mainstream news has become indifferent and creepy to
actual world events for an educated an savvy world of 7 billion people- why so
irrelevant and insulting to our global humanity's intelligence? Why must the people of our nations fight to
search for actual news happenings of our countries and the cultures and
humanity and environment we care about??? #allpeoplematter
-------------
o Cached
Mar 2, 2011 ... Special Coverage .... Look to tech
departments to instigate real change in the function of ... School buildings
are going to become 'homebases' of learning, not the ... Education Schools have
to realize that if they are to remain relevant, .... State education budgets,
keeping in their mantra of “Dumbing Down ...
---------
MANY IN CANADA
ETC. WILL KEEP AL-JAZEERA… their documentaries and news is more factual/actual
than any outside of Euronews…imho- BBC, Fox, CBC etc… are like all the bought
and paid for democrats who own 97% of all news spewed or NOT in today’s world…
and that’s just sad…. Remember RWANDA…
and Canada’s Romeo Dallaire….. UN/G7 and Mainstream news almost destroyed any
form of humanity in Rwanda with 100 days of silence and 800,000 butchered
innocent black brothers and sisters…. Canadians remember… We’ll keep AlJazeera thank u…. for it’s know
bias… there is more honesty and global inclusion of humanity than any ‘so
called civilized mainstream news… and we all know it…imho’…
1.
o Cached
Jul 9, 2014 ... Ratings leader Fox News Channel pulls in an
evening average of about 1.6 million. ... “There's no real estate for partisan
bickering” at Al Jazeera America, wrote USA ..... Dumbing down the news
programming in order to grab higher viewer ratings is the ... But now look at
the powerhouse NPR has become.
------------------
And CANADA and
most nations… wtf happened to intelligent actual news ?
o Cached
Nov 25, 2015 ... That dynamic has broken down this election
season. ... to mainstream news outlets, who were now collectively declining to
... for so long that they can't even remember stuff that happened not that
..... Trump is building upon a conflated memory of an actual event; crew of ...
And the dumbing-down continues.
-----------
by MHB
Administrator • Guest Posts
• Tags: 9/11, false flag
terror, government
conspiracy, James Fetzer,
media
disinformation, Nobody
Died At Sandy Hook, Paul Craig
Roberts, Sandy
Hook Elementary
Most people who are aware
and capable of thought have given up on what is called the “mainstream media.”
The presstitutes have destroyed their credibility by helping Washington to
lie—“Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Iranian nukes,” “Assad’s
use of chemical weapons,” “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” and so forth. The
“mainstream media” has also destroyed its credibility by its complete
acceptance of whatever government authorities say about alleged “terrorist
events,” such as 9/11 and Boston Marathon Bombing, or alleged mass shootings
such as Sandy Hook and San Bernardino. Despite glaring inconsistencies,
contradictions, and security failures that seem too unlikely to be believable,
the “mainstream media” never asks questions or investigates. It merely reports
as fact whatever authorities say.
-----------
by Kevin Scott
King • Guest
Posts • Tags: Chris Carter,
FBI, government
conspiracy, Kevin Scott
King, popular
culture, propaganda,
X Files
Or how mass media manipulates thoughts and opinions through popular culture
Kevin Scott King
TruthShock
TruthShock
In
the spring of 1993 Tim-Berners Lee releases what we know as the World Wide Web…
royalty free. For all intents and purposes this is the ‘Internet’ for most
people. The introduction of the WWW creates an explosion of data and
information sharing across the globe. People of like interests could easily
find one another and share data… and they did, at an unprecedented level. This
sharing of information is a godsend for any persons whose interest lie in
obscure or hard to find subjects. This is particularly important for those who
research controversial subjects, like those of a conspiratorial nature. But
regardless of what subject, be it obscure or common, this new ability to find
and share information easily and quickly, rapidly accelerated research. And
hence was a boon for harder to research subjects, especially those in which
parties are not keen on the ‘facts’ becoming common knowledge. Such as acts of
gross criminality at the governmental and political level; murder, fraud,
theft, false-flags… also labeled as ‘conspiracy theory’.
--------------
Mainstream
media far more interested in Tom Brady's balls than Hillary Clinton's ethics
violations
Saturday, May 16, 2015 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Tom Brady, Hillary Clinton, mainstream media
Tags: Tom Brady, Hillary Clinton, mainstream media
---------------------
5 days ago ... The “mainstream media” has also destroyed
its credibility by its complete ... Competent historians know that false flag events
are used to bring to fruition agendas ... is becoming certainly has a powerful
interest in disarming the public. ..... These staged events are modeled on real
world dynamic events, and, ...
-----------------
--------------
News & Politics
How
We've Become Resigned to the Spectacle of Violence and Misery
Democracy is under assault and appears to have fallen over
the edge into “dark times.”
By Henry Giroux
/ Truthout
August 27, 2014
-----------
Feb 14, 2005 ... Resignation of CNN chief news executive
Eason Jordan, under ... Mr. Jarvis said bloggers should keep their real target
in mind. ... "Or does it mean that we've entered a brave new world where
the MSM has become irrelevant," he asked, ... His own conclusion is that
the mainstream media "is being held to ...
----------------
7/12/2015
- American life is processed life. Left-right politics, feel-good religion,
corrupt Hollywood entertainment, crony capitalism, chemically-manufactured
factory food, greed-driven materialism, fake fiat currency, poisonous
pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, agenda-driven corporate media: each of these
things...
------------------
7/7/2015
- Here's where a recent story in The New York Times[1] got its
information: "American officials said ... officials said ... several
officials said ... American officials acknowledge ... Western officials say ...
a Western official said ..." (Story by Jon Schwarz, republished from
FirstLook.org) And...
---------------
|
5/10/2015
- What you're about to read here is a revealing look at the psychological
mechanism presently being used by government and media to achieve
near-absolute control over the population. I'm calling the concept the
"crisis of the NOW," and understanding this is a lot like taking
the RED pill. The "crisis...
==========
|
 |
5/8/2015 - Trust in the
mainstream media appears to be taking a nosedive, at least among young
people. A recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll that queried more than
3,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 found that only 2 percent of them
believe that the media can be trusted to do the "right thing" on...
|
---------------
-----------
UNITED NATIONS MANTRA
IS STILL... God, Gold and Glory..... conquerers ... and the 1% will still rule
this world.... f**k Pope Francis and his humanity and environment for the
7billion masses.... WAR, WAR, WAR AND MONEY, MONEY, MONEY....
This is from the ashes
of League of Nations formed in the 1920s... and disbanded on the ashes of the
horrific Jewish Holocaust forming United Nations in 1945 for humanity and
education and empowerment for each and everyone....
-------------------
These
should b all across Canada Communities..... with phone number contacts with
real people .... old people have definitely paid our dues the hard way... and
the last days should be in grace and some comfort.... imho
Helpline
puts Montreal seniors in touch with food banks, housing
---------
Women
are routinely excluded from peace processes. We're trying to change that: http://bit.ly/1VOZY9F #IWD2016
----------
---------------
To
saucypants and his castaways of a best nighttime show #TrevorNoah TDS and #stephencolbert who loves all the troops
... and us...
FROM
THE CANADIAN BIBLE- The Canada Party -34Million Canadians
CANADA for President 2016
--------------
---------------
o Cached
Why the Western media does not always report what is going
on around the world. ... The phrase "dumbing down" has entered the
language as television ... Cross-media ownership and the fact that a small number
of people own so many of our ... for their own people outside the mainstream
are given virtually zero coverage.
----------
o Cached
Jan 31, 2013 ... Mainstream media can change or not as it
sees fit. ... at the new agility and speed brought to the coverage of events by
the internet. ..... Have they become so brazen that they don't even bother
hiding their bias any more? ...... than news any more and why have they "dumbed"
themselves down to this level, ...
-----------------
TRUTH EMERGENCY: INSIDE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL MEDIA EMPIRE
May 3, 2010
Peter Phillips and
Mickey Huff
“When it comes to
the news, the corporate view is ‘objective,’ all else is ‘propaganda.’”
—Studs Terkel
Among the most
important Project Censored news stories of the past decade, one is the fact
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 two million Iraqi
deaths. In the current Iraq War, beginning in March of 2003, over a million
people 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 when the War on Terror was in its infancy,
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.
In a January 2008
report, the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reported that
“survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens
have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate
that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been
of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error
associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between
946,000 and 1,120,000.”(ii)
The ORB report
comes on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Johns Hopkins University
published in the Lancet medical journal that confirmed the continuing numbers
of mass deaths in Iraq. A study done by Dr. Les Roberts from January 1, 2002 to
March 18, 2003 put the civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. A second
study published in the Lancet in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian
deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion. The 2006 study confirms that
US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths
and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces.
The magnitude of
these million-plus deaths and creation of such a vast refugee crisis is
undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces has guaranteed a monthly
mass death rate of thousands of people—a carnage so severe and so concentrated
as to equate it with the most heinous mass killings in world history. Further,
more tons of bombs have been dropped in Iraq than all of World War II.[iii]
The American
people are faced with a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been
conducted in America’s name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude
of the deaths and tend to believe that the deaths are only in the thousands and
are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Corporate mainstream media is in large
part to blame.
The question then
becomes, how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the
United States of America, and what impact does this have on peace and social
justice movements in the country?[iv]
Truth Emergency
and Media Reform
In the United
States today, the rift between reality and reporting has reached its end. There
is no longer a mere credibility gap, but rather a literal Truth Emergency.
Americans cannot access the truth about the issues that most impact their lives
by relying on the mainstream corporate media. A Truth Emergency is a
culmination of the failures of the fourth estate to act as a truly free press.
This truth emergency exists not only as a result of fraudulent elections,
pseudo 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, torture camps, and
doctored intelligence, but also around issues that intimately impact everyday
Americans. Yet these issues are rarely reported in corporate media outlets,
where a vast majority of the American people continue to turn to for news and
information.
Consider that most
US workers have been faced with a thirty-five year decline in real wages while
the top few percent enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens,
creating a vastly disparate and widening wealth distribution gap. Furthermore,
the US has the highest infant mortality rate among industrialized nations, is
falling behind Europe and Asia in scientific research and education, faces
closing factories and schools, laid off teachers, an actual 15 percent
unemployment rate, multi-trillion dollar stratospheric national debt, a
crumbling infrastructure, and is seriously lacking in healthcare quality and
delivery. In fact, over 50 million Americans now lack healthcare coverage resulting
in the deaths of 18,000 people a year. America has entered another Gilded Age.
Someone should alert the media.[v]
This Truth
Emergency Movement held its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz,
California from January 25- to 27, 2008. Organizers gathered key media
constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of
suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to
disclose, legitimize, and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality
in the US. In sum, this truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of
Constitutional crisis, ecological peril, and widening war, ways in which top
investigative journalists, whistleblowers, and independent media activists can
transform the way Americans perceive and defend their world.
