake martial arts, and cretinesque dialogue. Radio? Consider the low mental qualifications of the falsely animated corporate simians hired as DJs -- seems like they're only allowed to have 50 thoughts, which they just repeat at random. And at what point did popular music cease to require the study of any musical instrument or theory whatsoever, not to mention lyric? Perhaps we just don't understand this emerging art form, right? The Darwinism of MTV - apes descended from man.
Ever notice how most articles in any of the glossy magazines sound like they were all written by the same guy? And this writer just graduated from junior college? And yet has all the correct opinions on social issues, no original ideas, and that shallow, smug, homogenized corporate omniscience, to assure us that everything is going to be fine... Yes, everything is fine.
All this is great news for the PR industry - makes their job that much easier. Not only are very few paying attention to the process of conditioning; fewer are capable of understanding it even if somebody explained it to them.
TEA IN THE CAFETERIA
Let's say you're in a crowded cafeteria, and you buy a cup of tea. And as you're about to sit down you see your friend way across the room. So you put the tea down and walk across the room and talk to your friend for a few minutes. Now, coming back to your tea, are you just going to pick it up and drink it? Remember, this is a crowded place and you've just left your tea unattended for several minutes. You've given anybody in that room access to your tea.
Why should your mind be any different? Turning on the TV, or uncritically absorbing mass publications every day - these activities allow access to our minds by "just anyone" - anyone who has an agenda, anyone with the resources to create a public image via popular media. As we've seen above, just because we read something or see something on TV doesn't mean it's true or worth knowing. So the idea here is, like the tea, the mind is also worth guarding, worth limiting access to it.
This is the only life we get. Time is our total capital. Why waste it allowing our potential, our personality, our values to be shaped, crafted, and limited according to the whims of the mass panderers? There are many truly important decisions that are crucial to our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, decisions which require information and research. If it's an issue where money is involved, objective data won't be so easy to obtain. Remember, if everybody knows something, that image has been bought and paid for.
Real knowledge takes a little effort, a little excavation down at least one level below what "everybody knows." 1
REFERENCES
Stauber & Rampton Trust Us, We're Experts Tarcher/Putnam 2001
Ewen, Stuart PR!: A Social History of Spin 1996 ISBN: 0-465-06168-0 Published by Basic Books, A Division of Harper Collins
Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations Crown Publishers, Inc. 2001
King, R Medical journals rarely disclose researchers' ties Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99.
Engler, R et al. Misrepresentation and Responsibility in Medical Research
New England Journal of Medicine v 317 p 1383 26 Nov 1987
Black, D PhD Health At the Crossroads Tapestry 1988.
Trevanian Shibumi 1983.
Crossen, C Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America 1996.
Robbins, J Reclaiming Our Health Kramer 1996.
Jefferson, T Writings New York Library of America, p 493; 1984.
O'Shea T The Magic Bean 2000 www.thedoctorwithin.com Alternative Medicine magazine May 2001.
Source
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Family of slain ex-Pentagon official John Wheeler wants info
WILMINGTON, Del. — The family of a slain ex-Pentagon official whose body was found in a Delaware landfill still doesn't know what happened to him, and their attempts to get more information from law enforcement have been rebuffed, their attorney said Monday.
Colm Connolly, an attorney for John Wheeler III's family, said he has asked forensic reports, search warrants and a copy of a video surveillance tape showing Wheeler in downtown Wilmington the night before his body was found. Connolly also noted that Wheeler's family learned only through the media last week that a medical examiner had officially determined that Wheeler died of blunt trauma injuries after being assaulted.
The family was told early in the investigation that Wheeler had died of a heart attack caused by an assault.
Wheeler's body was found among trash being dumped at the Wilmington landfill on the morning of Dec. 31. Wheeler, 66, was seen on video surveillance cameras wandering around downtown Wilmington two days before his body was found. The garbage truck that dumped his body had collected all of its trash from commercial disposal bins in Newark, several miles from both his home in New Castle and from downtown Wilmington.
Police, who do not have any suspects, still don't know how Wheeler wound up in Newark.
Attorney General Beau Biden's office, along with police investigators, have sought to keep information about the case from the public. Biden's office asked a judge to seal a search warrant for Wheeler's home, and three search warrants for Wheeler's cell phone and his 1993 Oldsmobile were sealed at the request of Newark police.
