During the middle of March, 2003, tbrnews received an email from a man who claimed to be a mid-level executive with a major American television network. He stated in this, and subsequent, emails that he was in possession of "thousands" of pages of in-house memos sent from his corporate headquarters in New York City to the head of the network’s television news department. He went on to say that these memos set forth directives about what material was, and was not, to be aired on the various outlets of the network.
(January 9, 2004)
Send a memo to all department heads looking for any and all French-speaking journalists. This does not apply to cameramen. If the Administration’s plans for a military adventure vis a vis the French materialize, we want to be right off the line with coverage
minute our people in Iraq that they must, under no circumstances, permit anyone other than our own employees to make use of our computer systems in place there. We have been virtually ordered under threat of prosecution under "national security" directives to keep irate military personnel from "leaking sensitive and always inaccurate" material. Make sure everyone gets this
(January 10)
with reference my memo of the 9th, do not discuss the French business unless and until. The Bush people want an administration change in Paris and we have to be careful not to mention any military assistance from our side. Diplomatic and economic pressure will be tried first. The French will cave in just like Brazil will stop its fingerprinting of US citizens. Either that or the World Bank and IMF will put them on the grill. Bush is visiting their president and will give him the word that we will not permit some third world state to dictate to us - they have even been photographing diplomats and CIA commercial cover people!
Wednesday, December 24, 2003/ New York
Another Xmas and the corporate stockings are stuffed with the annual bonus checks. This has been quite a year all in all. An excellent year for news briefs with plenty of excitement, bombs exploding, daily episodes that were very often the result of Hollywood and not History.
The War in Iraq is a lot like driving over a cliff in your new car; thrilling until you stop at the bottom. Have we reached the bottom yet? No, but we are getting there faster than anyone wants.
Bush and his supporters have knocked over a serious hornet’s nest in the Middle East, and in Pakistan, North Korea, Afghanistan, and Europe. Their actions have initially caused some minor alarm that has rapidly developed into major panic.
The Arabs blew up the Trade Center because the U.S. gave blind support to Israel. The Arabs saw us as the financial supporter of their major enemy; an enemy that disposed them of their homes in 1948 (with the aid of the British and Americans) and also of many of their lives. Israel, backed unquestioningly by the US, has invaded their countries, their homes and done its best to destroy all the Arabs of Palestine. Discreetly at first and then with increasing boldness, the repression goes on.
With no sophisticated weaponry such as that possessed by America and Israel, the impoverished and embittered Arabs turned to suicide bombs and self-immolation, a certain sign of their end-game attitudes.
The duty of every national leader is to firstly concern himself with the well-being of his own country. The Bush people have not done this. Aside from some of the Bush cronies, the only entity that has profited from the turmoil; the destruction of Iraq and dispossession of Saddam Hussein, is the state of Israel.
We have removed one of their most dangerous enemies from their borders without a single IDF soldier being killed and at absolutely no expense to their treasury.
But now that Saddam is gone, the Israelis, and the Americans, have discovered that he has been replaced with a growing and very proficient Arab guerrilla movement. This movement, which shows no sign of abating, has taxed our troops to the limit with random and murderous attacks.
Gross ineptness on the part of the military command there has not won the hearts and minds of the Iraqi public but rather, by savage retribution against the civilian population has turned an entire country of millions of Arabs against our occupying troops.
Snipings, sabotage of the vital oil system, killing of Arabs that have cooperated with the U.S., to include revered religious leaders, random killings of GIs, destruction of the power infrastructure and a dozen other actions have created an intolerable strain not only in the U.S. military command but also inside Washington.
With the Neocon war party firmly in power, no suggestion of flexibility or compromise is possible. That the Neocons are all Jewish (and many of whom are actually Israeli citizens,) is becoming very clear to everyone, including, and very dangerously, the general public.
The role of the media, print and television, in this is mixed. On one level, the excitement of daily eruptions in Iran are good copy and produce fine ratings but the growing discontent, both among the ranks and also among the average citizens, is extremely dangerous in the long haul.
We in the media cannot be seen to attack the humble, brave and freedom-loving men in the field. The Bush Administration is just waiting for us to step over that line. On the other hand, it is no longer possible to simply ignore the growing storm and spend all of our time in lavishing praise on the Administration and parroting its memos. (Fox is by far and away the worst offender here. Murdoch gives sycophancy a very bad name indeed.
