by cameron | Aug 13, 2008 | activism, Culture Jamming, Iraq
From the Center for Media and Democracy:
Today, we struck a blow against propaganda, and for transparency and accountability.
In early 2002, the Pentagon began cultivating retired military officers who frequently serve as media commentators to help make the case for invading Iraq. The pundit program continued — promoting the Bush administration’s stance on the Guantanamo Bay detention center, warrantless wiretapping and other controversial issues — until New York Times reporter David Barstow exposed its existence in April 2008.
Thanks to Blake Hall of our IT staff and senior researcher Diane Farsetta, now you and anyone with web access can search the massive cache of military documents detailing the Pentagon’s illegal attempts to shape U.S. public opinion. The New York Times first obtained the documents. After the Times reported on the covert pundit program, the Pentagon posted the documents online in a desperate attempt at damage control. But the documents weren’t text searchable, making systematic analysis of this important information nearly impossible.
But we’ve now cracked the Pentagon’s code and made the 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents fully text searchable, posting them all on our SourceWatch website, for journalists, researchers and concerned citizens.
What’s great about this is that it is a further demonstration that the media has been compromised. We all need to understand that EVERY time we see a so-called “expert commentator” on mainstream media, the chances are they are a front for one organisation or another and CANNOT BE TRUSTED as an impartial source. This, by the way, goes for leftist commentators as well as those from the right. The system is played the same way by both camps. Our initial position on anything you see on the news or any current affairs show is “TRUST NO1” unless you are really sure of their credentials as an independent commentator.
by cameron | Aug 8, 2008 | US politics
John Pilger has written a terrific article to commemorate the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (6 August, 1945).
I was talking about Hiroshima with American friends while in France. They gave me the usual answer “it was horrible but it stopped the war and saved lives”. These friends are Democrats – anti-war, anti-American Imperialism. And yet they still believe that old line about it saving lives. I asked them why America couldn’t have just shown the Japanese video footage of the bombs being dropped in the desert and used it as a threat. They replied that the Japanese were too arrogant and wouldn’t have stopped their war for anything. This is what even the good Americans want to believe. They have bought the propaganda.
To this, Pilger writes:
The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. “Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that … Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard”. Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.
by cameron | Jul 8, 2008 | Cuba, Uncategorized
Today is day three in Ajaccio and I’m having an awesome time. This is my 2nd trip to Ajaccio (the first time was in 2004, just after I left Microsoft and before TPN) and I absolutely am in love with the place. Think Cuba but with modern cars and without the economic sanctions, and you’re pretty close. It has lots of old, beautiful but dilapidated buildings, lots of cobbled laneways filled to the brim with outdoor cafes and restaurants and bars, a hundred Cuban cigar stores (“Tabac Le Havana”), breath-taking mountain views across water filled with yachts, folk musicians playing bawdy French folk songs in restaurants, etc. I’m here with a terrific bunch of people, academics from around the world, scholars, musicians, and they are all wonderful, passionate, and hugely intelligent. I’ve spent many hours discussing Judaism, Israel, the Holocaust and the Palestine question with a party of Israelis scholars in their late 80s, who were alive during WWII, and I hope to get them recorded for the show before I leave.
We’re all staying up very late each night, drinking chestnut whisky, smoking Cuban cigars, in outdoor bars, debating religion, politics, history, art, you name it. I’m in my element.
Internet access is spotty though, so I’ve hardly been online and haven’t churned out any podcasts yet, but I hope to before I leave.
by cameron | Jul 3, 2008 | climate change, Melbourne, Podcast
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My guest today is Peter Singer.
He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), University of Melbourne. Outside academic circles, Singer is best known for his book Animal Liberation, widely regarded as the touchstone of the animal liberation movement.
I invited him onto the show to talk about the recent news from Spain that they will soon probably extend basic legal rights to all non-human hominids, an idea that has been driven by an organization that Peter co-founded, The Great Ape Project. We also talk about the basic ethics of utilitarianism and how the best thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint is to stop eating meat.
The G’Day World theme music:
Conquest
“Secrets of Life” (mp3)
from “End of Days”
(Dark Star Records)
More On This Album
by cameron | Jul 1, 2008 | US politics
I’ve expressed my doubts about the Cult of Obama here a few times. I spotted this video in a Twitter comment today who said it was “racist”. What?? I don’t see how it can be called racist. I think it points out the obvious – that in order to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for President, you have to be a “player”, that is, you have to be part of the system, accepted and acceptable to the corporations that run the United States. And if you are part of the system, you have already sold out to the rich, white guys that run things. He is pwned.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jovq9j8cJSc&hl=en]
by cameron | Jun 26, 2008 | Australian politics, Iraq
America – your tax dollars have been well spent. What can you buy with one trillion dollars? No-bid contracts:
Nearly Four Decades Later, U.S. Oil Companies Return to Iraq
Four oil companies are in the final stage of contract negotiations to regain drilling rights in Iraq — thirty-six years after they lost them. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — founding partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — are currently in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry “for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields.” Joining them are Chevron and several smaller oil companies. The deal is expected to be approved by the end of the month and “will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.” The no-bid process has frozen out 40 other oil companies, including Indian, Russian and Chinese competitors. A spokesperson for the Oil Ministry said that “the no-bid contracts were a stop-gap measure to bring modern skills into the fields while the oil law was pending in Parliament.” He added that the companies chosen already had a relationship with the government, “advising the ministry without charge for two years before being awarded the contracts.” While the current contracts are relatively small, they represent a foot in the door for much more lucrative future deals.
Source: New York Times, June 19, 2008 via Center for Media and Democracy