There is another
growing national movement to address mainstream media failures and policies in
government, the Free Press or Media Reform Movement. However, this movement
fails to address many issues of the actual Truth Emergency. During the 2008
National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in Minneapolis, MN, Project
Censored interns and faculty conducted a sociological survey designed to gauge
conference participant thoughts on the status quo of the news media as well as
the truthfulness of corporate media news and effectiveness of the media reform
movement. The survey also sought to determine the level of belief and support
in a Truth Emergency in the US and the varying degrees of support for key truth
issues regardless of their coverage at the NCMR conference.
The completed
survey yielded 376 randomly selected NCMR attendees out of the 3,500 people
registered for the conference. The survey has a statistical accuracy of plus or
minus 5 percent at a 95 percent confidence interval, in that all the people at
the NCMR hold the same beliefs.
Strong support was
shown for the premise of a Truth Emergency in the US. The survey asked, Has
corporate media failed to keep the American people informed on important issues
facing the nation? Does a Truth Emergency exist in the United States?
The response was
staggering. Ninety-nine percent strongly agreed, or agreed with
the first
question, and only seven percent of responders disagreed with the
characterization of current events as a Truth Emergency in the US. Yet few of
the events, panels, or talks at the conference reflected these concerns.
Discovering the
most effective ways to chisel at the bulwark of corrupt corporate
media will require
continuing thought and effort. It is clear from our survey that media democracy
activists strongly support the continuing development of independent media
combined with aggressive reform efforts and policy changes as part of an
overall media democracy movement. Activists also believe that both reform and
grassroots independent media efforts will fit within an ongoing truth emergency
theme that conducts deep investigative research into critical social justice
issues. One activist said, “we cannot be afraid, democracy is in the balance.”
While recognizing
that this survey was done at an independent media activist “reform” conference,
fully expecting a great deal of agreement on the questions, it was still
amazing that there was almost total agreement for grassroots media efforts in
addition to reform work (especially given that most of the emphasis of the
conference was on reform of existing mainstream media rather than direct action
and grassroots movement approach with an independent and public focused
journalistic endeavor). In other words, it was reassuring to see support for a
media movement of the people, by the people, and for the people.[vi]
One statement on
the survey, that a military-industrial-media complex exists in the US for the
promotion of the US military domination of the world, received an 87 percent
approval rating among the sample. This result showed that research done by
Project Censored about the continuing powerful global dominance group inside
the US government, the US media, and the national policy structure is widely believed
by participants at the NCMR. [vii]
NCMR participants
also overwhelmingly believe the leadership class in the US is now dominated by
a neo-conservative group of some several hundred people who share goal of
asserting US military power worldwide. This Global Dominance Group, in
cooperation with major military contractors, the corporate media, and
conservative foundations has become a powerful long-term force in military
unilateralism and US political processes.
The Global
Dominance Group and Information Control
A long thread of
sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the
US, which sets policy and determines national political priorities. C. Wright
Mills, in his 1956 book on the power elite, documented how World War II solidified
a trinity of power in the US that comprised corporate, military, and government
elites in a centralized power structure working in unison through “higher
circles” of contact and agreement.[viii] This power has grown through the Cold
War, and, after 9/11, the Global War on Terror.
The military
expansionists from within the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and G. W.
Bush administrations put into place solid support for increased military
spending. Clinton’s model of supporting the US military industrial complex held
steady defense spending and increased foreign weapons sales from 16 percent of
global orders to over 63 pecent by the end of his administration. After 9/11,
during the presidency of George W. Bush, defense spending and the national
deficit climbed dramatically and federal authority became more concentrated.
The US now spends over half of its discretionary budget on military related
issues.
The Barack Obama
administration is continuing the neo-conservative agenda of US military
domination of the world—albeit with perhaps a kinder, gentler face. While overt
torture is now forbidden for the CIA and Pentagon, and symbolic gestures like
the closing of the Guantanamo prison are in evidence, a unilateral military
dominance policy, expanding military budget, and wars of occupation and
aggression will likely continue unabated. That has been the historical pattern.
Obama’s election
brought a moment of hope for many. However, the new administration is not
calling for decreased military spending, or a reversal of US military global
dominance. Instead, Obama retained Robert Gates, thus making Obama the first
president from an opposing party in US history to keep in place the outgoing
administrations’ Secretary of Defense/War. Additionally, Obama is calling for
an expanded war in Afghanistan and only minimal long-range reductions in Iraq.
Major defense
contractors were seriously involved in the 2008 elections. Lockheed Martin gave
$2,612,219 in total political campaign donations, with 49 percent to Democrats
($1,285,493) and 51 percent to Republicans ($1,325,159). Boeing gave $2,225,947
in 2008, with 58 percent going to Democrats, and General Dynamics provided
$1,682,595 to both parties. Northrop Grumman spent over $20 million in 2008
hiring lobbyists to influence Congress, and Raytheon spent $6 million on
lobbyists in the same period. In a revolving door appointment, Obama nominated
William Lynn, Raytheon’s senior vice president for government operations and
strategy, for the number two position in the Pentagon. Lynn was formally the
Defense Department’s comptroller during the Clinton administration and was
reputed to have been unable to account for over three trillion dollars in
defense department spending during his administration.[ix]
The US now spends
as much for defense as the rest of the world combined. At the beginning of 2009
the Global Dominance Group’s agenda is well established within higher circle
policy councils and cunningly operationalized inside the US Government. They
work hand in hand with defense contractors promoting deployment of US forces in
over 1,000 bases worldwide.
The corporate
media in the US like to think of themselves as the most accurate news reporting
source of the day. The New York Times motto of “all the news that’s fit to
print” is a clear example of this perspective, as is CNN’s “most trusted name
in news” and Fox News Channel’s “We Report, You Decide” or “Fair and Balanced.”
However, with corporate media coverage that increasingly focuses on a narrow
range of celebrity updates, news from “official” government sources, and
sensationalized crimes and disasters, the self-justification of being the most
fit is no longer valid in the US. In fact, several studies done by Diane
Farsetta at the Center for Media Democracy showed Pentagon propaganda
penetration on mainstream corporate news in the guise of retired Generals as
“experts” or pundits who turned out to be nothing more than paid shills for
government war policy. While the Pentagon claimed this was legal, the Pentagon
Inspector General’s office rescinded a report of the most recent propaganda
investigation and even removed the report from its website because the office
concluded the study “did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector
General work product.”[x]
A global dominance
agenda also includes penetration into the boardrooms of the
corporate media in
the US. In 2006 only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of
director of the ten big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the
corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the
top ten media corporations in the major defense contractors on their boards of
directors, including:
William Kennard:
New York Times, Carlyle Group
Douglas Warner III, GE (NBC), Bechtel
Douglas Warner III, GE (NBC), Bechtel
John Bryson:
Disney (ABC), Boeing
Alwyn Lewis:
Disney (ABC), Halliburton
Douglas
McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin.
Given an
interlocked media network, it is safe to say that big media in the United
States effectively
represent the interests of corporate America. The media elite, a key
component of the
Higher Circle Policy Elite in the US, are the watchdogs of acceptable
ideological messages, the controllers of news and information content, and the
decision makers regarding media resources.
An important case
of Pentagon influence over the corporate media is CNN’s
retraction of the
story about US Military use of sarin (a nerve gas) in 1970 in Laos during
the Vietnam War.
CNN producers April Oliver and Jack Smith, after an eight-month
investigation,
reported on CNN June 7, 1998, and later in Time magazine that sarin gas
was used in
Operation Tailwind in Laos, and that American defectors were targeted. The
story was based on
eyewitness accounts and high military command collaboration. Under
tremendous
pressure from the Pentagon, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and Richard
Helms, CNN and
Time retracted the story by saying, “The allegations about the use of
nerve gas and the
killing of defectors are not supported by the evidence.” Oliver and
Smith were both
fired by CNN later that summer. They have steadfastly stood by their
original story as
accurate and substantiated. CNN and Time, under intense Pentagon
pressure, quickly
reversed their position after having fully approved the release of the
story only weeks
earlier. April Oliver feels that CNN and Time capitulated to the
Pentagon’s threat
to lock them out of future military stories.
Even ten years
later, CNN has a difficult time reporting on their own complicity with the
Pentagon in creating propaganda, this time with the retired Pentagon Generals
pundit scandal. The Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, which was
announced in April of 2009, went to The New York Times’ David Barstow for his
reporting on this very subject, yet CNN, while covering the list of Pulitzer
winners, made no mention of his award or his reporting on the CNN/Pentagon
connection (which was also reported by Diane Farsetta at PR Watch).[xi]
Not only is the
corporate media deeply interlocked with the military industrial complex and
global dominance policy elites in the US, but the media is increasingly
dependent on various governmental and corporate sources of news. Maintenance of
continuous news shows requires a constant feed and an ever-entertaining supply
of stimulating events and breaking news bites. The twenty-four-hour news shows
on MSNBC, Fox and CNN maintain constant contact with the White House, Pentagon,
and public relations companies representing both government and private
corporations.
Symbiotic global
news distribution is a conscious and deliberate attempt by the powerful to
control news and information in society. The Homeland Security Act Title II Section
201(d)(5) specifically asks the directorate to “develop a comprehensive plan
for securing the key resources and critical infrastructure of the United States
including information technology and telecommunications systems (including
satellites) emergency preparedness communications systems.”
Media critic and
historian Norman Solomon wrote in 2005, “One way or another, a
military-industrial complex now extends to much of corporate media. In the
process, firms with military ties routinely advertise in news outlets. Often,
media magnates and people on the boards of large media-related corporations
enjoy close links—financial and social—with the military industry and
Washington’s foreign-policy establishment.”[xii]
By the time of the
1991 Gulf War, retired colonels, generals and admirals had become mainstays in
network TV studios during wartime. Language such as “collateral damage” flowed
effortlessly between journalists and military men, who shared perspectives on
the occasionally mentioned and even more rarely seen civilians killed by US
firepower.[xiii]
In the early
1990s, Chris Hedges covered the Gulf War for the New York Times. Ten years
later, he wrote, “The notion that the press was used in the war is incorrect.
The press wanted to be used. It saw itself as part of the war effort.