On the domestic scene, more and more is emerging about:
a. Bush’s probably foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack;
b. The growing problems not only in Iraq but possible eruptions and regime changes in a Pakistan that was bribed to support us;
c. A growing suggestion that vote fraud via deliberately defective electronic voting machines will revisit the terrible Florida election frauds in the Presidential elections;
d. The growing unhappiness, bordering on desperation, of the Administration about how it can put a lid on Iraq while at the same time preparing for probable other "shock and awe" attacks on the targets of the Neocon’s anger;
e. The actual number of the dead and, especially, the badly wounded troops in Iraq;
f. The growing "offshoring" of many hitherto "safe" middle class technical jobs to India, China and Singapore leaving tens of thousands of very apprehensive voters.
We are, I remind you, a business entity, not a charity or a blind supporter of lost causes. In light of this, I and many of my co-workers realize more and more that we will soon reach a point where we can no longer sit on the fence. We cannot run with the hares and hunt with the hounds at the same time and for myself, I would rather be a live hound than a dead rabbit!
The answer? We must find a consensus and very quickly. If, and I stress if, the public awakens from its hibernation and begins to growl in anger, we had all best have a simple and safe plan in place and it would be much better if we acted before we had to.
I would like your written opinions on this round robin on my desk no later than Monday, December 29th.
Let’s hope for a better New Year!
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This is only a small and most current part of these memos - there's quite a few pages which can be seen at ;
http://www.TBRNews.org/ As you can see the media is instructed to lie and withhold what's really happening and they do so without exception. You can also see how they consider us nothing more than sheep to be led and too stupid to sift through the data ourselves - this is why they put so much importance into "sound bites".
I just watched Noam's film Manufacturing Consent and he put into words exactly what the problem with commercial media is which I've seen over the years myself
I've found something interesting, I operate these video channels;
1.) CH-2 Movie Channel A (Hi-Fi sound)
2.) CH-3 BACK CAM (w/ processed mic audio)
3.) CH-4 FRONT CAM (w/ processed mic audio)
4.) CH-5 DISH VIDEO (testing/aux)
5.) CH-6 MOVIE CH.B (Hi-Fi sound)
6.) CH-15 LIST/MUSIC (TV guide bottom half,VU meter/message box top)
At least 2 of these carry movies all the time (2 and 6).
Here's what I've found.
When I play movies people mostly ignore them - uncut, unedited, full length no commercials..
When *the exact same movies play on commercial TV* people THEN watch them. The commercial breaks are the key - commercials are played approx every 5.minutes. I've found that when I play the same movies that typically the viewers stop watching after a short time, around 10 to 15. min.
The constant commercial breaks provide an attention break and TV viewers are conditioned to expect, want and need such breaks - as shown by thier viewing habits, when given a choice between the movie uncut and one that's shortened "time compressed" with missing scenes and *commercial breaks* they most often choose the commercial version even though it's the same movie.
Noam's example is for political discussion. His point is that no meaningful dialogue can take place when the discussion is being constantly interrupted and issues are never gone into deeply when there's a short time limit hanging over the discussion - he actualy presented video examples showing how he was cut off on the very few mainstream media shows he's been on.
Usually the host will ask a question to which an accurate reply would take some time RIGHT BEFORE a commercial break or at the end of the show.
TV operates on simplistic short attention span sound bites and real world people and problems are longer term realities than the time framing TV allows - this is intentional.
The more TV a person watches the more conditioned they become to expect short sound bites and in fact they become dysfunctional - even in a strictly entertainment sense - on the time required to address issues.
They are unable to hold thier attention long enough to even watch a movie much less hold a political debate.
With TV, commercials set the time framework - a framework too short to accomplish anything important - the perfect framework to sell you something before you have a chance to think about it (call now !, limited time offer)
Even in non-commercial settings (C-SPAN, PBS) the time is still strictly framed. There's a great many issues that cannot be solved - sometimes even addressed - in an hour, any discussion that's really important should be given *all the time required* with no framework, channels should be assigned on an issue basis with no time lmits at all.
We have the technology to do this easyly, but insted mass communications are in control of commercial corporations who only wish to sell us something and have no care for such solutions.
A channel set up this way would very quickly (in a matter of days) reach the point where it's benefit is realized and then the pressure would begin to reallocate other channels in this service.
This is unacceptable to the power elite - as this process is a direct threat to thier structure of keeping the masses ignorant and appeased on superficial "disinfotainment"
And yet the airwaves belong to us...
The mass media serves only as the mouthpiece of our oppressors - the same small group of people who own our airwaves are the one's who are starting wars for profit. The US is the most ignorant and out of touch of all the countries and yet we have the largest and most advanced telecommunications system.
