Sunday, February 20, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Helen Thomas: Jews didn't have to leave Europe following Holocaust
In CNN interview, veteran reporter refuses to call comments urging Jews to leave Israel and return to Europe insensitive, says Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is the real insensitivity.
The Jews did not have to leave Germany and Poland following the Holocaust since they were not being persecuted anymore, former White House correspondent Helen Thomas said in an interview on Thursday, adding that the Jews had no right to take other people's land.
Thomas, 90, stepped down from her job as a columnist for Hearst News Service in June of last year after a rabbi and independent filmmaker videotaped her outside the White House calling on Israelis to get "out of Palestine."
She gave up her front row seat in the White House press room, where she had aimed often pointed questions at 10 presidents, going back to Eisenhower.
Speaking of the controversial comments in an interview with CNN's Joy Behar on Thursday, Thomas said she did not regret her comments, saying that the Jews did not have to go anywhere after the Holocaust.
"There hasn't been persecution since that, since World War II. You don’t take other people's land," Thomas said in reference to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.
When Behar asked Thomas if she realized that her comment regarding sending the Jews back to Poland and Germany were insensitive in view of the past the Jews share with those countries, the former correspondent said: "I also said Russia."
"Well Russia, they had their share of anti-Semitic pogroms," the CNN interviewer said, to which Thomas answered: "They also had 25 million who died in World War II…. More than that."
"They didn't have to go anywhere really, because they weren’t being persecuted anymore but they were taking other people's land," Thomas said, adding of the perceived insensitivity of her comments by saying: "Count how many Palestinians are in jails now, taken from their homes, a million refugees, is that sensitive?"
Responding to Behar's question whether or not she considered herself to be anti-Semitic, Thomas said: "Hell no! I'm a Semite…of Arab background," and saying of the Jews: "They're not Semites. I mean, most of them are from Europe."
Thomas also referred to the widespread uproar which her comments caused, saying she "didn't realize it would ring that many bells, because they've [the Jews] been free ever since."
When asked by Behar how would she revise her comments in view of the reactions they garnered, Thomas said: "Why do they have to go anywhere? They aren't being persecuted! They don't have the right to take other people's land. Under international law occupied land should not be annexed," Thomas said.
The former White House correspondent did, however, say she did not accurately gauge the backlash to her comments, saying that there was a change they got "me in trouble, but everything is distorted. But I don't care. "
"We have organized lobbyists in favor of Israel, you can't open your mouth. I can call the president of the United States anything in the book, but you say one thing about Israel and you're off limits," Thomas said.
"I have regrets that everyone misinterpreted it and distorted it, and you have the Ari Fleshcer and the Abe Foxman distorting everything, so I certainly knew that and I should of kept my mouth shut, probably."
Source
The Jews did not have to leave Germany and Poland following the Holocaust since they were not being persecuted anymore, former White House correspondent Helen Thomas said in an interview on Thursday, adding that the Jews had no right to take other people's land.
Thomas, 90, stepped down from her job as a columnist for Hearst News Service in June of last year after a rabbi and independent filmmaker videotaped her outside the White House calling on Israelis to get "out of Palestine."
She gave up her front row seat in the White House press room, where she had aimed often pointed questions at 10 presidents, going back to Eisenhower.
Speaking of the controversial comments in an interview with CNN's Joy Behar on Thursday, Thomas said she did not regret her comments, saying that the Jews did not have to go anywhere after the Holocaust.
"There hasn't been persecution since that, since World War II. You don’t take other people's land," Thomas said in reference to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.
When Behar asked Thomas if she realized that her comment regarding sending the Jews back to Poland and Germany were insensitive in view of the past the Jews share with those countries, the former correspondent said: "I also said Russia."
"Well Russia, they had their share of anti-Semitic pogroms," the CNN interviewer said, to which Thomas answered: "They also had 25 million who died in World War II…. More than that."
"They didn't have to go anywhere really, because they weren’t being persecuted anymore but they were taking other people's land," Thomas said, adding of the perceived insensitivity of her comments by saying: "Count how many Palestinians are in jails now, taken from their homes, a million refugees, is that sensitive?"