Truth-seeking independence was far from the media agenda. The press was as
eager to be of service to the state during the war as most everyone else. Such
docility on the part of the press made it easier to do what governments do in
wartime, indeed what governments do much of the time, and that is lie.”[xiv] Of
course, this critique is not new. I.F. Stone, the iconoclastic investigative
journalist once wrote, “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for
countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”[xv]
The problem then
becomes more complex. What happens to a society that begins to believe such
lies as truth? What happens to leaders that begin to believe, too? And what
becomes of those in the society that do not believe the lies because they find
facts are more of a guiding light? The run-up to the current war in Iraq
concerning so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) is a grand example. It
illustrates the power of propaganda in creating not only public support for an
ill begotten war, but it promotes a languishing, if not outright impotent,
peace movement even when fueled by truth to stop a war based on false
pretences. The current war in Iraq was the most globally protested war in
recorded history even before it began, and this did nothing to stop it and has
done little to end it even under a now Democratic president that promised such
on the campaign trail. The candidate of hope and change, with many progressive
and peace groups in tow, has proven to be much of the same caliber of a leader
in foreign policy that got the US into war in the first place.[xvi]
Understanding
Modern Media Censorship
In order to
understand modern media censorship in the US, there is a growing need to
broaden its definition. The dictionary definition of direct government control
of news as censorship is no longer adequate. The private corporate media in the
US significantly under covers and/or deliberately censors numerous important
news stories every year. A broader definition of censorship in America today
needs to include any interference, deliberate or not, with the free flow of
vital news information to the American people. Modern censorship can be seen as
the subtle yet persistent and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass
media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional
non-inclusion of a news story—or piece of a news story—based on anything other
than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of
political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals),
economic pressure (from advertisers, funders, and underwriters), and legal
pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations,
and institutions).
The common theme
of the most censored stories over the past few years has been the systemic
erosion of human rights and civil liberties in both the US and the world at
large. The corporate media ignored the fact that habeas corpus can now be
suspended for anyone by order of the President. With the approval of Congress,
the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, signed by Bush on October 17, 2006,
allows for the suspension of habeas corpus for US citizens and non-citizens
alike. While the mainstream corporate media, including the New York Times with
it’s lead editorial piece published on October 19, 2006, have given false
comfort that American citizens will not be the victims of the measures
legalized by this Act, the law is quite clear that ‘any person’ can be
targeted.[xvii]
Additionally,
under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized
Nationally), federally coordinated mass arrests occurring since April 2005
netted over 54,000 arrests, a majority of which were actually not violent
criminals, the opposite of what was initially suggested. This unprecedented
move of arresting tens of thousands of “fugitives” is the largest dragnet style
operation in the nation’s history. The raids, coordinated by the Justice
Department and Homeland Security, directly involved over 960 agencies (state,
local and federal) and mark the first time in US history that all domestic
police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal
government.[xviii]
All these events
are significant in a democratic society that alleges to cherish individual
rights and due process of law. To have them occur is a tragedy and farce. To
have a free press not report them or pretend they do not matter is the
foundation of censorship today.
Are Americans
Unfeeling Towards War?
The failure of the
corporate media to cover moral issue raising questions like one million deaths
of Iraqis is a contributing factor to a very limited public response to the war
on terror being conducted around the world by the US. Even when activists do
mobilize, the corporate media coverage of anti-war demonstrations has been
negligible and denigrating from the start.
Linda Milazzo
writes about the major anti-war march in Washington, DC on September 15, 2007:
“I, along with 100,000 kindred activists, marched through the nation’s capitol
where we were pretty much ignored. The minimal media we did get was distorted
and untrue. When a small, sadistic band of war-hawks showed up to oppose us,
the press slanted their numbers as if they equaled our own. The truth is, their
numbers were one-hundreth the size of ours, although one would never know that
from this deceptive headline in The Washington Post, “Dueling
Demonstrations.”[xix] It’s a travesty to democracy that mainstream journalists
of the so-called free press ignore the anti-war movement and serve the
interests of their corporate masters in the military media industrial complex
to the detriment of the nation and perhaps the world.[xx]
Not only does the
corporate media disregard the anti-war movement in the US, the human costs of
the war are ignored as well. An investigative research study done at Project
Censored at Sonoma State University focused on news photographs appearing on
the front pages of the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle during
two periods, from March to December 2003 and from January 2006 to March 2007.
Examining these data, the researchers asked, how frequently do front-page news
photographs depict war in Afghanistan or Iraq? And, to what extent do these
photos portray the human cost of those wars?
Based on content
analysis of over 6,000 front-page news photos, spanning 1,389 days of coverage,
researchers found that only 12.8 percent of the photos analyzed relate in some
way to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A mere 3.3 percent of those front page
news photos represent war’s most fundamental human cost, by depicting dead,
injured, or missing humans. This research documents the enormous gap between
the number of actual deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq during this time span,
which numbers hundreds of thousands, and the number of deaths depicted
visually, through front page photographs—just forty-eight images of human
death. Researchers concluded that the human cost of war is permitted only a
small marginal position on the front pages of US newspapers.[xxi]
Visuals, including
news photographs, play a crucial role in how readers experience newspapers and
engage the stories that they contain. For example, the Poynter Institute’s
ongoing “Eyes on the News” study demonstrates that 90 percent of readers enter
pages through large photographs or other visual images; running a visual
element increases by three times the likelihood that the reader will read at
least some of the accompanying text; and readers’ comprehension and recall
increase when photographs or other visuals accompany stories.
The one-two
combination of the negation of human suffering and a neglected anti-war
movement contributes to an underlying belief that the 9/11 wars and occupations
are justified. A Gallup poll conducted in March of 2009 indicated, “Forty-two
percent of Americans now say the United States made a mistake in sending troops
to Afghanistan, up from 30% earlier this year and establishing a new high.
Meanwhile, the 53% who say the Iraq war is a mistake is down slightly from 56%
in January, and 60% last summer.” While over 50 percent of the public still
believes it was a mistake to invade Iraq, 58 percent still thinks invading
Afghanistan was the right thing to do.[xxii]
Further, the
corporate mainstream press continues to ignore the human cost of the US war in
Iraq with America’s own veterans. Veteran care, wounded rates, mental
disabilities, denied or delayed VA claims, first hand accounts of soldier
experiences, and more are avoided like the plague in corporate mainstream
media. Short of the Walter Reed VA hospital care scandal, little has been
covered. One of the most important stories missed by the corporate press was
about the Winter Soldier Congressional hearings in Washington, DC. The
hearings, with eyewitness testimony of US soldiers relating their experiences
on the battlefield and beyond, were only covered by a scant number of major
media outlets including the Boston Globe and NPR, but only in passing mention.
In contrast to the virtual corporate media blackout even about American
soldiers’ views of the war, the independent, listener sponsored, community
Pacifica radio network covered the hearings at length.[xxiii]
Americans do care
about human suffering and external wars when they are informed about what the
powerful are doing. Millions of Americans voted for Barack Obama as a peace
candidate. Barack Obama’s election to the US presidency in November of 2008
added to the view that something is being done to end the 9/11 wars as there
were many promises on the campaign trial hoping for change of Bush
administration policies. This belief that change will come belies what Obama
administration actions have actually shown about war policies, especially in
Afghanistan, where US troop presence is actually growing, and this belief
further contributes to a lackluster anti-war movement in the US despite what
the facts show.[xxiv]
The Left
Progressive Press
Where the left
progressive press may have covered some of the Winter Soldier issues, most did
not cover the major story of Iraqi deaths. Even the left progressive media has
shown limited coverage of the human costs of the 9/11 wars. In Manufacturing
Consent, Wharton School of Business Professor of Political Economy Edward
Herman and MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky claim that
because media is firmly embedded in the market system, it reflects the class
values and concerns of its owners and advertisers. According to Herman and
Chomsky, the media maintains a corporate class bias through five systemic
filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit
orientation; over-reliance on governmental and corporate sources for news; a
primary tendency to avoid offending the powerful; and an almost religious
worship of the market economy, strongly opposing alternative beliefs. These
filters limit what will become news in society and set parameters on acceptable
coverage of daily events.[xxv]
The danger of
these filters is that they make subtle and indirect censorship all the more
difficult to combat. Owners and managers share class identity with the powerful
and are motivated economically to please advertisers and viewers. Social
backgrounds influence their conceptions of what is “newsworthy,” and their
views and values seem only “common sense.” Journalists and editors are not
immune to the influence of owners and managers. Journalists want to see their
stories approved for print or broadcast, and editors come to know the limits of
their freedom to diverge from the “common sense” worldview of owners and
managers. The self-discipline that this structure induces in journalists and
editors comes to seem only “common sense” to them as well. Self-discipline
becomes self-censorship—independence is restricted, the filtering process
hidden, denied, or rationalized away.
Project Censored
conducted an analysis on the top ten left progressive publications and websites
coverage of key post-9/11 issues and found considerable limitations on coverage
of specific stories. Based on the evidence presented it can be concluded
Chomsky and Herman’s understandings may well contribute to the news story
selection process inside the left liberal media as well.[xxvi]
In the case of the
one millions dead Iraqis the left progressive press has shown late and limited
coverage at best. The million dead number emerged in the summer of 2007 on
several websites including after Downing Street, Huffington Post, Counter
Punch, and Alternet. Progressive journalist stalwart Amy Goodman at Democracy
Now! didn’t cover the story until February of 2008 after Reuters had it a few
days before. The Nation magazine didn’t acknowledge the story until February
16, 2009 in an article by John Tirman at MIT. This underplaying and lack of
reporting such a critical story on the humanitarian crisis of the US occupation
by the left press in America does not bode well for a strong, public, peace
movement. The US is in dire need of a media democracy movement to address Truth
Emergency concerns. There are examples that could be instrumental in adopting
such strategies available from the international community.
International
Models of Media Democracy in Action: Venezuela
Democracy from the
bottom is evolving as a ten-year social revolution in Venezuela. Led by
President Hugo Chavez, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela ((PSUV) gained
over 1½ million voters in the most recent elections November 23, 2008. “It was
a wonderful victory,” said Professor Carmen Carrero with the communications
studies department of the Bolivarian University in Caracas. “We won 81 percent
of the city mayor positions and seventeen of twenty-three of the state
governors,” Carrero reported.
The Bolivarian
University is housed in the former oil ministry building and now serves 8,000
students throughout Venezuela. The University (Universidad Bolivariana de
Venezuela) is symbolic of the democratic socialist changes occurring throughout
the country. Before the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998, college
attendance was primarily for the rich in Venezuela. Today over one million,
eight hundred thousand students attend college, three times the rate ten years
ago. “Our university was established to resist domination and imperialism,”
reported Principal (president) Marlene Yadira Cordova in an interview November
10, 2008, “We are a university where we have a vision of life that the
oppressed people have a place on this planet.” The enthusiasm for learning and
serious-thoughtful questions asked by students was certainly representative of
a belief in the potential of positive social change for human betterment. The
University offers a fully-staffed free healthcare clinic, zero tuition, and
basic no-cost food for students in the cafeteria, all paid for by the oil
revenues now being democratically shared by the people.
