The Murdoch Factor and an ignorant public

The Murdoch Factor and an ignorant public

In October 2003, the nonpartisan Program on International Policy Attitudes published a study titled "Misperceptions, the media and the Iraq war." It found that 60 percent of Americans believed at least one of the following: clear evidence had been found of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda; W.M.D. had been found in Iraq; world public opinion favored the U.S. going to war with Iraq.

The prevalence of these misperceptions, however, depended crucially on where people got their news. Only 23 percent of those who got their information mainly from PBS or NPR believed any of these untrue things, but the number was 80 percent among those relying primarily on Fox News. In particular, two-thirds of Fox devotees believed that the U.S. had "found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the Al Qaeda terrorist organization."

So, does anyone think it's O.K. if Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns Fox News, buys The Wall Street Journal?

Media still ignores role of neocons in helping Saddam stay in power

Media still ignores role of neocons in helping Saddam stay in power

Hussein could no longer disclose what Rumsfeld told him at their hand-shake meeting in 1983, or whether he got an alleged message from Vice President Bush in the mid-1980s about how to deploy his air force against Iran, or if his regime knew that deputy CIA director Gates was running interference for Iraq's military supply line in the 1980s.

Nor could Hussein give his account of the mixed messages delivered by George H.W. Bush's ambassador April Glaspie before Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Was there an American "green light" or did Hussein just hear what he wanted to hear?

All that history and more might have been salvaged if Hussein had been turned over to an international tribunal at The Hague as was done with other tyrants, such as Yugoslavia's late dictator Slobodan Milosevic.

Instead George W. Bush insisted that Hussein be kept under tight American guard and be tried in Iraq despite the obvious fact that the Iraqi dictator would receive nothing close to a fair trial before being put to death.

The major U.S. news media missed this larger story: how Hussein's hanging, after his conviction for his role in executing 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in 1982, silenced a key witness to the larger historical narrative.

In the U.S. press, virtually nothing was said or written about how the Dec. 30 execution amounted to the snuffing of a witness who could have exposed many of the "Iraq-gate" secrets, possibly implicating George W. Bush's former and current defense secretaries and the President's father.

Time for Republicans to Choose: Bush-Cheney or America

Time for Republicans to Choose: Bush-Cheney or America

Our national security has been undermined. Our civil liberties threatened. Our traditional political freedoms badly trampled by an out of control Executive Branch actively abetted by Republicans in Congress and Republican federal judges.

Corruption and incompetence dominates the leadership of the Republican Party at the state and national level almost everywhere in America. Investigations are underway in state after state from California to Texas to Ohio of Republican political abuses. Many more are called for in places like Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Partisan political considerations should never trump the rule of law. It is up to Republicans to clean-up the corruption and contempt of American political traditions by their leadership. Republican leaders need to choose between their Party leadership and the future of the American nation!

*Part of a longer article, the rest is at the link.

Face of a Neoconservative Psychopath

Face of a psychopath

Neoconservative icon Norman Podhoretz followed up his Commentary article titled "The case for bombing Iran" -- excerpts of which were re-published in The Wall St. Journal -- with an interview elaborating on why he "hopes and prays" that we bomb Iran and how he envisions the bombings. Though he generously acknowledges that such an action would likely "unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we've experienced so far look like a lovefest" -- consequences to which he is transparently (and revealingly) indifferent...

The Bushies Caught Again, Aides' Misuse of E-Mail Detailed by House Committee

Bush Aides' Misuse of E-Mail Detailed by House Committee

"It is troubling that so many senior White House officials, including Karl Rove and his former deputy Sara Taylor, were engaging in an effort to avoid oversight and accountability by ignoring the laws meant to ensure a public record of official government business," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "This extensive end run around the laws leads one to wonder what these officials wanted to hide from the public and Congress."