Responding to Behar's question whether or not she considered herself to be anti-Semitic, Thomas said: "Hell no! I'm a Semite…of Arab background," and saying of the Jews: "They're not Semites. I mean, most of them are from Europe."
Thomas also referred to the widespread uproar which her comments caused, saying she "didn't realize it would ring that many bells, because they've [the Jews] been free ever since."
When asked by Behar how would she revise her comments in view of the reactions they garnered, Thomas said: "Why do they have to go anywhere? They aren't being persecuted! They don't have the right to take other people's land. Under international law occupied land should not be annexed," Thomas said.
The former White House correspondent did, however, say she did not accurately gauge the backlash to her comments, saying that there was a change they got "me in trouble, but everything is distorted. But I don't care. "
"We have organized lobbyists in favor of Israel, you can't open your mouth. I can call the president of the United States anything in the book, but you say one thing about Israel and you're off limits," Thomas said.
"I have regrets that everyone misinterpreted it and distorted it, and you have the Ari Fleshcer and the Abe Foxman distorting everything, so I certainly knew that and I should of kept my mouth shut, probably."
Source
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Serious Doubt Cast on FBI's Anthrax Case Against Bruce Ivins
"It is hard to overstate the political significance of the anthrax attacks. For reasons I've described at length, that event played at least as much of a role as the 9/11 attacks in elevating the Terrorism fear levels which, through today, sustain endless wars, massive defense and homeland security budgets, and relentless civil liberties erosions."
"Yesterday, Rep. Holt re-introduced his legislation to create a 9/11-style Commission, complete with subpoena power, with a mandate to review the entire matter. "
BY GLENN GREENWALD
For years, the FBI believed that it had identified the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks -- former Army researcher Steven Hatfill -- only to be forced to acknowledge that he wasn't involved and then pay him $5.8 million for the damage he suffered from those false accusations. In late July, 2008, the FBI announced that, this time, it had identified the Real Perpetrator: Army researcher Bruce Ivins, who had just committed suicide as a result of being subjected to an intense FBI investigation. Ivins' death meant that the FBI's allegations would never be tested in a court of law.
From the start, it was obvious that the FBI's case against Ivins was barely more persuasive than its case against Hatfill had been. The allegations were entirely circumstantial; there was no direct evidence tying Ivins to the mailings; and there were huge, glaring holes in both the FBI's evidentiary and scientific claims. So dubious was the FBI's case that even the nation's most establishment media organs, which instinctively trust federal law enforcement agencies, expressed serious doubts and called for an independent investigation (that included, among many others, the editorial pages ofThe Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal). Mainstream scientific sources were equally skeptical; Nature called for an independent investigation and declared in its editorial headline: "Case Not Closed," while Dr. Alan Pearson, Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation -- representative of numerous experts in the field -- expressed many scientific doubts and also demanded a full independent investigation. I devoted much time to documenting just some of the serious flaws in the FBI's evidentiary claims, as well as the use of anonymous FBI leaks to unquestioning reporters to convince the public of their validity
Read more...
"Yesterday, Rep. Holt re-introduced his legislation to create a 9/11-style Commission, complete with subpoena power, with a mandate to review the entire matter. "
BY GLENN GREENWALD
For years, the FBI believed that it had identified the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks -- former Army researcher Steven Hatfill -- only to be forced to acknowledge that he wasn't involved and then pay him $5.8 million for the damage he suffered from those false accusations. In late July, 2008, the FBI announced that, this time, it had identified the Real Perpetrator: Army researcher Bruce Ivins, who had just committed suicide as a result of being subjected to an intense FBI investigation. Ivins' death meant that the FBI's allegations would never be tested in a court of law.
From the start, it was obvious that the FBI's case against Ivins was barely more persuasive than its case against Hatfill had been. The allegations were entirely circumstantial; there was no direct evidence tying Ivins to the mailings; and there were huge, glaring holes in both the FBI's evidentiary and scientific claims. So dubious was the FBI's case that even the nation's most establishment media organs, which instinctively trust federal law enforcement agencies, expressed serious doubts and called for an independent investigation (that included, among many others, the editorial pages ofThe Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal). Mainstream scientific sources were equally skeptical; Nature called for an independent investigation and declared in its editorial headline: "Case Not Closed," while Dr. Alan Pearson, Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation -- representative of numerous experts in the field -- expressed many scientific doubts and also demanded a full independent investigation. I devoted much time to documenting just some of the serious flaws in the FBI's evidentiary claims, as well as the use of anonymous FBI leaks to unquestioning reporters to convince the public of their validity
Read more...
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The DRESDEN Holocaust
66 YEARS AGO
DRESDEN 1945
The bodies weren't Jewish.
NEVER FORGET!
The dead admonish us to resist denial of the DRESDEN Holocaust!
Source
Friday, February 11, 2011
Are The Federal Reserve’s Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?
What if the greatest scam ever perpetrated was blatantly exposed, and the US media didn’t cover it? Does that mean the scam could keep going? That’s what we are about to find out.
I understand the importance of the new WikiLeaks documents. However, we must not let them distract us from the new information the Federal Reserve was forced to release. Even if WikiLeaks reveals documents from inside a large American bank, as huge as that could be, it will most likely pale in comparison to what we just found out from the one-time peek we got into the inner-workings of the Federal Reserve. This is the Wall Street equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.
I’ve written many reports detailing the crimes of Wall Street during this crisis. The level of fraud, from top to bottom, has been staggering. The lack of accountability and the complete disregard for the rule of law have made me and many of my colleagues extremely cynical and jaded when it comes to new evidence to pile on top of the mountain that we have already gathered. But we must not let our cynicism cloud our vision on the details within this new information.
Just when I thought the banksters couldn’t possibly shock me anymore… they did.
We were finally granted the honor and privilege of finding out the specifics, a limited one-time Federal Reserve view, of a secret taxpayer funded “backdoor bailout” by a small group of unelected bankers. This data release reveals “emergency lending programs” that doled out $12.3 TRILLION in taxpayer money - $3.3 trillion in liquidity, $9 trillion in “other financial arrangements.”
Wait, what? Did you say $12.3 TRILLION tax dollars were thrown around in secrecy by unelected bankers… and Congress didn’t know any of the details?
Yes. The Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves. The original copy of the Constitution spontaneously burst into flames. The ghost of Tom Paine went running, stark raving mad screaming through the halls of Congress.
The Federal Reserve was secretly throwing around our money in unprecedented fashion, and it wasn’t just to the usual suspects like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.; it was to the entire Global Banking Cartel. To central banks throughout the world: Australia, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, England… To the Fed’s foreign primary dealers like Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Royal Bank of Scotland (U.K.), Barclays (U.K.), BNP Paribas (France)… All their Ponzi players were “gifted.” All the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations got their cut.
Talk about the ransacking and burning of Rome! Sayonara American middle class…
If you still had any question as to whether or not the United States is now the world’s preeminent banana republic, the final verdict was just delivered and the decision was unanimous. The ayes have it.
Any fairytale notions that we are living in a nation built on the rule of law and of the global economy being based on free market principles has now been exposed as just that, a fairytale. This moment is equivalent to everyone in Vatican City being told, by the Pope, that God is dead.
I’ve been arguing for years that the market is rigged and that the major Wall Street firms are elaborate Ponzi schemes, as have many other people who built their beliefs on rational thought, reasoned logic and evidence. We already came to this conclusion by doing the research and connecting the dots. But now, even our strongest skeptics and the most ardent Wall Street supporters have it all laid out in front of them, on FEDERAL RESERVE SPREADSHEETS.
Even the Financial Times, which named Lloyd Blankfein its 2009 person of the year, reacted by reporting this: “The initial reactions were shock at the breadth of lending, particularly to foreign firms. But the details paint a bleaker and even more disturbing picture.”
Yes, the emperor doesn’t have any clothes. God is, indeed, dead. But, for the moment at least, the illusion continues to hold power. How is this possible?