Bottom up
democracy in Venezuela starts with the 25,000 community councils elected in
every neighborhood in the country. “We establish the priority needs of our
area,” reported community council spokesperson Carmon Aponte, with the
neighborhood council in the barrio Bombilla area of western Caracas. Community
radio, TV and newspapers are the voice of the people, where they describe the
viewers/listeners as the “users” of media instead of the passive
audiences.[xxvii]
Democratic
socialism means healthcare, jobs, food, and security, in neighborhoods where in
many cases nothing but absolute poverty existed ten years ago. With
unemployment down to a US level, sharing the wealth has taken real meaning in
Venezuela. Despite a 50 percent increase in the price of food last year, local
Mercals offer government subsidized cooking oil, corn meal, meat, and powdered
milk at 30-50 percent off market price. Additionally, there are now 3,500 local
communal banks with a $1.6 billion dollar budget offering neighborhood-based
micro-financing loans for home improvements, small businesses, and personal
emergencies.
“We have moved
from a time of disdain [pre-revolution—when the upper classes saw working
people as less than human] to a time of adjustment,” proclaimed Ecuador’s
minister of Culture, Gallo Mora Witt at the opening ceremonies of the Fourth
International Book Fair in Caracas November 7. Venezuela’s Minister of Culture,
Hector Soto added, “We try not to leave anyone out . . . before the revolution
the elites published only 60-80 books a year, we will publish 1,200 Venezuelan
authors this year . . . the book will never stop being the important tool for
cultural feelings.” In fact, some twenty-five million books—classics by Victor
Hugo and Miguel de Cervantes, along with Cindy Sheehan’s Letter to George
Bush—were published in 2008 and are being distributed to the community councils
nationwide. The theme of the International Book Fair was books as cultural
support to the construction of the Bolivarian revolution and building socialism
for the twenty-first century.
In Venezuela the
corporate media are still owned by the elites. The five major TV networks, and
nine of ten of the major newspapers maintain a continuing media effort to
undermine Chavez and the socialist revolution. But despite the corporate media
and continuing US taxpayer financial support to the anti-Chavez opposition
institutions from USAID and National Endowment for Democracy ($20 million
annually), two-thirds of the people in Venezuela continue to support President
Hugo Chavez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The democracies of
South America are realizing that the neo-liberal formulas for capitalism are
not working for the people and that new forms of resource allocation are
necessary for human betterment. It is a learning process for all involved and
certainly a democratic effort from the bottom up.
International
Models of Media Democracy in Action: Cuba
“You cannot kill
truth by murdering journalists,” said Tubal Páez, president of the Journalist
Union of Cuba. In May of 2008, One hundred and fifty Cuban and South American
journalists, ambassadors, politicians, and foreign guests gathered at the Jose
Marti International Journalist Institute to honor the fiftieth anniversary of
the death of Carlos Bastidas Arguello —the last journalist killed in Cuba.
Carlos Bastidas was only twenty-three years of age when he was assassinated by Fulgencia
Batista’s secret police after having visited Fidel Castro’s forces in the
Sierra Maestra Mountains. Edmundo Bastidas, Carlos’ brother, told about how a
river of change flowed from the Maestra (teacher) mountains, symbolized by his
brother’s efforts to help secure a new future for Cuba.
The celebration in
Havana was held in honor of World Press Freedom Day, which is observed every
year in May. The UN first declared this day in 1993 to honor journalists who
lost their lives reporting the news and to defend media freedom worldwide.
Cuban journalists
share a common sense of a continuing counter-revolutionary threat by US
financed Cuban-Americans living in Miami. This is not an entirely unwarranted
feeling in that many hundreds of terrorist actions against Cuba have occurred
with US backing over the past fifty years. In addition to the 1961 Bay of Pigs
invasion, these attacks include the blowing up of a Cuban airlines plane in
1976 resulting in the deaths of seventy-three people, the starting in 1981 of an
epidemic of dengue fever that killed 158 people, and several hotel bombings in
the 1990s, one of which resulted in the death of an Italian tourist.
In the context of
this external threat, Cuban journalists quietly acknowledge that some
self-censorship will undoubtedly occur regarding news stories that could be
used by the “enemy” against the Cuban people. Nonetheless, Cuban journalists
strongly value freedom of the press and there was no evidence of overt
restriction or government control.
Cuban journalists
complain that the US corporate media is biased and refuses to cover the
positive aspects of socialism in Cuba. Unknown to most Americans are the facts
that Cuba is the number one organic country in the world, has an impressive
health care system with a lower infant mortality rate than the US, trains
doctors from all over the world, and has enjoyed a 43 percent increase in GDP
over the past three years.
Ricardo Alarcon,
President of the National Assembly, discussed bias in the US media, “how often
do you see Gore Vidal interviewed on the US media?” he asked. Vidal has
recently said that the US is in its ‘worst phase in history.’ Perhaps Cuba uses
corporate news to excess,” he said. “Cuban journalists need to link more to
independent news sources in the US.” Alarcon went on to say that Cuba allows
CNN, AP and Chicago Tribune to maintain offices in Cuba, but that the US
refuses to allow Cuban journalists to work in the United States.
As the Cuban
socialist system improves, the US does everything it can to artificially force
cold war conditions by funding terrorist attacks, maintaining an economic
boycott, launching a new anti-terrorism Caribbean naval fleet, and increasingly
limiting US citizen travel to Cuba. It is time to reverse this cold war
isolationist position, honor the Cuban people’s choice of a socialist system,
and build a positive working relationship between journalists in support of
media democracy in both countries.[xxviii]
Grassroots
Antidotes to Corporate Media Propaganda
George Seldes once
said, “Journalism’s job is not impartial ‘balanced’ reporting. Journalism’s job
is to tell the people what is really going on.” Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael
Moore’s top-grossing movie Sicko is one example of telling the people what is
really going on. Health care activists know that US health insurance is an
extremely large and obscenely lucrative industry with the top nine companies
“earning” $93 billion in profits in 2006 alone. The health-care industry
represents the country’s third-largest economic sector, trailing only energy
and retail among the 1,000 largest US firms. Despite Moore’s film, and despite
the fact that an overwhelming number of doctors and a majority of Americans
want a single payer healthcare system for all Americans, the Obama administration,
Congress, and the corporate media have been deaf to the wishes of health-care
practitioners and the public will in their debate to “reform” the system.
Single payer, the public is told, like impeachment before it, is not on the
table no matter what the facts, no matter what the percentages of public
support. This is a characteristic of a failing republic, a dysfunctional
democracy.
Tens of thousands
of Americans engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how
corporate media marginalize, denigrate, or simply ignore their concerns.
Activist groups working on issues like 9/11 truth, election fraud, impeachment,
war propaganda, civil liberties/torture, the Wall Street bailouts, healthcare
reform, and many corporate-caused environmental crises have been systematically
excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a
genuine Truth Emergency in the country as a whole.
Now, however, a
growing number of activists are finally saying “enough!” and joining forces to
address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and
practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate
denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of
trustworthy news sources that tell the people what is really going on. These
activists know there is need for journalism that moves beyond forensic
inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of
corruption, propaganda, and illicit political control to rouse the nation to
reject a malignant corporate status quo.
Recent efforts at
national media reform through micro-power community radio—similar to the 400
people’s radio stations in Venezuela—and campaign finance changes, which would
mandate access for all candidates on national media, have been strongly
resisted by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). NAB, considered one
of the most powerful corporate lobby groups in Washington, works hard to
protect over $200 billion dollars of annual advertising and the several hundred
million dollars political candidates spend in each election cycle.
The Truth
Emergency movement now recognizes that corporate media’s political power and
its failure to meet its First Amendment obligation to keep the public informed
leaves a huge task to be done. Citizens must mobilize resources to redevelop
news and information systems from the bottom up. Citizen journalists can expand
distribution of news via small independent newspapers, local magazines,
independent radio, and cable access TV. Using the Internet, the public can
interconnect with like-minded grassroots news organizations to share important
stories. These changes are already in progress with more to come.
Becoming the
Media: Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored International
In response to
Truth Emergency conference outcomes, the Media Freedom Foundation and Project
Censored launched an effort to both become a repository of independent news and
information as well as a producer of content in what are called Validated
Independent News stories vetted by college and university professors and
students around the world. As corporate media continues their entertainment
agenda and the PR industry—working for governments and
corporations—increasingly dominates the content, we have the socio-cultural
opening to transform how the public receives their news.
Project Censored
believes that corporate media is increasingly irrelevant to democracy and
working people in the world, and that we need to tell our own news stories from
the bottom up. What better project in support of media democracy than for
universities and colleges worldwide to support truth telling and validate news
stories and independent news sources?
Only 5 percent of
college students under thirty read a daily newspaper. Most get all their news
from corporate television and increasingly from the Internet. One of the
biggest problems with independent media sources on the Internet is a perception
of inconsistent reliability. The public is often suspicious of the truthfulness
and accuracy of news postings from non-corporate media sources. Over the past
ten years, in hundreds of presentations all over the US, Project Censored staff
has frequently been asked, “what are the best sources for news and whom do we
trust?”
The goal of this effort
is to encourage young people to use independent media as their primary sources
of news and information and to learn about trustworthy news sources through the
Project Censored International News Research Affiliate Program. There are
currently thirty affiliate colleges and there are plans to expand college and
university participation tenfold this next year. Through these institutions of
higher learning, validated independent news stories can be researched by
students and scholars, then written, produced and disseminated via the web. In
addition to the production of validated independent news content, on any given
day at the Media Freedom Foundation website, one can view enough independent
news stories from RSS feeds to fill nearly fifty written pages, more than even
the largest US newspapers.[xxix]
The Hope for Real
Information Change
Recently, the US
Senate Judiciary Committee began considering a truth and reconciliation
commission as has been done in countries with troubled pasts to seek knowledge
and healing over controversial or even illegal and catastrophic issues. Vermont
Senator Patrick Leahy “wants Congress to convene an independent, blue-ribbon
commission to poke into some of the dark secrets and possible government
wrongdoing of the Bush years: the alleged torture of prisoners held at
Guantánamo Bay, controversial warrantless wiretapping, and the politicization
of the hiring and firing of federal prosecutors.” According to a recent Gallup
Poll, six in ten Americans agree.[xxx] Despite such public outcry and even
high-ranking mention in the Senate, it is doubtful there is political will to
follow through in light of the continuing economic meltdown emanating from Wall
Street echoing through Main Street. Further, President Obama has already remarked
that he wants to look forward and not backward while tackling the country’s
problems, insinuating that he is not interested in pursuing Bush administration
crimes. Only a massive public groundswell can possibly change this, which
requires an even more informed and empowered populace. After all, the facts are
on their side.[xxxi]
It is up to the
people to unite and oppose the common oppressors manifested in a militarist and
unresponsive government along with their corporate media lapdogs and PR
propagandists. Only then, when the public forms and controls its own
information resources, will it become armed with the power that knowledge gives
to move forward, not under reformist mindsets, but to create a new and truly
vibrant democratic society that promises as well as delivers liberty, peace,
and prosperity to all.
Peter Phillips is
a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of the Media
Freedom Foundation and Project Censored.
Mickey Huff is an
Associate Professor of History and Social Science at Diablo Valley College and
Associate Director of the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored.
