I agree I am so glad Obama stopped the nazification of america. I dont feel like a criminal anymore when I have to stand for the pledge of alegience

Monday, 9 October 2006,
North Korea says it has carried out its first test of a nuclear weapon.
It said the underground test, carried out in defiance of international warnings, was a success and had not resulted in any leak of radiation.

The US said intelligence had detected a seismic event at a suspected test site and Russia said it was "100% certain" a nuclear test had occurred.

yup must have been Clinton http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6032525.stm

Didnt they actualy develope the Bomb when bush was in office? and were we not buzy chaseing phantom WMDS in Iraq when this happened?

I know you wont bother because again you lack facts just opinion.

Stan Watt By this time, civil war had broken out between the Bolsheviks, the Reds, and the counter revolutionaries, the Whites, who supported the old regime. The Allies decided they had to do something. On March 15th, 1918, various senior ministers met in London. They agreed to send troops to Russia to support the Whites. The pretext for intervention was to stop Germany from pushing further into Russia. But in reality, the Allies were more concerned with ousting the Bolsheviks and keeping Russia for themselves.

Great Blunders in History will return in a moment. The History Channel now returns to Great Blunders in History.

Stan Watt Great Britain had been supporting Russia's counter revolutionaries since early 1918, by sending them munitions, tanks, and even planes. In theory, these were meant to help the Russians fight the Germans. But instead, they were used by White Russians against the Bolsheviks. Other European countries contributed as well. Armored cars were sent by Belgium. France and Italy gave their support.

[sil.]

Stan Watt The first British troops left for Russia toward the end of March, 1918.

[sil.]

Stan Watt They came ashore in Murmansk, a small port 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle and hundreds of miles from any Bolshevik centers.

[sil.]

Stan Watt U.S. troops landed at Murmansk and Archangel, 600 miles to the south. The Japanese, who also supported the intervention, landed at Vladivostok on the far eastern coast of Russia.
http://ahivfree.alexanderstreet.com/View/Transcript/524014

yawn...... You can use Iraq as an example of a country that couldnt defend itself and gets gets over run. the message sent to the rest of the world is loud and clear. If you do not wish your people to suffer as the Iraqis have you better develope a bomb. Historicly we have allways destablised socialist or communist countries. Cuba is a good example. Durring the communist revelution in russia the western powers actualy sent and expiditionary force to fight against the Reds. Buzy for now have a great afternoon

I think they call it self defence. The capitalsitic nations have allways forced them to do this depriveing them of spending money on their people. It seems we will never know if communism or socialism is actualy viable as long as rescourses are spent on arms and defence.

April 04, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- - "Those dirty A-rabs don't deserve democracy. We give them freedom and they kill our troops. We should nuke them all in their ****-hole."
-"Bring our troops home. What are they doing dying in some far away land trying to bring democracy to people who don't want it?"

-"We Arabs are not yet ready for democracy. We need strong authoritarian governments to keep the peace and ensure economic growth."

-"We should be grateful to the Americans. They got rid of our dictator and brought us democracy."

-"Is this democracy? Is this freedom? The Americans killed all my family and destroyed my house. If this democracy, I tell you my brother, we don't want it!"

Such comments and their likes are unfortunately not uncommon among some Americans and Iraqis regarding the US-led invasion of Iraq. Whether American or Iraqi, pro-war or anti-war, one fallacy lies at the bottom of their reasoning: that somehow 'democracy' had anything to do with the Iraq war.

Not that possessing WMDs was ever - objectively - enough reason to subject the whole of Iraq to so much senseless destruction; but since it became clear that the only real threat Iraq posed was to itself, the rhetoric had shifted into saving Iraqis from their themselves by bringing onto them good old (well, in human history it isn't actually that old) democracy.

But the fact is, that was never the case. Not in Iraq and certainly not in the region. Not in 2003 and most definitely not before that. After the fall of Baghdad, there were no serious moves to install democracy. Instead, US policies were channelled to inflame the sectarian divide.

After 12 years of merciless US-backed sanctions, all Iraq needed was one small push to descend into total chaos. Yet many Iraqis still waited to see what the US would offer. What they got was complete absence of security, hundreds of thousands of jobs losses, and death and torture at the hands of US forces with the help of some 'favoured' Iraqis.

