The hidden hand of the Pentagon...

[lady amarant]

Okay, so this has very little to do with Gender Issues, but aaaaaaaargh!!! it gets to me. And I know we all know that this happens, but for it to be so in your face as to make  mainstream news?! And then I ask, with tears in my eyes: Surely this kind of manipulation is against the law, and should be prosecutable in the face of evidence!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?em&ex=1208923200&en=a4ee1c89d3b31d22&ei=5087%0A

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded "the gulag of our times" by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration's communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as "military analysts" whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

~Simone.

[lisagurl]

Perhaps this belongs in politics. The US government has learned a lot from private industry marketing. Germany exploited it and it was called propaganda. Psychology learned how to manipulate people and it it used in marketing. The only thing we can do is be suspicious of any information coming from one source or a group that has the same interests. It takes independent research on the part of the individual to get a clearer picture. Then there is always things that we will never know, all we can do is be careful and diligent.

[lady amarant]

Good point about the section. Hopefully some nice mod will come along and move it into the correct one...

~Simone.

[tekla]

If you getting your news from these sources, then you deserve what you get, which is lies and propaganda.

[Ell]

Surely this kind of manipulation is against the law, and should be prosecutable in the face of evidence!

~Simone.

what is the law?

the law is any rule that can be backed and supported by force. note that there isn't much discussion of Nazis being tried for war crimes during the time that the Nazis were in power.

-ell

[RebeccaFog]

You're just finding this out?

I keep telling everyone that we need NATO and Canada to come free us.


I'm not kidding.

Some of our filthy [mis]representatives saw evidence of the torturing and did nothing because they are spineless, inhuman beasts not worthy of having the contents of an outhouse dumped on their heads.

This isn't funny

[tekla]

The major media in the US is owned by large corporations, and they do their master's bidding.

[RebeccaFog]

Maybe all those mexican illegals can help us since no one else will (including us).

[tekla]

There are so many things going on right now, none of which are covered by the MSM, largely because they don't fit the profile.  Don't cover the food riots that have happened in several places around the world, might be bad for Archer-Daniels-Midland ya know.  Along with the fact that over the last year the price of food has risen 80% in some areas, and even in the USA its up a solid 15%.

Don't cover the problems of the banks, might offend them as a advertiser.  So if Bank of America loses 6 BILLION dollars, and its profits fall 77% almost overnight, well, don't want to cause a run on the bank right?

[lady amarant]

Like I said, I'm well aware of how skewed the news is, but I found it surprising for this sort of thing, once the kind of article you'd only find at places like Alternet or Indymedia, to pop up in mainstream news, and I just thought it hopeful that it might spur some action.

~Simone, ever the hopelessly naive optimist.

Posted on: 21 April 2008, 14:20:28

There are so many things going on right now, none of which are covered by the MSM, largely because they don't fit the profile.  Don't cover the food riots that have happened in several places around the world, might be bad for Archer-Daniels-Midland ya know.  Along with the fact that over the last year the price of food has risen 80% in some areas, and even in the USA its up a solid 15%.

Don't cover the problems of the banks, might offend them as a advertiser.  So if Bank of America loses 6 BILLION dollars, and its profits fall 77% almost overnight, well, don't want to cause a run on the bank right?

Interesting fact: The first quarter of 2008 has seen the hugest losses in history for the insurance industry. I used to eat on GBP 10 a week (vegan=cheap), now I'm lucky if I get through on 16. And today the Bank of England announced a 50 BILLION GBP bailout for the banks. Now if that's not desperate, I don't know what is...

~Simone.

[lisagurl]

The major media in the US is owned by large corporations, and they do their master's bidding.

The Internet is also provided by corporations.

[tekla]

Provided for is different than controlling content, though they have been making a might effort to do so.

[NicholeW.]

BOA announced a loss of $8 billion. NPR news today.

The 80% figure, according to NPR is what people are spending in the so-called third world of their net income on food. UK, EU and USA about 15% of income on 'take-home' groceries. When you factor in restaurants I would imagine that the 15% figure is greater. All this on 'Marketplace' on NPR Thursday a.m.

I don't do news a lot, but I do have a basic trust for NPR & BBC that I don't have for most papers, NYT included. IMO, tekla and lisagurl seem about right. Where you get it is important. I suspect if the 'free press' were to be free of the Rupert Murdoch's and Gannett, etc, the news might well be a lot different, especially in USA.

Americans may be the least well-informed people in the world. Often why we seem to think that 'everyone' is against us. Everyone else often has a much clearer picture of just what the American government is about than do Americans.

N~

[RebeccaFog]

Yeah, americans are chumps.  heh heh.




oh, wait a minute... I'm american.  D'oh!

[tekla]

Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the  lives of six people.  There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina  Faso, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco,  Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that  last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have  risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased  demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal  crops.

full article at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley04212008.html

[RebeccaFog]

I was never sure that using food for fuel was a good idea.


    I saw a guy on TV who was working on a cancer cure and discovered a process to burn salt water as if it were gasoline with no pollution.  Then he went back to his cancer project.  I hope someone normal gets permission to look at his discovery.  Someone who will be socially conscious.

[tekla]

burn salt water as if it were gasoline with no pollution.

This is not possible.  All electo-chemical reactions have by-products.  Some are worse than others.  But at some level, all are bad.  You can't get something for nothing. 

[RebeccaFog]

I don't know.  I'm not a scientist.  Maybe they just said there were no bad by products.

The guy wants to help humans, not kill them.  Though, if it were me, I'd prefer to do the reverse.   >

[tekla]

The trouble is that all this stuff is done on a single use theory.  OK, so you use fuel cells, and those fuel cells give off say a gallon of water for every 100 miles you drive.  So, no real bad.  Not until you have to look at say, LA or NYC, and then how much water is being given off?  Every day, day in and day out, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.  Now we are dealing with a whole 'nother level of numbers.

[NicholeW.]

Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the  lives of six people.  There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina  Faso, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco,  Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that  last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have  risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased  demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal  crops.

full article at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley04212008.html

I wasn't arguing your figures, except the 6 billion. It was actually higher than you said.

Yes, I've been hearing on BBC and on NPR about food-riots. Certainly no argument there. Most people will put up with a lot, but before they get too weak to do anything about it most people will protest their own starvation.

I think that the 70s-80s right-wing thinker, Michael Novak, may be shown very soon that he was wrong when he argued that the greed that explicitly drives capitalism is a good thing. Food soaring, gasoline soaring, jobs declining, housing going bust and banks and insurance companies taking large hits along with airlines? That's a whole lot of threatened or gone jobs in the industrial states and already the middle class has disappeared with basically wealthy and poor the two divisions.

The greed may have gotten totally out-of-hand. Perhaps something better, or maybe just different, is on the way.

N~