Only the most ignorant consider Fox News to be a legitimate news network. And when it comes to issues dealing with terrorism and Islam, Fox News is not only a font of disinformation and blatant propaganda but also flat out lies. Continue reading
Press freedom has been under attack with the deaths in Paris of nine Charlie Hebdo employees, including editor Stephane Charbonnier, and the continued incarceration in Cairo of three Al Jazeera journalists. The circumstances of the victimization of the journalists are starkly different. Continue reading
HarperCollins says it’s sorry. It says it regrets not including Israel on a map of the Middle East in an atlas it published and distributed in the Middle East. It says all remaining copies of the atlas will be pulped. Continue reading
History will mark 2014 as the year of shifting global alliances and the beginning of the end of America’s self-styled unipolar dominance under the rubric of the “New American Century.” The corporate media is largely using the same “bucket list” of 2014’s most memorable events but the relative overall importance of these news stories are in the eyes of the beholder. Continue reading
Wow! After listening to the Stephen Harper’s interview with Peter Mansbridge and now having listened to Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird’s interview with Evan Solomon (CBC), it is apparent that they both have their talking points down pat. They could have exchanged places and the comments would have come out pretty much the same. Continue reading
It is the time of year for the mainstream media to make its lists, check them twice with the pundits, and find out who is naughty and who is nice. While not officially a year end review, I have recently commented on Evan Solomon’s interview with General Breedlove in which mostly softball questions without curves or spins were gently lobbed at the General—who did a reasonably intelligent job of responding considering the knuckleball attempts on some of the questions.(1) The next year end interview I viewed was between Peter Mansbridge, CBC’s senior correspondent, and Stephen Harper, Canada’s neo-Conservative head of state. As with the former interview, the Mansbridge interview was rather innocuous, with responses essentially reflecting Conservative canards about the economy, climate change, and foreign affairs. Continue reading
According to Stars & Stripes, United States Air Force Captain William Dubois—30 years old—was killed when the F-16 he was piloting on a mission against the Islamic State crashed. Marine Lance Cpl. Sean Neal, 19, of Riverside, California died in Iraq from a noncombat related injury. Marine Cpl. Jordan Spears, 21, of Memphis, Ind., was lost at sea while conducting flight operations in the North Arabian Gulf. Continue reading
A week has passed since President Obama surprised everyone with a strong statement in support of Net neutrality, declaring that the Internet should be available to everyone—reclassified under Title II of the Telecommunications Act as a common carrier—a public utility like telephone service or electricity without special privileges to companies willing to pay a premium for faster, more exclusive access. Continue reading
As I was finalizing my research for this article, I found myself browsing through a heap of hilarious videos by mostly Egyptian TV show hosts Tawfiq Okasha and Amr Adeeb. Continue reading
On Monday, the White House released a statement from President Obama in support of Net neutrality, his strongest and most direct since the 2008 election campaign. “An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life,” he began. “By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known. Continue reading
New York Times editors do it numerous ways. At times in their “Room for Debate” series. Featuring mostly one-sided views. Continue reading
I have come to the conclusion that the West is a vast lie machine for the secret agendas of vested interests. Consider, for example, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnership. Continue reading
A few months ago, not many Americans, in fact Europeans as well, knew that a Yazidi sect in fact existed in northwest Iraq. Even in the Middle East itself, the Yazidis and their way of life have been an enigma, shrouded by mystery and mostly grasped through stereotypes and fictitious evidence. Yet in no time, the fate of the Yazidis became a rally cry for another US-led Iraq military campaign. Continue reading
The increasing tendency of the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies to disregard previous prohibitions against the use of journalists as agents puts every legitimate reporter around the world in jeopardy. Continue reading
(WMR)—National news media operations based in Boston are almost like musicals that run “off Broadway.” Continue reading
At the end of the classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Jimmy Stewart, as Senator Jefferson Smith, is in the midst of his filibuster against the corruption of the political machine that sent him to Capitol Hill as their lackey. Now he knows the truth and he’s taken over the floor of the Senate to tell it. Continue reading