Wheeler's family announced Sunday they were offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
"We are grateful for the outpouring of sympathy and concern we have received over the past few weeks and for the efforts of the law enforcement authorities to uncover the circumstances surrounding Jack's death," the family said in a statement. "We have suffered a heartbreaking loss, and not knowing how Jack died amplifies the devastation we feel. Our hope in offering this reward is to encourage anyone who may have helpful information to come forward so that justice can be served."
Connolly, a former U.S. attorney for Delaware, said he understands law enforcement must be careful about disclosing information.
"On the other hand, I think when there is information that can bring some comfort and mitigate even to a small extent the sense of loss to the victim, authorities should release that information if it would not jeopardize their investigative efforts," he said.
Jason Miller, a spokesman for Biden, did not immediately return a message left on his cell phone Monday evening.
While authorities are still trying to piece together a timeline, Connolly said Wheeler arrived Dec. 24 in New York City, where he and his wife had an apartment, to join family members for the holidays.
Wheeler traveled on Dec. 28 from New York to Washington, D.C., where he worked. He is believed to have traveled on to Delaware later that same day, Connolly said. Wheeler's last communication with a family member was an e-mail sent on the morning of Dec. 29.
Connolly wouldn't release the e-mail.
Source
Colm Connolly, an attorney for John Wheeler III's family, said he has asked forensic reports, search warrants and a copy of a video surveillance tape showing Wheeler in downtown Wilmington the night before his body was found. Connolly also noted that Wheeler's family learned only through the media last week that a medical examiner had officially determined that Wheeler died of blunt trauma injuries after being assaulted.
The family was told early in the investigation that Wheeler had died of a heart attack caused by an assault.
Wheeler's body was found among trash being dumped at the Wilmington landfill on the morning of Dec. 31. Wheeler, 66, was seen on video surveillance cameras wandering around downtown Wilmington two days before his body was found. The garbage truck that dumped his body had collected all of its trash from commercial disposal bins in Newark, several miles from both his home in New Castle and from downtown Wilmington.
Police, who do not have any suspects, still don't know how Wheeler wound up in Newark.
Attorney General Beau Biden's office, along with police investigators, have sought to keep information about the case from the public. Biden's office asked a judge to seal a search warrant for Wheeler's home, and three search warrants for Wheeler's cell phone and his 1993 Oldsmobile were sealed at the request of Newark police.
Wheeler's family announced Sunday they were offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
"We are grateful for the outpouring of sympathy and concern we have received over the past few weeks and for the efforts of the law enforcement authorities to uncover the circumstances surrounding Jack's death," the family said in a statement. "We have suffered a heartbreaking loss, and not knowing how Jack died amplifies the devastation we feel. Our hope in offering this reward is to encourage anyone who may have helpful information to come forward so that justice can be served."
Connolly, a former U.S. attorney for Delaware, said he understands law enforcement must be careful about disclosing information.
"On the other hand, I think when there is information that can bring some comfort and mitigate even to a small extent the sense of loss to the victim, authorities should release that information if it would not jeopardize their investigative efforts," he said.
Jason Miller, a spokesman for Biden, did not immediately return a message left on his cell phone Monday evening.
While authorities are still trying to piece together a timeline, Connolly said Wheeler arrived Dec. 24 in New York City, where he and his wife had an apartment, to join family members for the holidays.
Wheeler traveled on Dec. 28 from New York to Washington, D.C., where he worked. He is believed to have traveled on to Delaware later that same day, Connolly said. Wheeler's last communication with a family member was an e-mail sent on the morning of Dec. 29.
Connolly wouldn't release the e-mail.
Source
Gilad Atzmon: Global Intifada
Haaretz reported today that “Israel urges the world to curb criticism of Egypt's Mubarak.”
Apparently Jerusalem seeks to convince its allies that it is in the ‘West's interest’ to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. In other words, Israel urges the ‘Goyim’ to ‘keep being subservient to Jerusalem’. Jerusalem was foolish enough to admit that Mubarak was there to serve Israeli and ‘Western’ interests.
Over the weekend Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries to restrain their condemnation of President Hosni Mubarak to “preserve stability in the region.”