To start with, as always, the US television “news” media (propaganda) networks just glossed over the whole thing - nothing to see here, just move along, back after a message from our sponsors… Other than that obvious reason, I’ve come to the realization that the Federal Reserve’s crimes are so big, so huge in scale, it is very hard for people to even wrap their head around it and comprehend what has happened here.
Think about it. In just this one peek we got at its operations, we learned that the Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, without Congressional input.
The audacity and absurdity of it all is mind boggling…
Based on many conversations I’ve had with people, it seems that the average person doesn’t comprehend how much a trillion dollars is, let alone 12.3 trillion. You might as well just say 12.3 gazillion, because people don’t grasp a number that large, nor do they understand what would be possible if that money was used in other ways.
Can you imagine what we could do to restructure society with $12.3 trillion? Think about that…
People also can’t grasp the colossal crime committed because they keep hearing the word “loans.” People think of the loans they get. You borrow money, you pay it back with interest, no big deal.
That’s not what happened here. The Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, using the American people as collateral, demanding nothing in return, other than a bunch of toxic assets in some cases. They only gave this money to a select group of insiders, at a time when very few had any money because all these same insiders and speculators crashed the system.
Do you get that? The very people most responsible for crashing the system, were then rewarded with trillions of our dollars. This gave that select group of insiders unlimited power to seize control of assets and have unprecedented leverage over almost everything within their economies - crony capitalism on steroids.
This was a hostile world takeover orchestrated through economic attacks by a very small group of unelected global bankers. They paralyzed the system, then were given the power to recreate it according to their own desires. No free market, no democracy of any kind. All done in secrecy. In the process, they gave themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses and impoverished tens of millions of people - they have put into motion a system that will inevitably collapse again and utterly destroy the very existence of what is left of an economic middle class.
That is not hyperbole. That is what happened.
We are talking about trillions of dollars secretly pumped into global banks, handpicked by a small select group of bankers themselves. All for the benefit of those bankers, and at the expense of everyone else. People can’t even comprehend what that means and the severe consequences that it entails, which we have only just begun to experience.
Let me sum it up for you: The American Dream is O-V-E-R.
Welcome to the neo-feudal-fascist state.
People throughout the world who keep using the dollar are either A) Part of the scam; B) Oblivious to reality; C) Believe that US military power will be able to maintain the value of an otherwise worthless currency; D) All of the above.
No matter which way you look at it, we are all in serious trouble!
If you are an elected official, (I know at least 17 of you subscribe to my newsletter) and you believe in the oath you took upon taking office, you must immediately demand a full audit of the Federal Reserve and have Ben Bernanke and the entire Federal Reserve Board detained. If you are not going to do that, you deserve to have the words “Irrelevant Puppet” tattooed across your forehead.
Yes, those are obviously strong words, but they are the truth.
Read more...
I understand the importance of the new WikiLeaks documents. However, we must not let them distract us from the new information the Federal Reserve was forced to release. Even if WikiLeaks reveals documents from inside a large American bank, as huge as that could be, it will most likely pale in comparison to what we just found out from the one-time peek we got into the inner-workings of the Federal Reserve. This is the Wall Street equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.
I’ve written many reports detailing the crimes of Wall Street during this crisis. The level of fraud, from top to bottom, has been staggering. The lack of accountability and the complete disregard for the rule of law have made me and many of my colleagues extremely cynical and jaded when it comes to new evidence to pile on top of the mountain that we have already gathered. But we must not let our cynicism cloud our vision on the details within this new information.
Just when I thought the banksters couldn’t possibly shock me anymore… they did.
We were finally granted the honor and privilege of finding out the specifics, a limited one-time Federal Reserve view, of a secret taxpayer funded “backdoor bailout” by a small group of unelected bankers. This data release reveals “emergency lending programs” that doled out $12.3 TRILLION in taxpayer money - $3.3 trillion in liquidity, $9 trillion in “other financial arrangements.”
Wait, what? Did you say $12.3 TRILLION tax dollars were thrown around in secrecy by unelected bankers… and Congress didn’t know any of the details?
