2009

The Hyperrealilty of a Failing Corporate Media System
By Andrew Hobbs and Peter Phillips
Hyperreality is the inability to distinguish between what is real and what
is not. Corporate media, Fox in particular, offers news that creates a hyperreality
of real world problems and issues. Consumers of corporate television news–especially
those whose understandings are framed primarily from that medium alone–are
embedded in a state of excited delirium and knowinglessness.

Corporate Media hasn’t acted as a cohesive, protective “fourth
estate” in several decades, instead gilding lilies such as the Iraq war,
torture and the true extent of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. Contemporary
corporate news is best seen in a post-modern context of hyperreality. The news
from US networks is based on the presentations of partially factual stories
framed inside socio-emotional story lines that juxtapose “evil”
with patriotism and Christian fervor. There are multiple examples of this, but
we will examine two distinct cases.
Inside the Military Media Industrial Complex: Impacts on Movements for Peace
and Social Justice
By Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff
Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past
decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United
States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include
the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed
upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million
Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million
people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols.
These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior
government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting
the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview
with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, “You
know we don’t do body counts.”[i] Fortunately, for those concerned
about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.
Hope
Fades for End of the American Empire under Obama
Peter Phillips – John Pilger writes a strong
informational piece on the lies of Obama. As we start to see more of this from
the current global dominance administration, hope fades for peace and the end
of the American Empire
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that
“passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party
slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.”
Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the
close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no
longer peace, but rather a permanent war that “extends well beyond Afghanistan
and Pakistan” to “disorderly regions and diffuse enemies”. He called this “global
security” and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which America
has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: “We have no interest in occupying
your country.”

by Chris Hedges
December 28, 2009
Truthdig.com

Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America.
He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus
no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those
at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal
Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S.
citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring
to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make
a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial,
his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists,
but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil
liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this,
but he is not allowed to speak.

This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements–who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism–have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.

The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.

December 26, 2009
Daily News
NBCNewYork.com

A Sept. 11 hero died of cancer on Christmas Day. Jim Ryan was on the front lines during 9/11, a firefighter who spent many weeks rummaging through the destruction that encompassed Ground Zero, only to succumb to pancreatic cancer, according to a report.
The fire department confirms that his sickness was 9/11-related. And now his family — his three children, wife and all the people who loved him — mourn the death of a hero.
“He was just really really great,” his grieving wife, Magda, told the Daily News.
Ryan, 48, was first diagnosed with cancer three years ago. He relapsed last year, reports the News.
A brave fighter until the end, Ryan desperately wanted to travel with his colleagues to Washington in November to campaign for the passage of legislation that would give $11 billion for those who contracted diseases on Sept. 11. That bill hasn’t yet passed.
“It’s about all the guys who are going to come after me,” Ryan, who wasn’t well enough to make the trip, told the News at the time. “And there’s going to be plenty of them.”
Ryan’s family spent a quiet Christmas Eve at home, and just before 2 a.m. on Christmas Day, the Long Island father’s teenage son realized he wasn’t breathing, reports the News.

Thursday, 17. December 2009
Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs

Podcast Show #16
The Boiling Frogs Presents Russ Baker

Russ Baker discusses his book, Family of Secrets, the first complete historic portrait of the Bush dynasty, and provides us with an overview of how this dynasty shaped our politics. He tells us about the shadow government in the US, the real players, elites, and power centers within each president’s government, and the limitation on what and how much an American president can accomplish — considering the influence of these powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. Mr. Baker defines and explains the concept of Forensic Journalism, and talks about his nonprofit news organization WhoWhatWhy, the need for nonpartisan and independent journalism today, the current media landscape in the US, and more.

December 14, 2009
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