Tag: corporate media

Original article, By Rob Sewell (vice-chair, London Central, National Union of Journalists), via Socialist Appeal (UK):

The present struggle of construction workers in defence of their national agreement on terms and conditions has been deliberately distorted by the British media and press. One not unexpected aspect of the recent wave of wildcat strikes in the construction industry has been the way that the media has reported them.

Our Corporate Media is on a mission.  It is a mission of concern for the American people.  It is a mission to enlighten ALL of us to the FACT that the world is not a SAFE place.  

Teh World Is To Be Feared!  No, really.  

Not only can bad things happen to YOU when you are out there in the world, but bad things can happen when bad people want to do bad things to YOU!  I’m positive!

The Corporate Media told me so.  Why just today……

By now most people have seen the video where Bush is shunned at the G20 summit. The first time I saw it, I caught what apparently most other people didn’t. This incident was deliberately staged.

Bush did not even try to shake anyone’s hand. There was no incidence of rebuff. He was ignoring them as much as they were ignoring him.

It worked, at first. The progressive community reacted viscerally, with glee and schadenfreude at Bush’s apparently “new” role at the summit as “The Pet Goat”. What people don’t seem to quite get is that Bush has BEEN the pet goat ever since he sat down to read it to a classroom full of children on September 11th.

What you should be asking yourself instead is how many of those people were still willing to shake Bush’s hand after he invaded Iraq? In fact, how many of them are fully complicit either by assistance or inaction in the war crimes of the Bush administration?



The answer is ALL OF THEM. This incident was designed to attach all of the world’s rage and frustration directly to Bush, “The Pet Goat”. So when Bush goes away, so does all the reason for the frustration and rage, right? WRONG.

Original article via dissidentvoice.org.  Sub-headed: Interview with Mickey Z.

While the corporate media are dancing on Eliot Spitzer’s political grave, and the supposedly lefty blogs are inventing new and exciting sludge bombs to sling at the Democrat they love to demonize, McClatchy has this:

Eight U.S. service members were killed in two attacks today in Iraq, making it the deadliest day against the military this year, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. At least 11 Iraqis also were killed Monday in a surge of attacks throughout the country.

Five of the Americans died when a suicide bomber walked up to a foot patrol in Baghdad and self-detonated. The others died while on a patrol in Diyala province, the official said. He asked not to be identified as he isn’t an official spokesman.

The rash of attacks against a spectrum of targets raised new questions about whether the U.S. can draw down its presence from the current buildup to levels of about a year ago.

To some, the most disturbing part of this video is Bush killing time while waiting for John McCain by doing a stupid little dance. But we know Bush is a nincompoop. What I find most disturbing- what I’ve always found most disturbing about his press appearances- is the seeming giddy laughter whenever he makes an insipid little “joke.” These are supposed to be professional journalists. Do they really find him funny? Or are they so shallow and simple-minded that proximity to a “president” makes them fawn, babble, and drool? I guess we’ll find out, next year. And I’m not sure which is worse.

You’re waking up to the exciting news that a falling satellite has been shot out of the sky, thus preventing a potentially dangerous crash landing, with a potentially dangerous release of toxic gas. The Pentagon is proudly showing off the video. On television, it will likely be the most played clip of the day. You can expect much hyperventilated cheerleading from the usual professional hairpieces. But there’s one aspect to the story that I don’t expect the TV news to cover. It’s tucked in this New York Times report:

Completing a mission in which an interceptor designed for missile defense was used for the first time to attack a satellite, the Lake Erie, an Aegis-class cruiser, fired a single missile just before 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the missile hit the satellite as it traveled at more than 17,000 miles per hour, the Pentagon said in its official announcement.

It almost sounds good. As if the most expensive weapons system in human history was finally being put to positive use. But what if that was the purpose, all along? Two days ago, the science journal Nature had this:

A plan by the US government to shoot down an out-of-control spy satellite has been described as a cynical tit-for-tat move in response to China doing the same last year. Scientists and arms-control experts fear that the operation will create damaging debris and weaken international efforts to ban space weaponry.

On 14 February, officials from the Pentagon, White House and NASA announced plans to use a ship-based missile to strike the satellite as it passes roughly 240 kilometres overhead. The satellite, which belongs to the National Reconnaissance Office in Virginia, dropped out of control after its launch in December 2006, and would re-enter Earth’s atmosphere around early March if no action were taken.

The strike is necessary to prevent the dispersal of around 450 kilograms of hazardous hydrazine thruster fuel onboard, according to James Jeffrey, assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser. If the fuel survived re-entry, it could be dispersed over an area of roughly 20,000 square metres, although “the likelihood of the satellite falling in a populated area is small,” he says. “Nevertheless, if the satellite did fall in a populated area, there was the possibility of death or injury to human beings.” The Pentagon denies that the shoot-down is to protect classified technologies on the satellite.

But scientists familiar with both satellite re-entry and the US missile defence system question the decision. The chances that the tank, which is 1 metre in diameter, will survive and strike land are extremely small, says Geoffrey Forden, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “Most likely it will land in the ocean,” he says. The reasons given for the plan “don’t sound too credible to me”, he adds. “I think they’re doing it mainly to tell the Chinese that we can blow up a satellite too,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “This gives the US cover to carry out a test.”

And I’m guessing that the corporate media will do their job to ensure that such cover is provided.