That's where the seeds of sectarianism had been sown. Instead of promoting reconciliation and unity, the US played a classic 'divide and rule' game in Iraq and drew the new Iraq - politically - along sectarian lines.

Militarily, Iraqis who had friends or family members killed or tortured by US forces in the presence (or under the advice) of other Iraqis weren't always strong enough to punish the Americans so they took vengeance on their fellow Iraqis. The result? A cycle of vengeance that could have been averted.

Meanwhile, on the 'democracy' front, we had one segment of the population relatively prepared for campaigning whilst the other barely struggling to stay alive let alone take part in elections. Who would they vote for? How can you have fair elections when all your potential candidates are in hiding for fear of being killed or detained and tortured? Voting may (or may not) have been free, but who would one vote for if his/her choice is not on the list that is approved by the powers that be?

Adding to the confusion, Iraqis were requested to approve a constitution that most of whom have not even had the chance to read, let alone contemplate. 'Imported' from the US and released only five days before its referendum date, the new constitution caused further divisions in Iraq. In the meantime, new laws continued to be passed despite strong objection from a large segment of the population that was never properly represented in parliament because there never had been free elections in the first place.

All this was taking place with direct US involvement, with a mainly favourable outcome for the war architects. Big money was being made by the invasion's supporters while ordinary Iraqis were being killed by many unexplainable attacks. Some of a sectarian nature, others just for money; ones blamed on Iran or Israel, while others blamed on Al-Qaeda (which only came to Iraq post-2003 invasion) or on the US military (frequently accused of secretly targeting civilians to discredit the insurgency).

The absolute truth may never be known, but one thing is certain: the US, as an occupying power, was under obligation, according to international law, to protect Iraqis. We all know how well that went. If it can't - or is unwilling to - assume such responsibility it should have not been there in the first place, and trigger a 'sectarian domino effect', in addition to its own acts of murder and torture.

Washington and its allies in right-wing think thanks and mainstream media experts cannot talk of 'mistakes' happening when the average person in the street predicted that total chaos (at least) would befall Iraq in the event of an invasion. How can pro-invasion so called 'experts', 'analysts', and 'intelligence' fail to foresee what an average bricklayer in Tunisia predicted?

Charity begins at home

In fact, how can the invading countries 'export' democracy to Iraq while they were fighting democratic value at home? Why would an Iraqi believe that the US is bringing him/her democracy when he/she sees American citizens gradually being deprived of their rights and freedoms by the Bush administration? They also ignored the loud voices of their own people protesting against the Iraq war.

Saddam Hussein was accused of torture, detaining suspects indefinitely, spying on his own people, silencing journalist critical of his policies, and inciting fear in the hearts of his opponents. And how does that differ - relatively - from the actions of Bush, the 'decider in chief'? Can anyone say - with a straight face - that Saddam was more of a threat to the American people than Bush himself?

Yet US and European right-wingers, and their 'political pawns' in the Middle East continue to speak favourably of so called 'democracy and freedom interventions' in the region. Yes, democracy should be vigorously sought in the Middle East (by the people of the region) and yes Americans and Europeans have every reason to be proud of their democracies (despite many shortfalls). But the pro-war establishment has no right to boast of democracy because whatever rights and freedoms 'western' societies enjoy today, they were the direct result of people fighting or challenging a similar-natured establishment in former eras. Today's anti-war camp is the legitimate inheritor of the women's-rights and the civil-rights movements. They are the rightful heirs of the anti-slavery and later the anti-empire heroes.

The people of the Middle East could learn more about modern democracy from the anti-war camp, and not from former president Bush and his 'coalition of the willing', the very anti-Christ of democracy.

What has the Bush administration really done to support democracy in the region?

US-backed dictatorships

Despite few lip services to democracy in the Middle East now and then, American foreign policy has always backed Arab dictators to remain in power and oppress their own people. These 'puppet presidents' or 'drag-queen kings' are kept in power - with US weapons and intelligence - for as long as they continue to serve American interests, not those of their own peoples.

Although mainstream media is not equally kind to them, the truth is often grossly distorted. These leaders are always much more 'liberal' than their predominantly conservative societies on social and religious issues. They would only draw a red line when their hold to power is shaken or challenged. But as Bush does with democracy, they often pay lip service to 'moral values'. And if you believe Bush then you might as well believe them too.

