Monday, June 20, 2011

The new yellow journalism: Goebbels would be proud

Much of what we hear in the corporate media, as regards controversial events for example, war and terrorist events, is single sourced, for example, a particular government spokesman, or a particular government agency. The Iraq war of 2003, and the 9/11/2001 terror attacks were prime examples.

In the case of the Iraq war, the entire corporate media took government pronouncements on Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" as a religious truth which cannot be denied. All the networks featured an endless procession of self-proclaimed experts and pundits, retired colonels and generals, defense analysts, Pentagon officials, White House propagandists, politicians on both "sides" of the aisle, defense sector spokespeople and more, all touting material that was known to be 100% false. What was even worse, is that the actuality of Iraq's 100% lack of WMDs, was already known by everyone in the relevant circles of those promoting the war. Philip Zelikow even admitted such, when asked about the reasoning behind choosing "WMDs" as the rationale for invasion: making a case for WMDs was the best option to achieve consensus. The story put forward by the man known as "Curve Ball" was known to be false, and he was known to be an unreliable witness with criminal tendencies. The Iraq war was largely "justified" and started on the basis of this one story, known to be false, from one person: A single, dishonest source, and the corporate media, in true Goebbels-wannabe obedience, regurgitated it in lockstep. 4500 American soldiers and 500,000+ Iraqi civilians were killed, and defense contractors made a killing, and the American people paid $1.2 trillion as a result this stack of corporate-media/government single sourced garbage.

As regards news from the Middle East in general, even many of the translations are being single sourced: MEMRI is the organization used by the US corporate media to translate most of what we hear from the region, from Arabic or Farsi or other language/dialect, to English. MEMRI, as has become well-known, has a very checkered history as regards accuracy, and an intent to fool or mislead readers.

Just as controversially, as regards 9/11, what we have all heard, and led to believe as the infallible truth, is as a result of the long, protracted, and detailed phone calls, allegedly sent from passengers about the alleged hijackers, most especially the infamous call to former Solicitor General Ted Olson from his wife Barbara, who was allegedly on AA Flight 77 when it allegedly hit the Pentagon. However, according to the FBI (referencing the case transcript in the trial of the alleged 20th hijacker Zararias Moussouai), *zero* cell phone calls were connected from Flight 77, and specifically, none as regards the case of Barbara and Ted Olson. Furthermore, according to a study of cellphone connectivity from the air by a certain Professor A. K. Dewdney, it was highly unlikely that any of the alleged phone calls could have been successfully connected as alleged, since the technology to do just that did not exist in 2001. The first reliable "in-air cellphone technology" was demonstrated by Qualcomm in 2004, a full three years later.

In other words, the entire backbone of the version of events on 9/11, relayed to us via the corporate media is not just single sourced, but also hearsay. It appears that we tend to give credence to versions of events that fit our comfort zone, and the art of not just journalism, but also how we write history is being poisoned for the sake of convenience, or worse. The corporate media, in the mandate to appear superficially 'patriotic'... a government lapdog as opposed to watchdog.... appears to have become no more reliable than a very well sponsored and far reaching blogger.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Fukushima news blackout

The cessation of coverage of the Japan catastrophe is most likely as a result of the lobbying power of the defense and nuclear power industry: the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is already likely to have caused that 35% spike in infant mortality in the Pacific Northwest, since the anomaly started a week or so after the radiation plume spread across the area.

The nuclear power industry, in the US at least,primarily exists not for the civilian infrastructure and generating power, but for the manufacture of atomic weapons: the very bad PR generated by the Fukushima multiple meltdowns, and the Chernobyl scale radioactive pollution would have been disastrous for the US (and worldwide) nuclear industry, and could have faced major funding hurdles, that is, had the media covered the story to the extent that was justified.

Since the US mainstream media is owned by the same corporate cartels that benefit from warmongering, (such as General Electric etc etc) it's hardly a surprise that coverage was strictly censored after 2 weeks or so.