People who are concerned with social justice issues are constantly playing a game of catch-up as the global elite set up one crisis after another. We waste much of our time even in our own networks concentrating on the smaller issues (distractions) while the most important issues are ignored.
All the mass media is a distraction, and articles from them are designed to waste your time to crowd out dealing with more important issues.
Apathy is an extremely powerful tool that's used against everybody - issues are framed intentionally to generate as much apathy as possible, as this is the tactic of last resort. So all our efforts are against a backdrop of apathetic and short attention span people that billions of dollars per year are sunk into to maintain - the PR industry is specifically in charge of this aspect of our oppression.
The solution to this artificially generated problem is said to be "educating the masses" but there's 2 problems;
1.) by doing so we're playing thier game of catch-up, trying to fix a problem they made themselves just to occupy our time and energy
2.) while we're busy doing that they continue to start wars and cause "terrorist events" under the cover of secrecy which in it'self is part of the problem - everytime they manufacture a new crisis we spend all our time dealing with it rather than making any headway in addressing the actual source of the problem - the very people who own our airwaves and create these wars.
The key aspect to all of this is the airwaves as this is being used both to deny us our ability to get the truth out and is conditioning people to not want to accept or even deal with the most serious problems - by generating apathy.
As long as we stay in our internet sandbox while millions are being fed a daily dose of mind-numbing sound bites, we will always be playing catch-up.
They simply reach far more people than we do - period.
The internet is starting to replace the mass media as a source for information for *some* people - even they are acknowledge this. But they are also trying to dominate this arena, with mainstream media internet sites getting most of the readership. This is a direct reflection of the problem they produce - people come to prefer lies because they're pretty lies - propaganda works so well because it *tells us what we want to hear*.
Change is scary and the TV provides a soothing sense of consistency. While what is consistent is bad that's still less scary than thinking about the changes that would be required to cause real revolution.
As long as the average person still has thier gas guzzling car, and thier standard of living remains largely constant they don't care about people in other lands suffering - by design. Every second of TV viewing re-enforces this selfish view of the world and in fact sells it as an "american value" - our very culture/morals and ethics are altered in the process of selling us wars and occupation as a viable means of getting what we want.
The PR experts attempt to frame all issues within narrow constructs that boil down to an US v THEM mentality always blaming other victims who always pay the price.
This very effectively keeps the focus away from the power elite who are behind both sides and in fact are profitting from conflict. Even in social justice circles we fall for this distraction where we find ourselves slinging mud at trolls who are also wasting thier time in the same manner, or even among ourselves as any imperfect human is disposed to do.
This brings up another key point - the global elite work together as one with common - though evil - goals. An important part of thier impact is based on having thier own networks of communication. They have many advantages here in that setting up the infrastructure is effortless for them - the only concern is diverting bandwidth from commecial profit.
Our job in setting up independent networks is expensive, time consuming and often "illegal" exposing us to risks and problems that at times can be too much of a burden without solidarity and support.
Not seeing alternative media as a critical part of the movement is a major flaw we suffer from. For example "pirate" stations are too few in number and mostly unprotected from raids and other harassment which is not a compelling situation for new people trying to add to this scene. Such stations need protection by providing alternate transmitting sites and protective direct action networks to prevent the loss of not only expensive equipment but also people who are skilled in building it (which saves alot of money, thus more stations can be set up or more money is available for other aspects of the movement.
There's a problem with once a station is established too many resources are invested into it at the expense of setting up more stations - an established station tends to form a shadow around it inhibiting other stations as it draws in all available resources.
An opposite model needs to be pursued - people involved should have the specific goal of making sure more than one station exists in any area and these sister stations must carry an even wider selection of programming. These stations become the fall back system - already in place with active listeners - if the first/main station goes down.
Insted we see only one station in a given area, and when it goes down (often at a critical time) people have nowhere to tune to.
I solve this problem on a smaller scale by operating more than one transmitter and in fact keep several spares on hand. I typically keep 2 to 5 signals on the air and keep programming active so that people know where the stations are on the dial and are used to listening to them already.
A tactic that works out well is to devote one station to news and one to entertainment (music) as a *minimium* system.
In the event that the news station goes down, the music station can take over it's function instantly. Also the other station can cover the one being harassed to help get the word out to people already listening - much better than franticly calling people on the phone or trying to keep the station on the air while the FCC is removing the antenna. The FCC doesn't expect multible signals and are ill prepared to deal with them - they are set up for tracking down only a single signal.
All "pirate" stations should have at least a sister station in the same area and optimally the sister station should be able to take over on the same channel. This opens the door to fooling the FCC by switching back and forth between them as well and other tricks.