Yes. The Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves. The original copy of the Constitution spontaneously burst into flames. The ghost of Tom Paine went running, stark raving mad screaming through the halls of Congress.
The Federal Reserve was secretly throwing around our money in unprecedented fashion, and it wasn’t just to the usual suspects like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.; it was to the entire Global Banking Cartel. To central banks throughout the world: Australia, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, England… To the Fed’s foreign primary dealers like Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Royal Bank of Scotland (U.K.), Barclays (U.K.), BNP Paribas (France)… All their Ponzi players were “gifted.” All the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations got their cut.
Talk about the ransacking and burning of Rome! Sayonara American middle class…
If you still had any question as to whether or not the United States is now the world’s preeminent banana republic, the final verdict was just delivered and the decision was unanimous. The ayes have it.
Any fairytale notions that we are living in a nation built on the rule of law and of the global economy being based on free market principles has now been exposed as just that, a fairytale. This moment is equivalent to everyone in Vatican City being told, by the Pope, that God is dead.
I’ve been arguing for years that the market is rigged and that the major Wall Street firms are elaborate Ponzi schemes, as have many other people who built their beliefs on rational thought, reasoned logic and evidence. We already came to this conclusion by doing the research and connecting the dots. But now, even our strongest skeptics and the most ardent Wall Street supporters have it all laid out in front of them, on FEDERAL RESERVE SPREADSHEETS.
Even the Financial Times, which named Lloyd Blankfein its 2009 person of the year, reacted by reporting this: “The initial reactions were shock at the breadth of lending, particularly to foreign firms. But the details paint a bleaker and even more disturbing picture.”
Yes, the emperor doesn’t have any clothes. God is, indeed, dead. But, for the moment at least, the illusion continues to hold power. How is this possible?
To start with, as always, the US television “news” media (propaganda) networks just glossed over the whole thing - nothing to see here, just move along, back after a message from our sponsors… Other than that obvious reason, I’ve come to the realization that the Federal Reserve’s crimes are so big, so huge in scale, it is very hard for people to even wrap their head around it and comprehend what has happened here.
Think about it. In just this one peek we got at its operations, we learned that the Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, without Congressional input.
The audacity and absurdity of it all is mind boggling…
Based on many conversations I’ve had with people, it seems that the average person doesn’t comprehend how much a trillion dollars is, let alone 12.3 trillion. You might as well just say 12.3 gazillion, because people don’t grasp a number that large, nor do they understand what would be possible if that money was used in other ways.
Can you imagine what we could do to restructure society with $12.3 trillion? Think about that…
People also can’t grasp the colossal crime committed because they keep hearing the word “loans.” People think of the loans they get. You borrow money, you pay it back with interest, no big deal.
That’s not what happened here. The Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, using the American people as collateral, demanding nothing in return, other than a bunch of toxic assets in some cases. They only gave this money to a select group of insiders, at a time when very few had any money because all these same insiders and speculators crashed the system.
Do you get that? The very people most responsible for crashing the system, were then rewarded with trillions of our dollars. This gave that select group of insiders unlimited power to seize control of assets and have unprecedented leverage over almost everything within their economies - crony capitalism on steroids.
This was a hostile world takeover orchestrated through economic attacks by a very small group of unelected global bankers. They paralyzed the system, then were given the power to recreate it according to their own desires. No free market, no democracy of any kind. All done in secrecy. In the process, they gave themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses and impoverished tens of millions of people - they have put into motion a system that will inevitably collapse again and utterly destroy the very existence of what is left of an economic middle class.
That is not hyperbole. That is what happened.
We are talking about trillions of dollars secretly pumped into global banks, handpicked by a small select group of bankers themselves. All for the benefit of those bankers, and at the expense of everyone else. People can’t even comprehend what that means and the severe consequences that it entails, which we have only just begun to experience.
Let me sum it up for you: The American Dream is O-V-E-R.
Welcome to the neo-feudal-fascist state.
People throughout the world who keep using the dollar are either A) Part of the scam; B) Oblivious to reality; C) Believe that US military power will be able to maintain the value of an otherwise worthless currency; D) All of the above.
No matter which way you look at it, we are all in serious trouble!
If you are an elected official, (I know at least 17 of you subscribe to my newsletter) and you believe in the oath you took upon taking office, you must immediately demand a full audit of the Federal Reserve and have Ben Bernanke and the entire Federal Reserve Board detained. If you are not going to do that, you deserve to have the words “Irrelevant Puppet” tattooed across your forehead.
Yes, those are obviously strong words, but they are the truth.
Read more...
FOX NEWS INSIDER: “Stuff Is Just Made Up”
by Eric Boehlert
Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”
Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.
“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”
And that’s the word from inside Fox News.
Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.
“They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,” says the source. But it’s all a well-orchestrated lie, according this former insider. It’s a lie that permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.
“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks,” says the source. “And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”
The source explains:
“Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content. The content that wasn’t ‘news,’ they didn’t care what we did with as long as it was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything—anything--that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”
What if Fox News staffers aren’t instinctively conservative or don’t have an intuitive feeling for what the spin on a story should be? “My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead,” the source explains. “You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”
The source recalls how Fox News changed over time:
“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots. CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.
“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.
Read more...
Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”
Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.
“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”
And that’s the word from inside Fox News.
Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.
“They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,” says the source. But it’s all a well-orchestrated lie, according this former insider. It’s a lie that permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.
“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks,” says the source. “And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”
The source explains:
“Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content. The content that wasn’t ‘news,’ they didn’t care what we did with as long as it was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything—anything--that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”
What if Fox News staffers aren’t instinctively conservative or don’t have an intuitive feeling for what the spin on a story should be? “My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead,” the source explains. “You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”
The source recalls how Fox News changed over time:
“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots. CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.
“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.
Read more...
Thursday, February 10, 2011
You Should Have a Gun
by Jimulacrum
You should have a gun. You really should.
Politicians and news personalities and other talking heads will often tell you that you shouldn’t have a gun. They’ll tell you that guns don’t need to be useful beyond the narrow scope of hunting and personal defense. They’ll tell you that the Second Amendment must have limits so that criminals and maniacs and terrorists can’t have high-capacity magazines and machine guns.
But hunting and self-defense are two secondary reasons why the government isn’t permitted to infringe on your right, as an American citizen, to bear arms. In fact, let’s review the exact text of the Second Amendment right now:
It doesn’t say anything about hunting. It doesn’t say anything about personal defense either. It contains two major parts: a justification of the right, and an unqualified declaration of the right.
The justification explains that the importance of this right is that is allows for local, organized defense (though nowhere does it restrict the right to this purpose). It is not referring to the National Guard of each state. It is referring to civilians maintaining the ability to organize themselves into effective military units if the need should arise.
The declaration does not specify what kind of arms, nor does it provide any room for exception to the rule. The word infringe does not include any connotation of flexibility. It means, “to encroach upon,” with its origins in a Latin word meaning “to damage, break off.” Any baby-step in the direction of restricting possession and carrying of arms of any kind is an infringement of the right.
It is not an oversight that the amendment was written this way. The founders of the United States were rebels and revolutionaries. Access to weapons is what allowed them to defend their country from the theft and oppression of George III.
It’s important to note here that monarchy was a very long-standing form of government as of the late 18th century. The founders were educated people who were facing massive disillusionment with a system that had been in place from time immemorial. The Second Amendment is a recognition that even the most trusted, powerful institutions around us can turn out be destructive elements that need to be stood down. They knew it could happen even in this well-considered arrangement they had created themselves.
That is why the people of the United States have a right—second only to free speech, free religion, free assembly, and redress of grievances—to own and to carry weapons of their choosing, with no limits. Everything from slingshots to missiles to laser rifles is forbidden to the government to restrict. And that right exists primarily so that we may defend ourselves against the government if it becomes necessary, with the same level of force that the government can employ.
Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the past few decades, there’s no way you could not have noticed the government’s complete lack of impunity in its actions. There’s no way you could not have noticed that, year after year, it looks a lot more like a permanent ruling class than any kind of democracy. There’s no way you could not have noticed that something has gone awry with the founders’ great experiment.