War on words

As is the case with all wars, truth was the first causality too in the Iraq war. But as more details emerge regarding the lead up to the invasion, one could say, to a small degree, that the truth is making a slow but sustainable recovery. I wish I could say the same for the English language which was among the early victims of the Bush administration.

Many may laugh at the clumsy language mistakes Bush made during his speeches or when answering questions from the press, but few know that it is really the former US president who had the last laugh. The truth maybe recovering, but the English language is not. The Bush administration may have gone, but twisted right-wing rhetoric still lingers on in most mainstream media outlets.

From that perspective, killing ‘our’ soldiers is ‘terrorism’ yet killing ‘their’ civilians is not. Their actions are ‘barbaric’ but ours are ‘controversial’, etc.

But my concern here is on terms related to governments and politicians. How come Middle Easterners don’t get to have ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’ like their US (and sometime Israeli) counterparts? And why don’t Americans have ‘moderates’, ‘hardliners’ and ‘radicals’ at the Oval office?

More importantly, why are some US-backed Arab dictators who are extremely repressive of their own populations referred to as ‘moderates’? Is it just because they serve the interests of Washington (or Tel Aviv) instead of their own countries? At the same time, those who are brought to power through the ballot box or enjoy extremely wide support among their populations are termed ‘hardliners’ or ‘radicals’ just because they are not in good terms with foreign invading (or occupying) powers.

Who will defend the English language from ‘radical democracies’ and ‘moderate dictatorships’?

Iron Iran

Far from being a perfect democracy, Iran today is much closer to realising the wishes of its people than during the era of the ruthless US-backed dictator, the shah, toppled by the 1979 revolution. Most Iranians today, despite their young age, are also familiar with the role of the US CIA-backed coup against their democratically elected PM in the fifties, Mohammed Mosadaq.

Iranians are in an uphill struggle to have a modern democracy and more freedoms, but the last thing their reformers or rights activists need is foreign interference that would directly discredit them in the eyes of the majority of their people.

The people of Iran, generally fond of 'western' societies, remain suspicious of US foreign policy. And amid rumours that neo-conservatives and Christian Zionists seek to nuke their 70- million population, accompanied with serious threats from the Bush administration, their reformist camp took a heavy blow. You have to remember that during World War II even rooted democracies like Britain suspended all democratic activities, and to Iranians the US is still perceived as an enemy that poses an existential threat.

Hands off Hamas

I don't know of any people who have defended their electoral choice with so much blood and sweat (plus hunger and disease) as the people of Palestine following their election of Hamas.

They faced a superpower (US), an occupation power (Israel), propaganda war by pro-Israelis, Islamaphopbes, anti-Arab racists, Arab dictators, self-loathing Muslims, and tag-along opportunists, while being besieged in a tiny overpopulated strip.

They were punished for their votes and yet at the same time were prevented somehow from being represented. It is OK, according to some Rabbis, to kill them because they voted for Hamas, but Hamas, so Israel wishes, must not be seen as representing them. It wasn't enough to take away their liberty, health and lives; their political and social voices had to be taken away too. And thus Hamas leaders had to be silenced - but should they speak, then the mainstream media is there to distort their views.

So called 'experts' and 'analysts' would indulge in debates on why Hamas was elected, fruitlessly seeking to undermine their legitimacy, forgetting that in democracies, reasons of voting for one party instead of another does not affect the power that comes from the ballot box.

They often speak of corruption in Fatah or by some members of the Palestinian Authority, without even giving much thought to what that implies. To Palestinians, corruption is not just breaking the law for some financial benefits; it is deeper than that. Many see corruption as selling Palestinian rights to Israel for personal gains; i.e. treason of the first degree.

The people of Palestine had faced many atrocities before; land theft, ethnic cleansing, occupation, bone breaking, imprisonment, tight sieges, and mass murder, among other injustices. But it was only under Bush's watch that their first ever democracy and electoral choice came under such ruthless attack.

Jews-only democracy

No doubt that in many senses of the word, Israel is a democracy. It could be because the whole system was planted there by the 'west', like many of its American and European immigrants who settled there during and after the creation of the Jewish state. It also could be the people there reached that wise decision on their own. Nevertheless, whatever the causes and reasons are, the positive aspects of its democracy must be acknowledged.