Notes
US General Tommy Franks, quoted in The San Francisco
Chronicle, March 23, 2002, online
athttp://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/020323-attack01.htm.
[ii] Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2009, (New York: Seven Stories, Press, 2008), pp. 19-25. This story is the number one censored story of the year at Project Censored for this year, archived online athttp://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-over-one-million-iraqi-deaths-caused-by-us-occupation/ and for the earlier casualty numbers see http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya070207.htm.
[ii] Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2009, (New York: Seven Stories, Press, 2008), pp. 19-25. This story is the number one censored story of the year at Project Censored for this year, archived online athttp://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-over-one-million-iraqi-deaths-caused-by-us-occupation/ and for the earlier casualty numbers see http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya070207.htm.
[iii] Mass killings from Rwanda to Darfur, from Cambodia to
Viet Nam, have ranged from the hundreds of thousands to several millions, with
Iraq now an easy rival in between. Watch AlterNet.org columnist Joshua
Holland’s speak at Project Censored’s “Modern Media Censorship Lecture Series”
from September 25, 2008,
athttp://www.projectcensored.org/lectures/lecture092508/ . His article about
the over one million dead in Iraq can be seen at http://www.alternet.org/images/home/splash/6words_splash.php.
For more on the refugees see Dahr Jamail’s “Iraq: Not Our Country to Return To”
at http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41430.
[iv] Various theories exist on the problem of the subject,
from historian Rick Shenkman’s Just How Stupid Are We to historian and cultural
critic Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas, but few examine its
affects on the peace community. For more on the issue of American historical
amnesia, see Gore Vidal on Democracy Now!
Athttp://www.democracynow.org/2004/5/21/gore_vidal_on_the_united_states. See
also, In These
Times,http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3099/the_united_states_of_amnesia/
and for a broader academic look at the issue of how Americans have become
arguably the least informed, most entertained people in the modern world,
reference the now classic work from the late New York University media scholar
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show
Business, (New York: Viking Adult, 1985). This article hopes to shine more
light on the impact of all of the aforementioned on the peace movement in
general and what can be done about it. For another view of this written earlier,
at the outset of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, see Felix Kolb and Alicia
Swords, “Do Peace Movements Matter?” Commondreams.org, May 12, 2003, online
athttp://www.commondreams.org/views03/0512-08.htm.
[v] For the Institute of Medicine study on lack of healthcare
related deaths see http://www.iom.edu/?id=19175; also see the
study done by Peter Phillips at Sonoma State University
athttp://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/practices-in-health-care/ and
cited in Michael Moore’s 2007 film, Sicko. For a broader look at the Truth
Emergency movement and its many facets from election fraud to 9/11, from
torture to the fiscal crisis, see http://truthemergency.us/ as well as the essay
on Truth Emergency by Peter Phillips and David Kubiak at http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/truth-emergency-us/.
[vi] For more on the NCMR study, see Peter Phillips and
Andy Roth, eds., Censored 2009, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008), chapter
11, “Truth Emergency Meets Media Reform” pp. 281-295. For more on the NCMR, seehttp://freepress.net.
[vii] In addition to the Media Reform study in chapter 11
of Censored 2009 cited above, see Peter Phillips, Censored 2007, (New York:
Seven Stories Press, 2006), pp. 307-341. “The Global Dominance Group and US
Corporate Media” by Peter Phillips, Bridget Thornton, and Lew Brown, is online
at http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/the-global-dominance-group/.
[viii] C. Wright Mills. The Power Elite, Oxford, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000, reissue).
[ix] Peter Phillips, “Barack Obama Administration Continues
US Military
Dominance,”http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/http-wwwprojectcensoredorg-articles-story-barack-obama-administration-c/.
[x] Diane Farsetta, Center for Media Democracy, studies on
Pentagon propaganda online athttp://www.prwatch.org/pentagonpundits and http://www.prwatch.org/node/8180.
Zachary Roth, Lawmaker On Withdrawn IG Report: “The American People Have Been
Misled” May 6,
2009,http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/lawmaker_on_withdrawn_ig_report_the_american_peopl.php.
[xi] Peter Phillips, Censored 1999, (New York: Seven
Stories Press, 1999). For Operation Tailwind and CNN, see chapter 5, pp.
158-163, and http://www.putnampit.com/ppeditorialjuly18-1998.html.
Glenn Greenwald, “The Pulitzer-winning investigation that dare not be uttered
on TV,” April 21, 2009, online athttp://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/21/pulitzer/.
See previous endnote for the link to Diane Farsetta’s piece.
[xii] Norman Soloman, “The Military-Industrial-Media
Complex: Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective,” Extra! July/August
2005, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2627.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Quoted by Norman Soloman at http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/media/2005/07militarymedia.html.
Originally published in Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,
(Cambridge: Public Affairs, Perseus Group, 2002). This phenomenon goes back to
journalist Louis O’Sullivan coining the phrase “Manifest Destiny’ in 1845 in
the New York papers on the eve of the Mexican American War. The Hearst
newspapers in New York on the run up to the Spanish American War also willingly
spread false claims of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine. Edward Bernays and
George Creel further used a compliant press to rouse support for US entrance in
WWI and the same happened after Pearl Harbor in WWII. Each time, each source, was
not interested in independent, factual reporting, rather, they were interested
in being useful tools of the powerful to fulfill establishment policies. For an
overview of propaganda history and US war policy as well as a deeper look at
media myth making through the events of 9/11, see Mickey Huff and Paul Rea,
chapter 14 in Censored 2009, “Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth
Information,” pp. 341-364, or the expanded version online
athttp://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/deconstructing-deceit/.
[xv] I.F. Stone, In a Time of Torment: 1961-1967, (New
York: Random House, 1967), p. 317.
[xvi] For an overview study of Iraq War propaganda, see
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of
Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq (New York, Tarcher Penguin, 2003), and their
follow up Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq, (New York:
Penguin, 2006). For reports on the continuation of war policy under President
Barack Obama, see Center for Media Democracy’s John Stauber, “How Obama Took
Over the Peace Movement,” http://www.prwatch.org/node/8297, and Peter
Phillips, “Barack Obama Administration Continues US Military Dominance,” http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/http-wwwprojectcensoredorg-articles-story-barack-obama-administration-c/.
[xvii] Peter Phillips, Censored 2008, (New York: Seven
Stories Press, 2007), pp. 35-44. Online
athttp://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-no-habeas-corpus-for-any-person/
andhttp://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-bush-moves-toward-martial-law/.
[xviii] See Censored 2008, chapter 1, story 6, pp. 55-59.
Also online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/6-operation-falcon-raids/.
The stories mentioned here are only a few examples. For a complete up to date
list of current censored stories, see Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, eds.,
Censored 2010 , chapter 1 of this volume for the latest list of Project
Censored’s most important stories missed or distorted by corporate mainstream
news for 2008 and 2009. Also see the Media Freedom Foundation PNN website for
year round validated independent news stories online at http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news-sources.
[xix] Online at http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/2473-corporate-media-turned-out-for-jena-but-not-for-anti-war-heres-why.html.
[xx] Linda Milazzo, “Corporate Media Turned Out for Jena,
but Not for Anti-War. Here’s Why.” Atlantic Free Press, September 23, 2007,
online at http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/2473-corporate-media-turned-out-for-jena-but-not-for-anti-war-heres-why.html.
[xxi] Andrew L. Roth, Zoe Huffman, Jeff Huling, Kevin
Stolle, and Jocelyn Thomas, “Covering War’s Victims: A Content Analysis of Iraq
and Afghanistan War Photographs in the New York Times and San Francisco
Chronicle,” in Censored 2008 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007), pp.
253-271.
[xxii] Jeffrey M. Jones, “In U.S., More Optimism About Iraq,
Less About Afghanistan:
New high of 42% say war in Afghanistan a mistake,” March
18, 2009.
See the Gallup Poll results online at http://www.gallup.com/poll/116920/Optimism-Iraq-Less-Afghanistan.aspx.
[xxiii] For more on the Winter Soldiers, see Censored 2009,
chapter 1, story 9, pp. 58-62 and online
athttp://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/9-iraq-and-afghanistan-vets-testify/;
see also chapter 12, pp. 297-319. See the KPFA radio and Corp Watch website for
the coverage athttp://www.warcomeshome.org/wintersoldier2008.
[xxiv] Peter Phillips, “Barack Obama Administration
Continues US Military
Dominance,”http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/http-wwwprojectcensoredorg-articles-story-barack-obama-administration-c/.
[xxv] Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing
Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (New York: Pantheon Books,
1988, 2002). For an introduction of the Propaganda Model, see chapter 1 of the
work, or see a retrospective by Edward Herman online at http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20031209.htm.
[xxvi] Peter Phillips, Censored 2008, see chapter 7, “Left
Progressive Media Inside the Propaganda Model,” pp 233-251, http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/left-progressive-media-inside-the-propaganda-model/.
[xxvii] Co-author, Peter Phillips, interviewed Carmon
Aponte while visiting the Patare Community TV and radio station in a trip to
Venezuela for a book fair in 2008. The station was one of thirty-four locally
controlled community television stations and four hundred radio stations now in
the barrios throughout Venezuela.
[xxviii] Co-author, Peter Phillips, attended the major
journalism conference in Cuba in 2008. About his experiences there, Phillips
remarked, “During my five days in Havana, I met with dozens of journalists,
communication studies faculty and students, union representatives and
politicians. The underlying theme of my visit was to determine the state of
media freedom in Cuba and to build a better understanding between media
democracy activists in the US and those in Cuba.
I toured the two main radio stations in Havana, Radio
Rebelde and Radio Havana. Both have Internet access to multiple global news
sources including CNN, Reuters, Associated Press and BBC with several
newscasters pulling stories for public broadcast. Over ninety municipalities in
Cuba have their own locally run radio stations, and journalists report local
news from every province.
During the course of several hours in each station I was
interviewed on the air about media consolidation and censorship in the US and
was able to ask journalists about censorship in Cuba as well. Of the dozens I
interviewed all said that they have complete freedom to write or broadcast any
stories they choose. This was a far cry from the Stalinist media system so
often depicted by US interests.”
[xxix] For more details see the Project Censored website at
/; for independent media feeds see Media Freedom Foundation at http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news-sources;
and for more on the Project Censored International Affiliates Program, see
/project-censored-international-affilates-program. For more on how to become
the media, see David Mathison’s work at http://bethemedia.com.
[xxx] Alex Kingsbury, “Why Sen. Patrick Leahy Wants a
“Truth Commission,” U.S. News and World Report, March 4, 2009, http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2009/03/04/why-sen-patrick-leahy-wants-a-truth-commission.html.
[xxxi] Naomi Wolf, “Do the Secret Bush Memos Amount to
Treason? Top Constitutional Scholar Says Yes,” Alternet.org, March 25,
2009,http://www.alternet.org/rights/133273/do_the_secret_bush_memos_amount_to_treason_top_constitutional_scholar_says_yes/.