Governments cannot be trusted to correct themselves once they’ve gone bad. Human history does not contain any examples of that. Governing bodies exist to last indefinitely, so that’s what they do—preserve the structure of rule. Sometimes, when they’re acting badly enough, that preservation can take some really ugly forms. It can kill and destroy with an unimaginable ferocity. Human history is filled with examples of this.
Unarmed citizens command no authority and present potential government thugs no deterrent to abuse. Armed citizens represent a power to be reckoned with; any large-scale assault upon them risks running into effective resistance.
No one is saying you should keep an automatic rifle loaded under your bed, ready and waiting to be brought into battle. There’s no call to attack the government. There’s no need to join a militia if you don’t want to.
But you should have a gun, and you should learn to use, store, and maintain it properly. You should assert and protect your and your fellow citizens’ right to keep and bear arms. And you should never forget why.
Source
You should have a gun. You really should.
Politicians and news personalities and other talking heads will often tell you that you shouldn’t have a gun. They’ll tell you that guns don’t need to be useful beyond the narrow scope of hunting and personal defense. They’ll tell you that the Second Amendment must have limits so that criminals and maniacs and terrorists can’t have high-capacity magazines and machine guns.
But hunting and self-defense are two secondary reasons why the government isn’t permitted to infringe on your right, as an American citizen, to bear arms. In fact, let’s review the exact text of the Second Amendment right now:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
It doesn’t say anything about hunting. It doesn’t say anything about personal defense either. It contains two major parts: a justification of the right, and an unqualified declaration of the right.
The justification explains that the importance of this right is that is allows for local, organized defense (though nowhere does it restrict the right to this purpose). It is not referring to the National Guard of each state. It is referring to civilians maintaining the ability to organize themselves into effective military units if the need should arise.
The declaration does not specify what kind of arms, nor does it provide any room for exception to the rule. The word infringe does not include any connotation of flexibility. It means, “to encroach upon,” with its origins in a Latin word meaning “to damage, break off.” Any baby-step in the direction of restricting possession and carrying of arms of any kind is an infringement of the right.
It is not an oversight that the amendment was written this way. The founders of the United States were rebels and revolutionaries. Access to weapons is what allowed them to defend their country from the theft and oppression of George III.
It’s important to note here that monarchy was a very long-standing form of government as of the late 18th century. The founders were educated people who were facing massive disillusionment with a system that had been in place from time immemorial. The Second Amendment is a recognition that even the most trusted, powerful institutions around us can turn out be destructive elements that need to be stood down. They knew it could happen even in this well-considered arrangement they had created themselves.
That is why the people of the United States have a right—second only to free speech, free religion, free assembly, and redress of grievances—to own and to carry weapons of their choosing, with no limits. Everything from slingshots to missiles to laser rifles is forbidden to the government to restrict. And that right exists primarily so that we may defend ourselves against the government if it becomes necessary, with the same level of force that the government can employ.
Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the past few decades, there’s no way you could not have noticed the government’s complete lack of impunity in its actions. There’s no way you could not have noticed that, year after year, it looks a lot more like a permanent ruling class than any kind of democracy. There’s no way you could not have noticed that something has gone awry with the founders’ great experiment.
Governments cannot be trusted to correct themselves once they’ve gone bad. Human history does not contain any examples of that. Governing bodies exist to last indefinitely, so that’s what they do—preserve the structure of rule. Sometimes, when they’re acting badly enough, that preservation can take some really ugly forms. It can kill and destroy with an unimaginable ferocity. Human history is filled with examples of this.
Unarmed citizens command no authority and present potential government thugs no deterrent to abuse. Armed citizens represent a power to be reckoned with; any large-scale assault upon them risks running into effective resistance.
No one is saying you should keep an automatic rifle loaded under your bed, ready and waiting to be brought into battle. There’s no call to attack the government. There’s no need to join a militia if you don’t want to.
But you should have a gun, and you should learn to use, store, and maintain it properly. You should assert and protect your and your fellow citizens’ right to keep and bear arms. And you should never forget why.
Source
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