But it should not pass as something comparable to 'western' democracies (not that they make those like they used to anymore). You have to remember a democracy is usually elected by a majority. Yet the majority of the people of that particular land are forced to live in exile.

Imagine if you'd expel the majority of blacks in the US and then when Election Day comes, you'd say to the few that remained that they have a right to vote and they should count their blessings for living in a democracy. You might even want to consider demanding that they'd show their loyalty to you. You didn't ban anyone from voting, you just prevented them from returning to their rightful homes, making them unable to cast their ballots.

Until the Palestinian refugees' problem is solved on a just basis, the Jewish state cannot claim to be a true democracy. But what has the Bush administration done to the plight of those estimated six million Palestinian refugees?

Plus, as the US should know, being a democracy at home does not give you the right to be a dictator abroad.

So why was Iraq invaded? Was it for money (oil)? For love (of Israel)? Or just for fame (keeping superpower reputation means teaching others a lesson every now and then)? I am not completely sure, but you can bet your sorry soul it was never about democracy.

Mamoon Alabbasi is an editor for Middle East Online and can be reached via: alabbasi@middle-east-online.com
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22351.htm

As the late great Paul Harvey would say........ and now the rest of the story.....Western Europe has universal health care and a far more equal society hence they do not depend on chairity to fill in the gaps. I wonder how much these corpo-rats would donate if it were not a tax deduction. hmmmm

Seems to be alot of that going around..............

Glad you enjoyed it sorry I havent contributed much latly but I am in a spring romance that seems to be going well.

Hey, what time is it? Does anybody know? Is it one o'clock? Two? Six? Ten?

It doesn't matter. Whatever time of day it is, there is always one thing you can be assured of. You'll never have a shortage of regressive hypocrisy on your hands. You'll never have to deal with painful withdrawal symptoms.

Nobody does hypocrisy like the right in America. Nobody does it more shamelessly, more wantonly, or more promiscuously.

Speaking of which, for example, you can pretty much bet that any right wing freak - whether playing with himself under the clergy's robes or dressed up in the politician's suit - any one of them who preaches the loudest about matters of sexual morality is guaranteed to be the most twisted case when the cameras are switched off. Can you say "Ted Haggard"? "Newt Gingrich"? "Larry Craig"? "Wide stance"?

Lately, though, the regressive right has been setting all kinds of personal best records for astonishing levels of hypocrisy, ranging from the merely laughably buffoonish all the way to the sickeningly pernicious.

One of my favorites in the former category is the Neanderthal obsession with Barack Obama's use of a Telerompter. I don't really quite get this, although perhaps it somehow makes them feel slightly better about having supported a president for eight years for whom proper English was a foreign language. But, lordy lord, talk about the ridiculous hypocrisy of this critique, over and beyond its absurdity (what, are we supposed to believe that Obama is really a dummy because he uses a Teleprompter?).

What makes this whole affair astonishingly hypocritical is the fact that Ronald Reagan did the same thing, only worse, in a low-tech fashion. Reagan almost never said anything in public without his ubiquitous 3 x 5 cue cards. Guests at the White House would sometimes be astonished that Reagan would stand there and exchange one on one small talk banter with them, reading off of cue cards. One time he even mistakenly pulled out last week's set of cards from his suit coat pocket, and blithely went along reading the wrong introductory comments to the guests assembled for a meeting. Needless to say, however, Reagan has since been turned into a virtual deity of the right. So isn't it a little rich that the same people who worship at the Throne of The Ron have a problem with the current president reading his speeches off a Teleprompter?

Another one that I like a lot is this silly trope that Obama is seeking to take over the country, a la Stalin. (Of course, given the president's clear socialistic tendencies, this one has an extra ring of plausibility.) Why do they say this? Because he is actually beginning to demand that corporations receiving bailout money use it properly, and make (often highly novel) intelligent decisions in exchange for being rescued with taxpayer funds. Is that arrogant or what? Shouldn't he really do what Bush did, and just give the banks hundreds of billions of dollars without any requirements for what they do with the money?