Note: All online sources were accessed and viewed between
March 25 and 31, 2009 and then reviewed and revised between May 13 and 15,
2009.
--------
1. [PDF]
o Cached
File format:Adobe PDF
mainstream
news quality has fallen by the wayside, in
favor of profitable, ... “real” and “fake” news, The Daily Show reaches a mass
audience, which gives it ... that in a post September 11 world, objectivity has
become irrelevant ... tactics, so as soon as Murrow opened the Senator up to
criticism, he no longer ..... By dumbing.
----------------
o Cached
(Forty years ago, when you had to get up and walk across
the room to ... Bias in general, as it relates to news media (Scroll down.)
Specific examples of biased news coverage ... JournoList - Evidence of an actual
conspiracy to bias the news. .... It is even more so when no one has ever told
you that you, too, need to be kept ...
------------
o Cached
Nov 13, 2008 ... Channel 4 was about to kick off but there
was no Sky News; no ITV 2 and ... and citizen newsgathering was the coverage of
the floods that swept ... That's why the notion of developing networks has
become ..... By comparison, BBC TV News is now so lightweight and dumbed down
that I no longer watch it.
----------------
consortiumnews.com/2015/11/02/reviving-the-liberal-media-myth/
o Cached
Nov 2, 2015 ... There is not now nor really was there ever
a “liberal media.” ... In the 1960s, the U.S. mainstream media largely favored
the Vietnam War, ... But this news coverage that so infuriated the Right and
many .... from the real world and have surrendered their political judgment to
..... Is reduced to irrelevant prose.
-----------
How do we get to these kids? Find out ten easy ways to
appeal our volunteer program to the millennials of today.
--------
Theories on elderly
volunteer participation
Different theories rationalize how the aging population
will effect volunteer participation. Three different theories- rational choice,
exchange, and social resource- predict volunteer activity based on aging.
First, rational choice theory "predicts an increase in volunteering at
retirement because more free time becomes available" (Wilson, 2000, p.
226). In contrast, social exchange theory suggests that "retirees seek
volunteer work to replace psychic and social benefits formerly derived from
paid employment" (p. 226). According to this theory, one may observe an
increase in volunteer activity at retirement. Lastly, social resource theory
predicts "a decline in volunteering to the extent that withdrawing from
the labor force weakens social integration" (p. 226). These theories are a
comprehensive approach to defining volunteer participation among this age
group. Understanding the theories behind volunteer behavior allows managers to
come to a greater comprehension of elderly volunteer participation.
world 7.4 billion
Major Religions
of the World (2013)2
Christians
|
2,347,171,000
|
Roman Catholics
|
1,206,990,000
|
Protestants
|
526,020,000
|
Independents*
|
399,793,000
|
Orthodox
|
278,807,000
|
Muslims
|
1,633,173,000
|
Hindus
|
987,513,000
|
Buddhists
|
509,046,000
|
Chinese folk religionists
|
436,179,000
|
Sikhs
|
25,150,000
|
Jews
|
13,862,000
|
*This term
denotes members of Christian churches and networks that regard themselves as
postdenominationalist and neo-apostolic and thus independent of historic,
mainstream, organized, institutionalized, confessional, denominationalist
Christianity.
----
How can we bridge the
gap between what youth – young Canadians aged 15-24 years old -- are looking
for in volunteering today and how organizations are engaging youth volunteers?
Conducted in the
summer of 2010, a new pan-Canadian research study
provides the most
current national data about the changing culture of
Canada’s voluntary
sector, including information specific to the nation’s youth
population.
Unlike earlier
surveys that emphasized overall participation rates, this new
research captured:
Ø What youth want in
their volunteer experiences;
Ø The issues youth
have in finding satisfying volunteer roles; and
Ø What organizations can
do to enhance the volunteer experience
for youth, which in
turn can help them achieve their missions and
ultimately build
stronger communities.
The Importance of
Youth to the Canadian Voluntary Landscape
Youth represent a
particularly important demographic because they are the
future of
volunteering.
Youth make up a
relatively small percentage of the total number of volunteers
in Canada, but their
recruitment and engagement is critical to ensuring the
future sustainability
of the voluntary sector. Seniors are currently the most
active volunteers in
Canada, but as they age, they will begin to reduce their
volunteer
participation. Effective youth recruitment techniques are crucial to
maintaining a strong
voluntary sector as Canada’s most engaged volunteer
cohort – seniors –
begins to retire from their volunteer careers.
Youth Thoughts on
Volunteering
Youth see
volunteering from a variety of perspectives, and their motivations
for volunteering are
professional, social, and personal in nature.
Often volunteering is
seen as contributing to their job search by providing an
opportunity to
network, improve their skills and raise their profile among
potential employers.
Some youth cited the
social importance of volunteering and the satisfaction derived from seeing the
benefit of their work for others. Many young people in Canada are introduced to
volunteering through mandated programs in schools, which can build long-term
interest in community engagement. While volunteering was generally seen by
youth as an opportunity to meet different kinds of people, make new friends,
and socialize, many wondered why they should volunteer for free when they could
make money instead through paid jobs.
This underlines the
importance for voluntary organizations to provide incentives for attracting
youth to volunteer opportunities. Organizations should try to make the
experience fun and rewarding for young people, so they will be more likely to
continue their engagement into the future, as their life circumstances change.
Understanding the
Characteristics of Youth Volunteers
To be more effective
at attracting and retaining volunteers in a particular
demographic, it helps
to first understand their general characteristics.
Canadian youth are:
Career-focused,
flexible and receptive to new ideas
More open-minded –
have grown up being exposed to greater
diversity than
previous generations
Energetic and
enthusiastic – have high levels of vitality
Technologically savvy
– respond to innovative online communications and recruitment techniques
Prefer peer
camaraderie – as social beings, youth enjoy meeting new
people and
participating in volunteer activities with their friends
In many instances
affected by mandatory community service
requirements – e.g., community service hours are required for high
school graduation in some provinces and territories
Seeing volunteering
as a bridge – something that supports their search for employment, skills
development, and networking
Sensitive to
perceived age discrimination – prefer volunteer tasks
where they feel
respected and are given some responsibility
Matching Skills for
Youth Volunteers: Barriers & Opportunities
Youth often feel it
is up to them to present their abilities and actively seek out volunteer
opportunities
that match their
skill set. Many volunteer in areas that allow them to improve their skills and
gain access to training.
While youth felt some
organizations are very effective and have systems in place to match volunteers
to opportunities, in other instances youth said they had to create
opportunities themselves.
Youth indicated
finding volunteer experiences with organizations online is particularly
challenging.
Because youth are a
particularly tech-savvy demographic, providing opportunities that deal with
technology – such as roles involving social media outreach or web design – can
make volunteering more accessible and attractive to young people.
Volunteer roles with
age restrictions for youth can be a barrier to their engagement; minimum age
requirements such as 18 and older are perceived by youth as unfair to younger
potential volunteers.
Youth feel
discriminated against due to their age and believe they are not respected or
are given menial tasks that nobody else would do.
Other barriers to
youth volunteering include:
Lack of time
Inability to make a
long-term commitment
Not being asked
Unsure how to become
involved
Feeling that their
opinions and insights are not valued, respected or taken into account
Organizations’
perception that youth need services and help instead of seeing youth as having
something to give to organizations (especially communications and technology skills)
While many youth
volunteers felt they weren’t given enough responsibility in their roles, some
thought they were thrown in over their heads by organizations, to the point of
sometimes being given more responsibility than they were willing to take on.
Occasionally, they also felt they didn’t have the required skills for a certain
position, but were placed in the role anyway.
Providing Volunteer
Opportunities That Interest Youth
The research found
that today’s youth are most interested in volunteer opportunities:
With education and
research organizations, as well as sports and recreation organizations,
followed by social service organizations;
That are
international, as youth see themselves as world citizens and tend to define
‘community’ as being global in nature; With organizations that support
environmental issues;
That are flexible
enough to accommodate their other commitments for school, work, friends,
and family;
With volunteer job
descriptions that give youth a clear understanding of what they will do and the
broader significance of their participation;
Where youth can
receive constructive feedback and certification where possible; and
Where they can
volunteer with other youth, including their friends.
Examples of
Youth-Friendly Volunteer Tasks
Tasks that can be
done virtually, such as maintaining an organization’s social networking
pages, designing a
website, doing research, or writing a theme song
Activities that can
be done in pairs or groups are highly valued by youth, such as animation
work, helping out in
a homework club, cleaning parks, making presentations in high schools, or
participating in
planning days
Opportunities that
allow the volunteer to learn job-related skills
Organizations Can
Improve the Volunteer Experience for Youth By:
ü Promoting
volunteerism where youth will see it – such as via social media and at youth
centres
or community centres
ü Building meaningful
relationships – getting to know the individual needs and talents of youth
volunteers better by
encouraging and mentoring them
ü Capitalizing on
technology options – offering greater online engagement of youth such as
websites with
volunteer listings and matching capacities, and volunteer opportunities that
can
be completed virtually
ü Being sensitive to
differences – respecting gender, culture, language, and especially age, being
careful to avoid the
perception of age discrimination and recognizing youth have unique skills to
offer
ü Being respectful
about the tasks and roles that are assigned to youth – avoid automatically
giving youth jobs
considered unskilled ‘grunt work’
ü Being flexible and
accommodating – many youth have to juggle other time commitments for
school or part-time
work
ü Offering benefits
and incentives – such as volunteer appreciation parties, concert or theatre
tickets, or bus
tickets for youth who need transportation support to attend meetings or events
ü Communicating
feedback to youth volunteers regularly and constructively – recognizing their
efforts in a positive
manner will help them learn and grow so they can also gain from their
volunteer experience
ü Clearly outlining
the purpose of the proposed youth volunteer activity – explaining how it will
make a difference, as
well as following up and letting youth volunteers know the impact of the
time, energy, and
skills they contributed
---------------
#TrevorNoah TDS #Bell
Canada #ComedyCentral Canada-WHERE'S MY TREVOR NOAH THE DAILY SHOW..the one
latenite that's sly,saucy and lazy crazy
------------
Can u imagine this wld happen to old worn out people? More grandparents
taking on parental role for grandchildren http://globalnews.ca/news/2520467/more-grandparents-taking-on-parental-role-for-grandchildren/
------------------
ahh baby's back on 22nd February .... #TrevorNoah TDS- thank
u thank u.... sly, adorable and crazy fun with just enough saucy to even have
the older folks laugh.... from his co-horts 'stay in your own lane African' to
'R U NOT ENTERTAINED???" and
naughty boy standing in 'trump's' place of stumping- to trevor's global perspective and wry humour
on Americana and Africa's poverty .... it's a great show... and globally many
are tuning in.... now we need K'naan to sing the perfect game song and we need
david beckham... to spice up one of the best shows... thank u john stewart
...thank u - God bless our troops and #firstresponders and yours.
------------
7
Things That Will Make You Happy
by Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | December
15, 2011 04:31pm ET
Finding Happiness
If you're happy and you know it, what's your secret?
Researchers have uncovered plenty of factors, from genes to personal
characteristics to life choices, that seem to coincide with happiness and its
longer-lasting cousin, well-being. Here are a few you might have some control
over.
Get Culture
<p>Men who enjoy art, ballet and other cultural
activities feel happier and healthier, according to a May 2011 study published
in the Journal of Epidemiology. The result held even after researchers
controlled for other happiness-influencing factors such as income. For men,
physical activity, outdoor hobbies and volunteer work were also linked with
happiness. The cheeriest women attended both church and sports events.
Cause-and-effect isn't certain (maybe happier people take in more culture
rather than the other way around), but the message is clear: It can't hurt to
get out there. </p>
Get a Dog (Or a Cat)
Pet owners are another group that tends toward greater
happiness. A survey of pet-owners and non-pet-owners published in July 2011
online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people
who have dogs say their pets increase their self-esteem</a> as well as
their feelings of belonging and meaning. The research also found that pets had
a similar ability as human friends to stave off feelings of rejection. In
America, furry happiness boosters are all around: As of 2007, two-thirds of
U.S. households had at least one pet</a>. </p>
Be Grateful
The power of positive thinking may really work, according
to a 2010 paper reviewing 51 earlier studies on increasing happiness. The
researchers, who detailed their work in the Journal of Clinical Psychology,
found that people who get into the habit of writing down three good things that
have happened to them every week show a significant rise in happiness. The
review also found that study participants who wrote letters of gratitude to
others reported a happiness boost that lasted for weeks. And no need for
postage. Participants didn't even have to send the letters to get the boost —
though who knows, dropping that thank-you note in the mailbox might spread the
joy around. </p>
Cultivate Altruism
The same 2010 review found that giving back to others can
pay happiness dividends. And a 2008 study published in the journal Science
found that people who give money away rather than spending it on themselves get
a happiness boost.
Not only that, but
people who volunteer for selfless reasons live longer, according to a study
published in August 2011 in the journal Health Psychology. Altruism is even
linked to stronger relationships: A 2006 study found that the most altruistic
people were also the most likely to have happy marriages. </p>
Get Nostalgic
Social and energetic, extroverts are also the happiest
personality type. It's not easy to blossom from wallflower to center of the
party, but you can steal an extrovert's happiness trick: Viewing the past
through rose-colored glasses.
Research published
in June 2011 in the journal Personality and individual Differences found that
extroverts owe their happiness advantage to their tendency to look back on the
past with nostalgia. Savoring happy memories or putting bad ones in an
optimistic light could help make life happier.</p>
Have Sex
<p>This may seem like a no-brainer, but satisfaction
between the sheets seems linked to happiness in daily life. Post-menopausal
women with more satisfying sex lives are also happier in general, according to
a 2008 study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Likewise, newlyweds
with neurotic personalities find that their anxieties are soothed when their
sex lives are better, according research published in 2010 in the journal
Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Hugs and physical
affection boost happiness in men, as well.
Don't Focus On It
Okay, you've got the animal shelter on speed-dial, and
you're stocking up on stationary for thank-you notes. But be careful: A May
2011 study found that a hyperfocus on happiness could paradoxically make people
less happy.
"Wanting to be
happy can make you less happy," study researcher Iris Mauss, an assistant
professor in psychology at the University of Denver, told LiveScience. "If
you explicitly and purposely focus on happiness, that appears to have a
self-defeating quality."
The study, published in the journal Emotion, found that
women who valued happiness more or focused on it more exclusively had trouble
actually achieving it. Perhaps these people set their happiness standards too
high, Mauss said. Or they may be focusing on personal happiness at the expense
of things that really make people happy, like relationships with friends and
family.
It's not that trying
to be happy is a lost cause, Mauss said, it's just that you may want to pursue
activities that make you happy, rather than happiness itself. </p>
-----------
evil evil turkey-
QUOTE: We also suspect today’s hacking to have been an eavesdropping
event to delay a new story we are working on — how Turkey has purchased swine
flu from an employee at the Lugar lab in Georgia, which already has killed 1000
in Ukraine, been released in Russia, and surprise, surprise beginning to show
up in the Turkish Kurdish resistance.
This comes the day after Munich started, with the Turks
shelling Azaz, 4 to 5 miles south of the Turkish border — the last town on that
supply road to Aleppo
Breaking: Saudi Arabia moves planes to Turkey, Joint attack
on Russian, Syrian and Kurdish forces begins (continually updated)
-----------
CLIMATE CHANGE CANADA STYLE: #KillTheKCup - from Canada with Love Kill The
K-Cup (Updated): https://youtu.be/U6vszhOn0_M via @YouTube
----------------
CLIMATE CHANGE: POPE
FRANCIS-Vatican-Fiat Lux lights up St. Peter's Basilica-check the gorgeous
animals on vatican https://youtu.be/IeWhziNupLk
------------------
--------------
Doug Saunders
1968, all over again: Young Americans rally for an
anti-system outsider
QUOTE: What has made younger Americans turn so
dramatically to an anti-system outsider? They are a generation of people who
have experienced a break with a past that bears a lot of similarities to the
rupture experienced by the postwar generation.
For one thing, 18- to 34-year-olds in the United States are
living different lives. They are dramatically more educated, the percentage
holding a degree having risen from 15 per cent to 22 per cent in 33 years. They
are far less likely to leave school: Dropout rates fell to 7 per cent last
year, from 12 per cent in 2000. They are also much less likely to use drugs,
alcohol or tobacco, or to get pregnant before marriage, than any previous
generation. Same-sex marriage, interracial marriage and legal pot are utterly
uncontroversial non-issues of the past to them.
Second, they are different people. By 2020, white American
children will be a minority; those white Americans who are 18 to 34 today (the
Bernie backers) are very likely to have lived and worked with people who don’t
resemble them; they may assume a racial equality that doesn’t exist.
Third, they are entering a much less secure economy. Only
65 per cent of them are employed, down from 72 per cent in 1990, and those jobs
are far from secure or robust
----------
UNITED NATIONS AND
WORLD LEADERS COVERED baby raping and abuse of women hidden QUOTE: 'Gross
institutional failure' - EU and African Peacekeepers.... Sweet Jesus, Mother
Mary and Joseph.... pls don't involve Canada in this mess... please
-----------------
God is watching and
He is angry at your arrogance- NATO to Expand Military Presence in Europe to
Deter Russians http://nyti.ms/1o45HO7
----------------
volunteering in
communites seniors are the backbone what happens when they are gone?
volunteering in
communites is core value- why only seniors volunteering?
-----------
QUOTE: At just 13 ,
Rachel designed a water pasteurization unit made out of materials that are
readily available in Third World countries: ABS pipe, water bottles, cotton and
charcoal. Her invention took home the gold medal in the Canada-Wide Science
Fair back in the summer.
N.S. 13 year old teen
hopes to bring life-saving water system to Uganda and Pakistan
Rachel Brouwer is
getting closer to turning her gold-medal winning science project into a
life-saving invention for people in Third-World countries.
At just 13 , Rachel
designed a water pasteurization unit made out of materials that are readily
available in Third World countries: ABS pipe, water bottles, cotton and
charcoal. Her invention took home the gold medal in the Canada-Wide Science
Fair back in the summer.
Now, she’s working on
improving her invention in hopes of taking it to Uganda and Pakistan to help
those who need it.
“It’s all really
exciting and just a completely different experience,” she said during a recent
interview.
It's a simple
process. The sun heats the water in the black plastic pipe, the water moves
through the charcoal and cotton filters, effectively eliminating the bacteria.
When tested, Rachel’s design killed 100 per cent of the E. coli in water
samples.
Zebu Jilani,
president of Swat Relief Initiative, has reached out to Rachel with the
intention of bringing her invention to the Swat Valley, a mountainous region of
Northern Pakistan, and attaching it to the wells in the area.
“It’s very practical
in areas like the Swat Valley,” said Jilani. “We’re going to try and get her
water filtration system to a lot of poor people who don’t have access to clean
water.”
In 2009, the Taliban
took over the Swat Valley and in turn greatly harmed the livelihoods of the
people in the area.
“Our whole goal is to
help women and children because it was women and children who suffered the
most.”
Jilani says she hopes
Rachel can be an inspiration to the women of Swat and a mentor to some of the
female students in Northern Pakistan.
“A lot of these girls
are very talented, except in Third-World countries and rural areas like Swat,
girls do not have many opportunities to invent things and come up with ideas.”
Jilani even sent a
news story about Rachel to one of her heroes, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize-winner and
advocate for women and children’s rights in the Swat Valley, Malala Yousafzai.
“It was really
exciting,” said Rachel. “It’s still very surreal. It’s still hard to wrap my
head around.”
Rachel got the idea
for her invention while reading Malala’s book that spoke about women dying from
a cholera outbreak in the Swat Valley.
Rachel is working on
getting her invention to Uganda as well, but it needs to be tweaked before it
can be sent there.
She’s also raising
money for a patent by selling her own line natural beauty products at the Sweet
Brier Boutique in Hammonds Plains.
“We’re deciding
whether or not to patent it or just open source it, so then it could be taken
to the next level by someone that would want to partner with me.”
She’s working on
improving the wax indicator, that patentable part of the project. The wax
indicator lets the user know when the water is safe to drink.
She had been working
with a 3D-printing company since last summer to print the indicators, but last
week the company contacted her with a quote of more than $10,000 to print 10
wax indicators from food-safe printing material.
“I’m trying to get
the wax indicator printed in food-safe materials, but it’s really expensive and
hard to access, so I’m just trying to get around that right now.”
To help Rachel get
her invention to the third world, visit: www.gofundme.com/f36tvjjs.
-------------
Refugee support information
Many Nova Scotians are looking for
ways to help with the current refugee crisis. Here is a list of organizations
that are lending their support.
From the Government of
Canada website: How
Canada is helping Syrian and Iraqi refugees
211.ca is
a free, confidential information and referral service for thousands of
community and social services available across the province.
Citizenship & Immigration Canada (instructions for sponsoring refugees)
-------------
--------------
Canadian
Social Trends Number 93
Giving and volunteering
among Canada's immigrants
by
Derrick Thomas
Release date: May 17, 2012
This article examines donating and volunteering among
immigrants in Canada: their reasons for doing so or not, the amounts of money
and time they give and the types of organizations that they support. It
compares immigrants to other Canadians and considers how the philanthropic
behaviour of immigrants changes as they establish themselves in Canada. The
data are from the 2010 Survey of Giving Volunteering and Participating.
Employer support of
volunteering
by
Matt Hurst
Release date: May 17, 2012
This article examines employer support of volunteering in
Canada. It focuses on volunteers who are employed, examining the different
types of employer support they receive. It also looks at the number of hours
volunteered by supported employees, as well as the type of activities they
engage in and work-related skills they acquire through volunteering. Possible
effects of employer support are explored, including how it relates to
employees' perceptions that volunteering increases their chances of job
success.
Charitable giving by
Canadians
by
Martin Turcotte
Release date: April 16, 2012
This article examines charitable giving by Canadians,
comparing information about donors and donations in 2010 and 2007. It profiles
the types of organizations that received the larger amounts of donations,
distinguishing between religious and other organizations. It also looks at
motivations for donating and reasons for not giving more, including what may
have bothered donors about how they were asked to donate. The data comes from
the 2010 Canada Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating.
Volunteering in Canada
by
Mireille Vézina and Susan Crompton
Release date: April 16, 2012
This article examines volunteering in Canada: volunteer
rates, number of hours volunteered and types of organizations supported. It
describes key socioeconomic characteristics of volunteers, types of volunteer
activities, motivations for volunteering and barriers to volunteering. The
article also examines "informal volunteering", that is, direct help
provided to family, friends and neighbours. Data are from the 2010 Canada
Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating.
Profile of seniors'
transportation habits
by
Martin Turcotte
Release date: January 23, 2012
This article examines various issues related to seniors'
access to transportation and to a vehicle. The first part focuses on
determining which seniors have a driver's licence and drive a car, including
those with the weakest visual, auditory, motor and cognitive faculties. The
second part of the article describes seniors' main forms of transportation
other than driving a car. The last part examines the impact of seniors' main
form of transportation on their level of social participation.
Date modified:
2015-11-27
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Oh Sweet Lord....
Canada's primer Cartoonist is astounding... check his site and his blogs....
the lion - Patrick LaMontagne (he does political cartoons for NovaNewsNow.ca )
- brilliant bold and beautiful....
Painting a Lion on
the iPad http://www.cartoonink.com/2016/01/30/painting-a-lion-on-the-ipad/#.Vrn3ZJx2mVs.twitter
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UN $$$WAR MACHINE
NATIONS- what have u done- humanity oh humanity- we weep Syria's heritage in
ruins: before-after pictures http://gu.com/p/3m6n7/stw
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UNITED NATIONS-2016-
what have u done to humanity? u were formed on the ashes of the Holocaust of
League of Nations (1929-1945) for humanity- UN war mongrel nations...what have
u done to our beautiful planet??? our
beautiful troops treated like throwaway playtoys for the $$$rich men of war
...sigh - Before-and-After Photos Show
What 9 Cities Looked Like Before They Were Destroyed by War by @hycieeeee http://mic.com/articles/89585/before-and-after-photos-show-what-9-cities-looked-like-before-they-were-destroyed-by-war#.TNLGCgQ3i
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The idea is much
needed in Canada for everyday kids and Canada's future... BUT THE LOCATION IS
WAY WRONG... imho
Leaders write Pope
asking him to stop private school opening in Winnipeg's north end http://fb.me/2DQbbRr7t
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luv this- how do u
make these beautiful animals do the faces? Save the Canadians: Costa Rican
Animals 4 Overworked https://youtu.be/-XPOSldsLFw
Halifax Explosion: The Aftermath and Relief Efforts (1917)
Actual footage following the 1917 Explosion in Halifax,
showing devastation and the relief effort, beginning with activities the day
after the Explosion and following the reconstruction in the north end of
Halifax, including the Hydrostone housing project.
Filmmaker: W.G. MacLaughlan
For more information on the archives and these films,
please visit: http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/ns...
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Getcha Nova Scotia
and Canada on folks from babies to great grandmas- wheelchairs n carriages- 5
reasons why - GARDENING GURU: Green spaces promotes health, wellness
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Rebuilding
Europe after WW1 took decades
By Staff The Canadian Press
;
The Basilica in Saint Quentin, France, badly damaged during
the First World War and later restored, is shown in this 2013 handout photo.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Tom Douglas
YPRES, Belgium – The First World War cut a swath of
destruction across Europe, leaving centuries-old towns and hallowed buildings
in ruins. Rebuilding took generations.
Many Canadians visiting this West Flanders city where so
many of their forebears fought and died in that war marvel at the magnificent
Cloth Hall in the Grand Market Square.
A lot of them don’t know, however, that this splendid
example of 13th century architecture is not even as old the Centre Block of
Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings.
Oddly, both the Cloth Hall and the original Centre Block of
Parliament buildings burned and crashed to Earth within a couple of years of
one another.
On the night of Feb. 3, 1916 a raging fire destroyed all
but the Library of Parliament and the northwest wing of the Centre Block.
On Nov. 22, 1914, German shell fire struck the Cloth Hall.
Wooden scaffolding set up to repair damage caused by earlier shelling quickly
ignited and the upper floors of the hall were badly charred.
The Germans rained fire on Ypres for the rest of the war
but never managed to seize it. Canadian soldiers, who saw their first major
action of the war at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, watched the
gradual destruction of this former textile centre.
By the end of the war, in November 1918, the venerable city
and its medieval buildings had been flattened.
Ottawa’s Centre Block was rebuilt in fairly short order. On
September 1, 1919, the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, laid the
cornerstone for the Peace Tower. The structure was completed in 1922.
The rebuilding of the Cloth Hall finally finished in 1967.
And if Winston Churchill had had his way, Ypres would have been left as a pile
of rubble as a monument to the hundreds of thousands of Allied troops killed there
through the years of fighting.
“I should like us to acquire the whole of the ruins of
Ypres,” Great Britain’s future prime minister said in 1919. “A more sacred
place for the British race does not exist in the world.”
But two factions of Ypres citizenry lobbied for
reconstruction. One group wanted a new city built on the ruins using the
fashionable art deco architecture of the 1920s.
Another group, which prevailed, favoured using the existing
plans for the old city to create a replica of pre-war Ypres, paid for by German
reparation payments and donations pouring in from all over the world.
Some French and Belgian communities, pounded flat by years
of shelling, were never rebuilt, passing into history with no more than an
inscribed cairn to mark their previous existence.
One of many badly damaged communities on the Western Front
that actually was reborn in art deco style was Saint Quentin in the Picardy
region of northern France near the Somme River.
It was the site of brutal fighting and a long German
occupation which left three-quarters of the city in ruins.
Once again, war’s end brought an influx of German
reparation payments as well as worldwide donations, and the townspeople decided
to rebuild.
The reconstruction included colourful mosaics, floral
friezes and wrought iron or bow windows that reflect the art deco motif and
became a powerful tourist attraction that is still a major part of the city’s
marketing campaign.
READ
MORE: The perilous history of Canada’s Ross rifle
Frederic Buron, Saint Quentin’s manager of tourism
development, said the city centre sustained the most damage, especially the
Basilica, where the Germans used the church steeple as an observation post for
artillery.
“The Basilica’s wooden framework, dating back to the 17th
century, caught fire on Aug. 15, 1917 when Allied shelling targeted the
steeple,” Buron said.
“The roof was destroyed and without its protection during
the particularly harsh winter that followed, the interior of the building
collapsed in on itself.
“Many stained glass windows were blown and the crypt
housing the tomb of Saint Quintinus, the Roman martyr who gave his name to the
city, burst open. A new crypt was constructed during the restoration and the
sarcophagus containing the saint’s remains was transferred there.”
Buron added that the majority of the 55,000 inhabitants had
fled either immediately after the German takeover in 1914 or during a massive
evacuation in March 1917, when the Germans turned Saint Quentin into a fortress
town as part of their defensive Hindenburg Line.
“At war’s end, the townspeople returned to find the city in
ruins,” he said. “Temporary shelters were set up and the enormous task of
rebuilding the city began.”
The reconstruction began with the transportation system,
roads, canals and railways. The locals struggled to re-establish the industrial
base that had been methodically dismantled and shipped off to Germany. It took
until the late 1930s to get things back to pre-war conditions.
The pipes of the massive organ in the Basilica had been
removed by the Germans and melted down to make weapons and ammunition. The
pipes and the shattered stained glass windows were replaced in the rebuilding.
The process taught the locals a valuable lesson, Buron
said.
“When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, we
had to reverse the process and store away all our valuable artifacts to prevent
them from being destroyed all over again.”
-----------------
1. You're not imagining it. Canadian politics is ...
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/10/05/youre-not-imagining-it-canadian-politics-is-getting-dumber/
Oct 5, 2015 ... One of the more obvious places we've seen this 'dumbed
down' ... Flash back to 1968, the year Canada's very first televised leaders'
... Two things happened. ... The debates, when campaigning, when in Question
Period, have all turned ... ( other than news/the odd Olympic sporting event
and what might be, ...
2. Project Censored — The News that Didn't Make the ...
------------------------
http://www.projectcensored.org/
The News that Didn't Make the News and Why. ... Help us celebrate our
40th year fighting news media censorship! 4333535662_0c39694ff2_b. Randi Kaye's
...
3. 'Media Is Our Last Line of Defence': Mohamed Fahmy...
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2015/09/26/Media-Our-Last-Line-Defence-Fahmy/
Sep 26, 2015 ... ''The Government of Canada will continue to provide Mr.
Fahmy with ... our plight alive and hearing snippets of news I received in my
cell kept me going. ... I did not criticize them because I was inside the
prison, but my family was ... to all of us who are watching our democracy get
flushed down the toilet.
---------------
4. America dumbs down: a rising tide of...
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/
May 15, 2014 ... Related: Does America really care about Boko Haram? ...
(The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent ...
Americans have long worried that their education system is leaving ..... They
sure do a good job dumbing down people in Canada and W. Europe. ..... That
simply doesn't happen.
--------------------
5. What happened to the CBC? : canada - Reddit
www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/33jimx/what_happened_to_the_cbc/
Apr 23, 2015 ... Is CBC TV news being deliberately dumbed down? ... Soon
Harper will just have the CBC replaced with ET Canada for all your .... if it
means actual news; you could hire 10 for the price of one Peter Mansbridge
..... Is the quality bad because of the cuts or did the cuts happen because of
the bad quality?
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BLOG:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Major
Reports- Statistics- September 2013-Canada- STOP A BULLY/ USA- ARC OF HOPE-
Breaking the Chains of Abuse- It's Time- NO MORE BULLYCIDES
-------------------
BLOG:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas called Canada's Women and girls the bravest in the world back in our days of 60s, 70s and 80s- and we raised our sons 2 treat women and children better- Please don't let us down- March 8- International Women's Day is everyday- no more excuses students- no more excuses- Loretta Saunders 4 u/Rita MacNeil Warrior Woman/BLOGS /DAILY UPDATES /SEP 22, 2014 - JUSTICE 4 REHTAEH PARSONS- one of abusers pleads guilty- One Billion rising
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/03/canada-military-news-gloria-steinem-and.html
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