The idea is the same as commercial stations - to keep your spot on the dial no matter what. They use dual transmitters and antennas - sometimes at a different site as backup, they pride themselves on being able to switch without the listeners even noticing.
Mostly for events like lighting or power loss..
We can apply exactly the same tactic for FCC raids and in fact I have been - for years.
MP3 CD players can offer from 12 hours to days worth of programming for a 20 cent CD-R with a low-cost player ($30.) A sister station thus set up can go for days without attention. This station left unattended if raided represents very little loss in equipment and no risk to the engineer.
Radio shows like Unwelcome Guests, Auntie Beez Knees, Between The Lines are burnt to CD-R and the MP3 CD player is loaded every few days. The signal is monitored at the main station (in my case an "operations room" with the video channels, optical paths, internet gateway, etc)
A receiver at the sister station also monitors the main station and on remote control can be turned off or re-transmit main station programming as a "booster" - this adds very little to the cost when old car radios and TV SAP modules are used..
But too few stations are being set up, over too few areas while too much time and money is being invested into having "pirate" stations imitate the "big boys" with posh studios, guests, equipment, rental space, utilities, etc..
We'll never reach the number of people we need to reach by doing this as over 95 percent of the country are excluded from the footprints.
We have to set up a half dozen unattended sister stations as cheaply as possible rather than a single expensive station serving a single limited area.
With thousands of such stations the FCC would be hopelessly outnumbered and in-effective.
This is already a proven tactic in Miami where there's over a dozen "pirate" stations at any one time, they pop up faster then the FCC can shut them down - and only for cultural programming too - just so the Cuban population has news and entertainment not even political !
Yet drive 150 miles to Tampa and they come down hard on any "pirate" station who dares go on the air.
The difference is in Miami the Cubans have a different attitude and culture which offers solidarity and protection. This is exactly what's missing from American culture and is being actively torn down by the mass media.
The mass media are enemies not only of the American people but all forms of alternative media and especially with the underground micropower movement - they often do the FCC's job for them, scanning the bands for any unusual signal and are the first to call. They also sensationalize and play up the "public safety" angle (the planes falling out of the sky scare - which has never actually happened - except to "transmitter farms" - commercial stations, even then only maybe one case)
Dozens of cases of commercial transmitters causing such problems are quietly dealt with every year and buried or minimalized, while any case where a non-commercial transmitter is involved is played up to the hilt squeezing every drop of entertainment value out of - in some cases - even no enforcement action at all.
IE: no action is taken by the FCC engineers yet local TV news smears it as a "pirate station shut down"
When a transmitter is designed to stay within part 15 rules as millions of devices do and the FCC finds it's exceeding allowed limits *only slightly* the rules themselves contain the solution - alter it or turn it off.
Devices operating under part 15 by the very definition cannot be a "pirate station" even if they slighty exceed the limit - as doing so is simply an error in the operation of said devices - as stated on the legally required sticker placed upon them...
Yet TV stations if they think they have a story, have no problems distorting the truth or outright lying...
This sensationalizing is profitable and has a chilling effect on the micropower movement. They would have you obtain a range of less than a few hundred feet (to stay strictly within part 15 regulations - to stay "legal" and by definition NOT "pirate") and yet at the same time label you "pirate" when it suits them.
This is while they ignore all the cases of commercial transmitters causing interference problems which goes on constantly. (paging transmitters are really bad about this)
In the same vein the FCC claims "zero tolerance" for whole radio bands (which is actually impossible as there is always a certain man-made level of background noise) for non-commercial people, yet ignores this for commercial transmitters where it becomes a "tolerable" level.
So even the rules they play by are inconsistent and are slanted to favor commercial broadcasters.
In these conditions we will never win the war for zero interference as even background noise is used against us - computers and other digital systems are snagged by this. This red herring has to be dealt with head-on. Using Miami as an example you can rest assured the FCC uses this same excuse there, but because of the solidarity the Cubans have with more stations going up than being taken down, the situation remains largely static.
Miami should be an example to everyone on how to deal with them - simply keep more stations on the air than they have the resources to deal with.
Cities lucky to have a "pirate" station are better off than average but they can still lose that one station at any time and then they are worse off - as the sensationalizing attacks by the mainstream media throw up roadblocks to other stations being set up.
These other stations need to be *already* set up and on the air as sister stations carrying a wider spectrum of programming. Even an unattended setup playing a MP3 CD has something to offer, and serves as backup should the main station go down - people already know about it and are already listening to it. It's important to keep a presence on the air so people get used to having something to listen to (I play music when I'm not playing shows whereas I used to go off the air)
The Miami model is a good place to start