Again, here's another case where, just in its own right, stupidity abounds. But regressives are only getting started. Idiocy is a mere hors d'oeuvre. The truly fun part is the hypocrisy of it all. Remember how they wailed when George Bush shredded the Geneva Conventions and the Bill of Rights at Guantanamo? Remember how loudly they objected as W used over 1200 signing statements to write Congress out of the legislative loop, thus destroying separation of powers, pretty much the most prominent single idea in the Constitution? Remember how angry they were recently when it was revealed that John Yoo and others had penned legal memos allowing the president to do absolutely anything, including shutting down the press, and arresting anyone, for any reason, any time, without any guarantees of any sort of due process? Remember how the right screamed and hollered and shouted at those massive assaults on American liberty by the former president?

You don't...? Neither do I. Maybe they just missed the whole thing. Maybe they're not really such massive hypocrites for going after Obama, after all, because Fox and the rest of the Crawl Under Media oddly somehow just forgot to carry those stories.

Another great one concerns the filibuster. Apart from when Anthony Kennedy sometimes loses his mind and casts his vote with the Supreme Court's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the filibuster is the only remaining shred of power the right wing holds in Washington today. Over the last two years they've used it more than any other time in American history, and they're holding on to it tenaciously, even as we speak. This has caused Democrats, who have been given about as fat a mandate to govern as one might expect during even somewhat normal times, to play around with the idea of using the budget reconciliation process to enact legislation by simple majority vote in the Senate, thus bypassing the opportunity for a small minority of one house of one branch of the United States government to hold the entire rest of the thing hostage.

This has Republicans all in a tizzy. Judd Gregg, who has been working overtime lately to embarrass himself and his party, lamented out loud that "it is not appropriate to use reconciliation, which cuts off the role of the Senate, on something as broad and expansive as rewriting the healthcare laws of this country". Just one small problem, though. Republicans did this all the time when they were in the majority. Indeed, when they were trying to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, Gregg himself objected strenuously to Democratic Party attempts to use the filibuster, and happily extolled the great virtues of using the reconciliation process. Back then he was quite clear on the matter, and quite emphatic: "We are using the rules of the Senate here. Is there something wrong with majority rule? I don't think so."

I don't either. And, therefore, you gotta hand it to these guys, don't you think? They have such high entertainment value that - if only they could be maintained permanently in the (super)minority - it would be worth it to keep them around just for ****s and giggles.

Truly my favorite form of regressive hypocrisy on the current horizon, however, has to do with their shrill and vociferous shrieks about outrageous levels of government spending under the new Obama administration. They are really, really upset. Mind you, purely on behalf of the average American taxpayer, of course. They are outraged, and they don't mind saying so.

And who could blame them? This is, after all, the party and the ideology of fiscal discipline. We've been told this countless times, so surely it must be true. Unlike those drunken sailors in the Democratic Party, whose tax-and-spend policies bankrupt America at every turn, borrow-and-spend regressives run up fantastically larger deficits and pass them on to our kids. And what for? Only important stuff like funding giant tax breaks for the already outrageously wealthy and paying for wars based on lies.

So why wouldn't they be furious at those socialists (like Wall Street flacks such as Timothy Geithner or Larry Summers) who've taken over the Democratic Party? Those guys are actually using some of the money to build schools and improve healthcare, rather than building a bridge to nowhere or whacking yet another Middle Eastern country.

And how utterly embarrassing it is that the administration is throwing gobs of stimulus money around in an attempt to try to spend our way out of the worst recession America has experienced since that last great run of Republican rule came a cropper under Herbert Hoover?

Since every extra dollar of stimulus money is another mark of shame for the ruling party of the last decade, far better to take a little trip down Hypocrisy Lane instead, eh?

How else can you describe the GOP *****ing about overspending to rescue an economy they created that's so bad it makes sewage processing plants smell like perfume in comparison?

How else can you explain them moaning like stuck pigs when Obama does precisely what Bush did in applying the paddles of stimulus and bailout to this near corpse, and yelling "Clear"?

How else would one account for a party that inherits the greatest surplus in American history, turns it into the greatest deficit ever, doubles the size of the national debt, drives the economy into the ditch, and then whines about spending too much, despite that that is the only possible remaining hope of reviving the casualty they made?

What else can you make of a party that is so committed to saying "No!" that it actually created an alternative budget without, um, er, any... uh, numbers?

What can you possibly say to this?

What I'd say is that these guys have raised hypocrisy to an art form.

And what I'd say is that they've done so because their only other alternative is to go sit in the corner, sniveling in shame for what they've wrought, and shutting the hell up.

I do wish they'd consider going with that latter choice, though.

Hey guys, if we cut taxes on millionaires even further, would you reconsider?
_______



About author
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/21111

This year’s report on “enemies of the Internet” prepared by Reporters Without Borders, the international press advocacy group, paints a very gloomy picture for the freedom of expression on the Web. It finds that many governments have stepped up their attacks on the Internet, harassing bloggers and making it harder to express dissenting opinions online.

These are very disturbing trends. But identifying “Internet enemies” only on the basis of censorship and intimidation, as Reporters Without Borders has done, obfuscates the fact that these are only two components of a more comprehensive and multi-pronged approach that authoritarian governments have developed to diffuse the subversive potential of online communications.

Many of these governments have honed their Internet strategies beyond censorship and are employing more subtle (and harder to detect) ways of controlling dissent, often by planting their own messages on the Web and presenting them as independent opinion.

Their actions are often informed by the art of online ‘‘astroturfing,’’ a technique also popular with modern corporations and PR firms. While companies use it to engineer buzz around products and events, governments are using it to create the appearance of broad popular support for their ideology.

Their ultimate ambition may be to transform the Internet into a ‘‘spinternet,’’ the vast and mostly anonymous areas of cyberspace under indirect government jurisdiction. The spinternet strategy could be more effective than censorship — while there are a plenty of ways to access blocked Web sites, we do not yet have the means to distinguish spin from independent comment.

In China, the spinternet is being built by the ‘‘50 cent party,’’ a loose online squad of tech-savvy operators loyal to the government who are paid to troll the Internet, find dissenting views and leave anonymous comments to steer all discussions in more ‘‘harmonious’’ directions. The ‘‘50 cents’’ in the name stands for their meager pay rates.

Plenty of local technology companies are also eager to help the government with various data-mining programs that identify dissenting views early and dispatch “50 cent party” operators to steer the discussion away from an antigovernment direction.

In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards recently announced their ambition to build their own spinternet by launching 10,000 blogs for the Basij, a paramilitary force under the Guards. This comes at a time when the Internet has become a major force in exposing corruption in the highest ranks of the Iranian leadership.

The Russian government may have found an even more ingenious way of suppressing the Internet’s democratizing potential: cost. Many Internet users in Russia are still billed on the basis of the frequency and duration of their browsing sessions, and the state-owned All-Russia State Television and Radio Company has floated the idea of building a ‘‘social Internet,’’ where users would pay nothing for state-approved Web sites.

Such an approach is already being tested in Belarus, where Internet users can browse the government’s favored mouthpiece, ‘‘Belarus Today,’’ for free — that is, without paying their ISPs for Internet traffic, as they must for the country’s few independent media outlets.

The rise of the spinternet suggests that the threats that the Internet poses to authoritarian regimes are far from unambiguous; some of these governments have turned quite adept at exploiting it for their own purposes.

So while it’s important to continue documenting the direct repression of online journalists and bloggers, as organizations like Reporters Without Borders are doing, it is important to remember that there are other ways to qualify as an “enemy of the Internet.”



http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/29-5

How about "The George Bush 911 Inside Job Memorial Tower"

race baiting? how republican. I would suspect this politician was playing to the popular unrest in his own country. Im sure it was a calculated move on his part. As predicted his home town cheered his courage and blunt assessment, after all its realy an accurate assessment what exactly is not accurate? One of course would have to have a background in history to realy understand his statement and a some what sophisticated mind not to make a snap judgment.

get back to me when you find your data and let me know if it is even close to the fraud at Halliburton and KBR in Iraq.

Bewildering the Herd
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Rick Szykowny
The Humanist, November/December 1990 [September 7, 1990]
QUESTION: You take the average American who gets his or her information on the world at large from, say, the network news, from wire service reports in the daily newspaper, and maybe -- if he or she is feeling especially dutiful -- from CNN or "Nightline." How good a picture do they actually have of what's really happening in the world?
CHOMSKY: They get a good picture of how the state-corporate nexus in the United States would like to depict the things that are happening in the world ... and occasionally more than that.