Anti-investor Conservatives

The Anti-Investor Right

Bush Shafts Enron Victims

Bush Shafts Enron Victims

Reid On Pace: Truer Words...

appalachian mountains sunset

War and Censorship at Wilton High

Senator Brownback showed this poisonous mixture of scientific ignorance and religious dogmatism

DON'T KNOW MUCH BIOLOGY

Now maybe evolutionary biology isn't going to propel America into the forefront of world science, but creationism (and its gussied-up descendant "Intelligent Design") is not just a campaign against evolution—it's a campaign against science itself and the scientific method. By pretending that evolution is on shaky ground, and asserting that religion can contribute to our understanding of nature, creationists confuse people about the very form and character of scientific evidence. This confusion can only hurt our ability to make rational judgments about important social issues, like global warming, that involve science.

Senator Brownback showed this poisonous mixture of scientific ignorance and religious dogmatism in a May 31 op-ed piece in The New York Times ("What I Think About Evolution"), written to clarify why he raised his hand to dissent from Darwinism. The first thing that's clear is that Brownback displays a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary biology. He claims that there is "no one single theory of evolution," citing punctuated equilibrium as an alternative to Darwinism. (He's apparently implying that there might be something dubious about evolution because there's a multiplicity of theories).

Part of a much longer article. The rest is at the link.

black and white 101

Secret CIA prisons confirmed by Polish and Romanian officials

they don't want us there

Iraqi Lawmakers Pass Resolution That May Force End to Occupation

While most observers are focused on the U.S. Congress as it continues to issue new rubber stamps to legitimize Bush's permanent designs on Iraq, nationalists in the Iraqi parliament -- now representing a majority of the body -- continue to make progress toward bringing an end to their country's occupation.

The parliament today passed a binding resolution that will guarantee lawmakers an opportunity to block the extension of the U.N. mandate under which coalition troops now remain in Iraq when it comes up for renewal in December. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose cabinet is dominated by Iraqi separatists, may veto the measure.

The law requires the parliament's approval of any future extensions of the mandate, which have previously been made by Iraq's prime minister. It is an enormous development; lawmakers reached in Baghdad today said that they do in fact plan on blocking the extension of the coalition's mandate when it comes up for renewal six months from now.

ready to rumble

The Tortured Lives of Interrogators

"I tortured people," said Lagouranis, 37, who was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq from January 2004 until January 2005. "You have to twist your mind up so much to justify doing that."

"I couldn't make sense of the moral system" in Iraq, he said. "I couldn't figure out what was right and wrong. There were no rules. They literally said, 'Be creative.' "

Lagouranis blames the Bush administration: "They say this is a different kind of war. Different rules for terrorists. Total crap."

What is the weird obsession that right-wingers have with being fake cowboys. First there was little Ronnie Reagan, then George W. Bush with his fake ranch and $2000 cowboy boots and how we have Fred Thompson renting a pick-up truck so he'll look like a good ol boy instead of a mediocre character actor and multi-millionaire who's never done an honest day's work in his life CNN reported on Thompson's pickup truck without noting it was a leased campaign prop

An article in the Style section of the May 31 edition of the Washington Post described possible Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson as "the pickup-driving former senator and 'Law & Order' star," referring to the long-running television series in which Thompson stars and the red pickup truck he drove during his 1994 and 1996 Senate races. On the May 30 edition of CNN's American Morning, anchor John Roberts said of Thompson, "He'll be taking his red pickup truck, which has become synonymous with Fred Thompson, around on the campaign trail." But neither the Post nor Roberts noted that the pickup truck Thompson took on the road during his Senate campaigns was a prop leased by his campaign staff for the purpose of winning over Tennessee voters and, despite subsequently buying it, Thompson told a reporter through a spokesman that he left it in his mother's driveway "looking a little forlorn," with expired Senate license plates, once the races ended.

buenos aires colors

Iraq Is Korea?Bush's latest appalling historical analogy.

What the heck is vote caging, and why should we care?

Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war). The Republican National Committee reportedly stopped the practice following a consent decree in a 1986 case. Google the term and you'll quickly arrive at the Wizard of Oz of caging, Greg Palast, investigative reporter and author of the wickedly funny Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans—Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Palast started reporting allegations of Republican vote caging for the BBC's Newsnight in 2004. He's been almost alone on the story since then. Palast contends, both in Armed Madhouse and widely through the liberal blogosphere, that vote caging, an illegal voter-suppression scheme, happened in Florida in 2004 this way: