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June 18

SYSTEMATIC HATE CRIMES AGAINST BLACKS PERPETRATED BY GOP IN 2004 TO STEAL ELECTION

Preventing an eligible citizen from voting is a crime. Criminally targeting a victim because they are a certain race is called a hate crime. Thus the GOP committed wholesale hate crimes against blacks, and worse yet, black soldiers serving in Iraq, in 2004 to keep their "Fuhrer" in office.

To block blacks from voting on a massive scale, the GOP engaged in a criminal scheme in which party chiefs created a pretext for challenging the ballots of tens of thousands of voters, nearly all of them from Black-majority precincts.

.Greg Palast reported: ".Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as “undeliverable.”

"The lists of soldiers of “undeliverable” letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted. One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.

"Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades. "

"The story was broken by Palast, but is being investigated by the BBC. Of course NOT by the US media. BBC Television Newsnight obtained files from the secret anti-Black voter campaign, along with emails that instructed GOP operatives in how to commite the crimes. "

Between this scheme, the New Hampshire phone jamming scheme, and the widespread vote fraud in Ohio, there is absolutely no doubt now that Bush did NOT win the 2004 election: He stole it. He is, in short, a treasonous criminal - as is every single GOP operative who helped him. MORE

MEDIA GOONS DANCE AT THE END OF KARL ROVE'S STRINGS TO PERPETUATE PRO-WAR MYTHS

Last week when the Democrats debated the Republicans on the Iraq war issue, it was made very clear, for anyone who bothered to follow even parts of the debate on C-SPAN, that the Democrats DO have a clear alternative to Bush policy on Iraq. It is called the MURTHA RESOLUTION. And yet the Murtha Resolution was not mentioned by a single major mainstream news outlet. Nor were any of the strong and forceful comments of Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Henry Waxman and others who stated an alternative position in no uncertain terms. Waxman’s case was relentlessly compelling. He laid out the clear case – citing findings from the GAO, State Dept., etc., that, even setting all other considerations aside, the US cannot afford, morally or financially, to continue a war that has been riddled with corruption since the start, especially when no one (Halliburton in particular) is being held accountable for said corruption and loss. But all we have heard are snippets from John Murtha - a guy who is certainly heroic, but one who has become the Bushie camp’s best-defined target. So the media is sticking to the "one voice" portrayal because the Limbaughs, Coulters, et al. have their responses all ready and prescripted.

The overwhelming majority of House Democrats resisted the Rove trap - the bogus "support the troops" resolution (I mean, who at this point was stupid enough to fall for that! Yeah right - support our troops by hangin' em out to dry for another 2 or 3 years!). But what do the headlines say? “Republicans Stand Firm on Iraq”; “Democrats Fail in Debate”, etc . ad nauseum. All are headline that were preplanned by the marshallow-faced thug Rove. and executed by his subservient goons in the mainstream media.

But even the supposedly more progressive writers/editors are dancing at the ends of Rove's strings. Like Frank Rich of the NY Times, and the editors at Raw Story (who apparently think that being "more balanced" means printing at least one Rovian piece of propaganda each day). Rich's story: "Rove Beats Democrats Again" and his comment that the Democrats have not been able to come up with "a stirring narrative" that defines their stance "is not only misleading, it is downright false - unless, of course, what he means by "beating the Democrats" is that Rove has again succeeded in manipulating the media and insuring that only the Bush "narrative" ever sees the light of day. When you black out the speeches by Waxman, Waters, et al, black out the position statements of the Out of Iraq Caucus (let alone its existence), and black out the Murtha Resolution, it's pretty damn easy to make the claim to the unwitting public that the Democrats have " no narrative" and that Rove has "won again."

The only thing that can be achieved by this systematic twisting and suppression of the truth is the perpetuation of an immoral and pointless war and a failed, dictatorial presidency. This being the case, then one must conclude that these things are also the goals of the editors and "journalists" participating. MORE

UPDATE 11:20 PM. Tim Russert had John Murtha on Meet the Press. What a hoot Russert was in his effort to try to tear at Murtha. He kept referencing his handler – ie, Karl Rove…”Well, Karl Rove said that….” Etc. Why bother to have Russert appear on the show at all! Just cut out the middle man and have Rove appear himself: The “Meet Karl Rove Press” show! Having Murtha on the show at all was simply a ploy – to try to deflect accusations that the Democrats’ side has not been presented. But, of course, making sure that Murtha didn’t appear until AFTER the vote on the phony Repug resolution and after the media had thoroughly spun the story.

June 17

PROPAGANDA OVERDRIVE!