QUESTION: Occasionally more than that?

CHOMSKY: Yeah. But not most of the time. Most of the time the press is very disciplined.

QUESTION: Well, in short, what I'm asking is how well served are Americans by the mainstream media?

CHOMSKY: If you follow the mainstream media with great care and skepticism and approach it with the right under standing of how propaganda works, then you can learn a lot. The normal viewer or reader gets fed a propaganda line.

QUESTION: You've frequently stated that the Western media constitute the most awesome propaganda system that has ever existed in world history. But at the same time, the press tries to cultivate a mythology or popular image of itself as tireless, fearless seekers after the truth. You have them taking on the politicians, such as Dan Rather challenging George Bush on the air, or even toppling them from office, as Woodward and Bernstein allegedly did with Nixon. That's the public image of the media, and I think many people are going to be surprised to hear that they are being fed a line of propaganda.

CHOMSKY: Well, I doubt that many people would. Most polls indicate that the majority of the population regards the media as too subservient to power. But it's quite true that for educated people it would come as a surprise. And that's because they are the ones most subject to propaganda. They also participate in the indoctrination, so therefore they're the most committed to the system. You mentioned that the media cultivate an image of a tribune of the people fighting power. Well, that's natural. How would a reasonable propaganda institution depict itself? But in order to determine the truth of the matter, you have to look at the particular cases. I think it is one of the best established conclusions in the social sciences that the media serve what we may call a propaganda function -- that is, that they shape perceptions, select the events, offer interpretations, and so on, in conformity with the needs of the power centers in society, which are basically the state and the corporate world.

QUESTION: So, in other words, an adversarial press doesn't really exist in this country.

CHOMSKY: It exists out on the margins, and occasionally you'll find something in the mainstream. I mean, for example, there are cases where the press has stood up against a segment of power. In fact, the one you mentioned -- Woodward and Bernstein helped topple a president -- is the example that the media and everyone else constantly uses to show that the press is adversarial.

But there are very serious problems with that case that have been pointed out over and over again. In fact, what the example actually shows is the subordination of the media to power. And you can see that very clearly as soon as you take a look at the Watergate affair. What was the charge against Richard Nixon, after all? The charge against Nixon was that he attacked people with power -- he sent a gang of petty criminals for some still unknown purpose to burglarize the Democratic party headquarters. Well, you know, the Democratic party represents essentially half of the corporate system. Its one of the two factions of the business party which runs the country. And that is real power. You don't attack real power, because people in power can defend themselves. We can easily demonstrate that that's exactly what was involved; in fact, history was kind enough to set up a controlled experiment for us. At the very moment of the Watergate exposures, there was also another set of exposures: namely, the FBI COINTELPRO operations which were exposed using the Freedom of Information Act right at the same time. Those were infinitely more serious than the Watergate caper. Those were actions not by a group of crooks mobilized by the president or a presidential committee but by the national political police. And it was not just Richard Nixon; it ran over a series of administrations. The exposures began with the Kennedy administration -- in fact earlier, but primarily with the Kennedy administration -- and ran right through the Nixon administration. What was exposed was extremely serious -- far worse than anything in Watergate. For example, it included political assassination, instigation of ghetto riots, a long series of burglaries and harassment against a legal political party -- namely, the Socialist Workers Party, which, unlike the Democratic party, is not powerful and did not have the capacity to defend itself. That aspect of COINTELPRO alone, which is just a tiny footnote to its operations, is far more important than Watergate.


read more at http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19900907.htm

I understand. but realy it wasnt people like you or I who sat behind closed doors and tried to find "legal loopholes" around the Nuremburg laws. WHen Bush/Cheney ran for office they didnt run on a platform of torture or unjust wars, had they done such we never would have elected them

Did you realy expect the capitalsitic mainstream media to run this article? they would "offend" their advertisers.

Maybe most of you but could be charged but I never aided and abetted it. I have been a member of the resistance for years.

As the country contemplates a major reform and restructuring of the way we run our national health care system (if it can even be called that), it needs to be pointed out that the mammoth health insurance industry is nothing but a parasite on that system.