During Cold War One those of us in the American radical left were often placed in the position where we had to defend the Soviet Union because the US government was using that country as a battering ram against us. Now we sometimes have to defend Russia because it may be the last best hope of stopping TETATW (The Empire That Ate The World). Yes, during Cold War One we knew enough about Stalin, the show trials, and the gulags. But we also knew about US foreign policy. Continue reading
Let us get one thing crystal clear: We in the the United States of America, do not live in an informed genuine people’s ‘democracy’ nor do we have a government or mass media that is honest and transparent that serves the needs, interests, and aspirations of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. Continue reading
As more and more people are speaking out about Israel’s genocidal attacks against the Palestinian population in Gaza, mainstream media executives are trying to put a lid on it. How else can you explain NBC’s action to remove, from Gaza, Ayman Mohyeldin, an experienced, well respected reporter after he described the arbitrary killing of four young Palestinian boys playing soccer on a beach by members of the Israeli Defense Force. Continue reading
According to the latest reports, the separatists in Donetsk have handed over to Malaysian authorities the black boxes from the downed Malaysian airliner, which indicates that those who have been blamed by Washington and the Western presstitute media have nothing to fear from the facts. Continue reading
I got the news from my last Time-Warner bill, which is for a 42-inch flat screen and a second set, 23- x 36-inch flat screen. It seems they are changing all the numbers of the stations, introducing content previously shown over a period of years and still changing. I took notes when I talked to the representative about a monthly bill from TW for $142.25. RT-Today, my favorite news station at Channel 135 hadn’t been there for weeks. Continue reading
Irrespective of how one feels about the direction taken by various Arab revolutions in the last three years, a few facts remain incontestable. Arab revolts began in the streets of poor, despairing Arab cities, and Arabs had every right to rebel considering the dismal state of affairs in which they live. Continue reading
Anyone who has seen the 1976 film Network can only imagine how CLAIRVOYANT the film’s writer, Paddy Chayefsky, turned out to be. The film, a dark satire, showed a future society where the media became the message and celebrity was greater than reality. Ratings were the only thing that mattered- as they apparently still are on today’s Nutworks! Continue reading
“In Yemen today, the US embassy is closed to the public. Officials telling CNN there is credible information of a threat against Western interests there,” a CNN news anchor read from the news bulletin on May 8. Continue reading
The vote was taken at the Federal Communications Commission Thursday morning, as drums pounded and hundreds of demonstrators supporting Net neutrality chanted outside FCC headquarters. Continue reading
I think a description of the political space in which we live as a kind of twilight reality is not an exaggeration. Not only is a great deal of the news about the world we read and hear manipulated and even manufactured, but a great deal of genuine news is simply missing. People often do not know what is happening in the world, although they generally believe they do know after reading their newspapers or listening to news broadcasts. People receive the lulling sounds or words of most of this kind of news almost unconsciously just as they do to the strains of piped-in “elevator music” in stores and offices. Continue reading
Let me preface these thoughts by stating that what another billionaire says or does because he feels above the rest of we serfs is never surprising to me. What Don Sterling, owner of the Clippers basketball team, said and implied is murmured to this writer many times by many people . . . always in either whispers or in secure settings. Racism is alive and well in Amerika, as it always has been since our founding. Continue reading
Western media scoundrels mock legitimacy. They march in lockstep with lawless US policy. Continue reading
(WMR)—Vice Magazine, the online “news” site founded in 1994 in Montreal as the “Voice of Montreal,” has become a major influential media outlet. But the online magazine also appears to be doing the bidding of Western governments in aiming its fury at Russia, North Korea, and other countries with which are receiving full barrages from the neoconservative propaganda industry. Continue reading
In support of the dying nuclear power industry, the New York Times Editorial Board has penned an inadvertent epitaph. Continue reading
Barack Obama told us there would be no compromise on Net neutrality. We heard him say it back in 2007, when he first was running for president. Continue reading
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Murdering journalists . . . them and us
Posted on January 22, 2015 by William Blum
After Paris, condemnation of religious fanaticism is at its height. I’d guess that even many progressives fantasize about wringing the necks of jihadists, bashing into their heads some thoughts about the intellect, about satire, humor, freedom of speech. We’re talking here, after all, about young men raised in France, not Saudi Arabia. Continue reading →