Let’s all be clear about it : as far as Israelis are concerned, ‘stability in the region’ means a few million Jews living in ‘safety’ on Palestinian land, at the expense of one billion Muslims. But I guess that this Zionist militant expansionist fantasy is crumbling in front of our eyes now.
Apparently the Israelis detect some confusion within Western capitals : "The Americans and the Europeans are being pulled along by public opinion and aren't considering their genuine interests," one senior Israeli official said. The Israeli official was kind enough to suggest to Europeans and Americans what their ‘genuine interests’ are. Seemingly, the Israeli always know better.
The Israeli official was also clever enough to envisage a tidal wave of mistrust between the West and its Middle Eastern puppet regimes. "Even if they (the Westerners) are critical of Mubarak, they have to make their friends (the puppets) feel that they're not alone. Jordan and Saudi Arabia see the reactions in the West, how everyone is abandoning Mubarak, and this will have very serious implications,"
The senior official is obviously correct -- We are indeed, entering a new era : Corrupted regimes in the Middle East are about to crumble, one after the other, as people all across the region rise up. Those in the West who were stupid enough to dismiss the Palestinian Intifada are now waking up to the reality of a regional Intifada. And the collapse of American puppet regimes in the region could dramatically affect global economies and energy prices, bringing Europe and America to their knees.
For years I have been arguing that Palestinians are at the forefront of the battle for humanity; alone, they faced Zionist evil. However, the time has changed, and it isn’t just Gaza or the West Bank anymore -- Today it is Cairo and Amman, and tomorrow, as energy prices sore beyond affordability, it could well be any Western capital.
We are all Palestinians, because we share the same enemy. We are all tired of Zionist driven expansionist wars. We don’t want ‘Israeli officials’ to preach to us about Western interests. We don’t want to see our elected politicians dancing to the Jewish Lobby’s irritating tune. It is time to emancipate humanity from the Zionist grip.
Source
Apparently Jerusalem seeks to convince its allies that it is in the ‘West's interest’ to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. In other words, Israel urges the ‘Goyim’ to ‘keep being subservient to Jerusalem’. Jerusalem was foolish enough to admit that Mubarak was there to serve Israeli and ‘Western’ interests.
Over the weekend Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries to restrain their condemnation of President Hosni Mubarak to “preserve stability in the region.”
Let’s all be clear about it : as far as Israelis are concerned, ‘stability in the region’ means a few million Jews living in ‘safety’ on Palestinian land, at the expense of one billion Muslims. But I guess that this Zionist militant expansionist fantasy is crumbling in front of our eyes now.
Apparently the Israelis detect some confusion within Western capitals : "The Americans and the Europeans are being pulled along by public opinion and aren't considering their genuine interests," one senior Israeli official said. The Israeli official was kind enough to suggest to Europeans and Americans what their ‘genuine interests’ are. Seemingly, the Israeli always know better.
The Israeli official was also clever enough to envisage a tidal wave of mistrust between the West and its Middle Eastern puppet regimes. "Even if they (the Westerners) are critical of Mubarak, they have to make their friends (the puppets) feel that they're not alone. Jordan and Saudi Arabia see the reactions in the West, how everyone is abandoning Mubarak, and this will have very serious implications,"
The senior official is obviously correct -- We are indeed, entering a new era : Corrupted regimes in the Middle East are about to crumble, one after the other, as people all across the region rise up. Those in the West who were stupid enough to dismiss the Palestinian Intifada are now waking up to the reality of a regional Intifada. And the collapse of American puppet regimes in the region could dramatically affect global economies and energy prices, bringing Europe and America to their knees.
For years I have been arguing that Palestinians are at the forefront of the battle for humanity; alone, they faced Zionist evil. However, the time has changed, and it isn’t just Gaza or the West Bank anymore -- Today it is Cairo and Amman, and tomorrow, as energy prices sore beyond affordability, it could well be any Western capital.
We are all Palestinians, because we share the same enemy. We are all tired of Zionist driven expansionist wars. We don’t want ‘Israeli officials’ to preach to us about Western interests. We don’t want to see our elected politicians dancing to the Jewish Lobby’s irritating tune. It is time to emancipate humanity from the Zionist grip.
Source
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