Health insurance companies add zero value to the delivery of health care. Indeed, they are a significant cost factor that sucks up, according to some estimates such as one by the organization Physicians for a National Health Program, as much as 31 percent of every dollar spent on medical services (a percentage that has been rising steadily year after year).

Insurance companies are damaging in more ways than simply cost, though.

They also actively interfere in the delivery of quality medical care, as anyone who has had to battle with some "nurse" on the phone at an insurance company to get required pre-authorization for needed procedure can attest. Just recently, the editor of a local weekly alternative paper in Philadelphia, Brian Hinkey, the victim of a near fatal hit-and-run accident last year who spent several days in a coma, and has been working hard to regain the use of all his limbs and faculties, reported in an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer on how his insurer after a few successful weeks of in-hospital rehab, denied him coverage for six critical weeks for out-patient rehab services, though every specialist on head injuries knows that early, consistent therapy is crucial to recovery of lost brain function.

This kind of human abuse is standard operating procedure for companies whose bottom lines are fattened the more services they can deny to insured clients. My own father, once doomed by a metastasized cancer following prostate surgery, was saved by a procedure offered by a physician in Atlanta that his Blue Cross plan in Connecticut refused to pay for. He had to finance the expensive treatment himself.

Now these medical system parasites are suddenly running scared, because it is clear that if everyone in America is to be guaranteed health insurance coverage--a promised goal of the new administration of President Barack Obama, and, according to polls, the desire of a large majority of the American people--they are going to stand exposed as a costly impediment to achieving that goal.

Insurance companies have managed to stay profitable and at least somewhat affordable to the private employers and workers who, together, have to pay for them, by denying care not just to policy holders, who are denied certain tests and treatments but especially to those who have known ailments, who are simply denied coverage altogether.

For decades, people with "pre-existing conditions" have been either barred from coverage, or have had to sign waivers that excluded them from getting coverage for treatment of those pre-existing conditions. In the worst case, which is all too common, people have ended up dying because they couldn't get treatment for common and easily treated ailments like high blood pressure or diabetes.

Now we hear that two big insurance trade groups, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and America's Health Insurance Plans, have offered to "phase out the practice of varying premiums based on health status in the individual market" in the event that all Americans are required to obtain health insurance.

Well sure they're doing that. If they didn't, the government would force them to! The insurance industry, in saying that it would not price sick people out of coverage in a nationally-mandated health insurance scheme, is merely recognizing the political firestorm that would arise if it were not to do that, and were to force the sick and inform onto some government insurance plan, subsidized by taxpayers, while they just cherry-picked the healthy population, as they've been doing now for decades.

The whole point is that if everyone is included in the insurance pool, instead of only the healthy population, then the overall cost of being chronically or critically ill to the individual is spread over the whole of society. Premiums get adjusted accordingly.

Medicare is the model. Here we already have a government plan that covers every single elderly and disabled person.

If we were to simply extend Medicare to cover everyone in America, we would essentially have the Canadian model of health care (which, it should be pointed out, costs half what we pay in America for health care when private insurance and government programs are added together). As with current Medicare, the government would pay for treatment, with private doctors and hospitals providing the care, and with the government negotiating the permissible charges. That, in a nutshell, is what "single-payer" means--the government is the single payer for all health care. It doesn't mean, as the right-wing critics claim in their scaremongering propaganda, that people would be forced to use certain doctors and certain hospitals. Far from it. That's what private HMOs do.

Medicare is efficient (only 3.6% of Medicare's budget goes to administrative costs, compared to 31% for health care delivered through private insurance plans), its clients like it, and doctors and hospitals accept it.

We should not be tricked by this seeming sudden appearance of decency on the part of these corporate parasites. There is simply no valid reason for preserving the private insurance industry's role in any health care reform plan that is aimed at giving everyone access to health care in America. The Obama administration needs to jettison its "free market" fetish when it comes to health care. The financing of health care for all Americans can all be handled much better by the government. Medicare has proven this. Other countries--Britain, Australia, France, Canada, Taiwan and most other modern nations have proven this.

Leave the insurance industry to handle our car insurance and our life insurance. It has no more place in the delivery of health care than do tapeworms in the digestive process of our bowels.
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About author
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's new book is "The Case for Impeachment," co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.

He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com

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