North Korean Missile Story and Shoebomber Tale are Both Pentagon/Media Fairy Tales

Man, oh man! This week I could fill my entire “Need to Know News” page just with debunking mainstream news propaganda! It’s getting just that bad! Here are two of the most outrageous examples from just the past 48 hours!! First up we have the North Korean missile-capable-of-hitting-US story, a "tale of terror" that happens to be a complete fabrication. Second, we have the amazing, shifting shoebomber tale - an exercise in Pentagon fantasy that is now into its third version......READ THE REST

MAINSTREAM MEDIA: "A NUMBING REPETITION OF UNCORRECTED FALSEHOODS"

Greg Sargent in the "American Prospect" writes: Today's Washington Post piece on yesterday's congressional debates about Iraq floated two key GOP falsehoods without debunking them. The first: "I'm not surprised at John Kerry switching his position yet again," [Dick] Cheney said on Sean Hannity's radio talk show. Kerry is charging "that somehow he was misled," the vice president said. "He wasn't misled. He saw the same intelligence all the rest of us saw."... Lies, lies, lies. The falsehood that the President and Congress had access to the same intel in the runup to Iraq has been thoroughly debunked numerous times....And here it is again, quoted in the Post, with not a single word providing this crucial context or noting that it is simply false.

"The second [falsehood]: Central to the House Republicans' argument was the much-disputed link between the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq. ...Much-disputed? Not a single scrap of real evidence has ever emerged linking Sept. 11 to Iraq..... To describe this as "much-disputed" creates the false impression that the jury's still out on the question of whether there's some sort of real, meaningful link between the two.

"...little by little, such journalistic failures add up. The numbing repetition of uncorrected falsehoods creates a phony atmosphere of uncertainty around key questions which in fact have already been resolved. Eventually voters throw up their hands and accept the fact that they'll never know for sure what the truth is, and confusion ensues. If the media more aggressively debunked such lies -- every single time, and in every single context -- voters just might stand a chance." MORE

Prime Example of Media Falsehood:

Here's a prime example of mainstream media falsehoods. Compare the actual finding of the World Health Organization (Exhibit A) with AP's completely false version (Exhibit B)

Exhibit A:

The World Health Organization Reports: " The evidence shows that environmental risk factors play a role in more than 80% of the diseases regularly reported by the World Health Organization. Globally, nearly one quarter of all deaths and of the total disease burden can be attributed to the environment.In children, however, environmental risk factors can account for slightly more than one-third of the disease burden. "

Exhibit B

AP Reports: "While 24 percent of the diseases affecting the general population result from exposure to threats in the environment, the figure rises to more than 33 percent for children."

There's a HUGE difference between 80% and 25% doncha think? And yet while millions will read the erroneous AP version, only a few thousand will read the report at its source.

June 16

LATEST BUSH/IRAQ WAR POLLS ARE RIGGED WITH SKEWED QUESTIONS

This is the second example I have seen of a recent Bush/Iraq war poll showing “good news for the White House” that uses manipulative questioning to elicit answers that either are in Bush’s favor or can be spun in Bush's favor. Here's a sample question from a Gallup/USA Today poll:

"Which comes closer to your view about the war in Iraq?"

1. You think the U.S. will definitely win the war in Iraq.

2.You think the U.S. will probably win the war in Iraq.

3.You think the U.S. can win the war in Iraq, but you don't think it will win.

4.you do not think the U.S. can win the war in Iraq

All four of the possible answers have a "US will (or can) win" “clause” built in. Even the most negative of the four possibilities has the “can win” bit built in ("you do not think the US CAN win." It's a trap, of course. The US obviously “can” win if it carpets Iraq with bombs and kills a few hundred thousand more people….or if it sent in about 200,000 more troops in….or if it changes it’s strategy, etc. So worded this way, even I – as opposed to the war as I am – would have to answer yes, the US can win. Not one of the answers is a straightforward here and now answer – there’s no “I do not think the US will win the war,” or even “The way things are currently going, I do not think the US will win the war.”

But, just as the poll-designers intended, the results of the above poll were promptly used as media spin. Media Matters reports: “On the June 13 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough misleadingly described the results of a USA Today/Gallup poll, which asked whether respondents believe that the U.S. can still win the Iraq war. Scarborough declared four times that the poll showed "69 percent of Americans now believe America can win the war in Iraq," a figure he referred to as "staggering," "shocking" and one "I can't get my arms around." But included in the 69 percent Scarborough cited were 21 percent of respondents who believed that the United States "can win the war in Iraq" but "don't think it will win." In fact, the number of poll respondents who believed that the United States definitely or probably will win in Iraq was equal to the number of people who believed that the U.S. cannot or probably won't win.”

The point is, what we are seeing is one of the most aggressive, largest-scale propaganda campaigns in the history of the US, one in which the White House, Pentagon, and mainstream media (and its pollsters) are systematically colluding, indifferent to the truth, the US image, or rights of the American people. MORE