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Friday, February 28, 2003 |
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The way to understand how policy makers make media in this country... there's a great movie, THE GODFATHER, PART TWO. There's a scene early in the movie where all the American gangsters are on top of a hotel roof in Havana. It's a classic scene. Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone. And they've got a cake being wheeled out to them. And Hyman Roth is cutting up slices of the cake. And the cake's got the outline of Cuba on it, giving each gangster a slice of Cuba. And while he's doing this, Hyman Roth's saying, "Isn't it great to be in a country where we have a government that respects private enterprise, they let us own the country."
- - Robert McChesney
RHINO HERE:
Following up on Thursday's mention of Donahue being cancelled, I've been a faithful viewer of the show since day 1 (with the help of Replay TV). So now what? Bill Maher has a new show called "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO. Similar to his, Politically Incorrect we'll have to see how left he can lean and stay on the air. His show will be NEW and LIVE every Friday night at 11:30 on HBO! With repeats airing: Tuesday 12:00 am, Wed 10:30 pm / Sunday following the late movie / Saturday 11:00 pm on HBO 2.
Then there's the ever courageous Bill Moyers and his PBS series "NOW". Last week he had on independent journalist Seymour Hersh, who won the Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and is one of America's leading investigative journalists, and WOW did he have a story to tell.
The nutshell version; North Korea was selling missiles to Pakistan on terms. Meanwhile Pakistan was running a nuke program and built their atom bomb. Spent all their money on that and couldn't pay North Korea for the missiles, so they offered them nukes instead. Meanwhile, Pakistans secret service and army were aiding & training Al Queda. The U.S., wanting a staging area to attack Afganistan, cut a deal with Pakistan which included a promise that if U.S. forces came upon Pakistani forces in Afganistan, they would let them escape back to Pakistan. That happened, but along with hundreds of Paki's, the U.S. forces allowed hundreds of Al Queda escape with them. Think that's fishy? The U.S. cutting deals with a nation known to have developed WOMAD's (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and also who gave WOMADs to other nations, including one of the axis of evil. It get's weirder. Here's a link to the complete transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript208_full.html
MSNBC thinks SAVAGE NATION represents the U.S. better than Donahue
Also on last week's "NOW", Moyers noted the changes at MSNBC with the following comments:
"NBC is owned by General Electric; G.E. and Microsoft own the cable news network MSNBC; and MSNBC has just hired Michael Savage to do a new television program. Mr. Savage is the host of an ABC radio show called SAVAGE NATION. MSNBC says Michael Savage will provide "compelling opinion and analysis with edge." Now, what does that mean?
Well, let's look at the record: Michael Savage is known to speak on the air of non-white countries as - you may want to cover your children's eyes - as "turd world nations." Open your door to immigrants, he has said, and "the next thing you know they are defecating on your country and breeding out of control." He has said that while Latinos, in particular, "breed like rabbits" and whites don't, homosexuals "are part of the grand plan to cut down on the white race." When student volunteers distributed food to San Francisco's homeless, Mr. Savage said "the girls can go in and maybe get raped because they seem to like the excitement of it. There's always the thrill and possibility they'll be raped in a dumpster while giving out a turkey sandwich." When the Million Mom March called for gun control, Mr. Savage said children killed by guns "are not kids, they're ghetto slime." Never mind. Apparently such ideas strengthen the arsenal of democracy. For Michael Savage says: "We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy." So a SAVAGE NATION is now safely nestled in the bosom of big media, courtesy of G.E. and Microsoft."
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript208_full.html (bottom of the transcript)
If you feel moved to give the powers that be at MSNBC a piece of your mind, their email address is:
viewerservices@msnbc.com
Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communications Politics in Dubious Times
On the topic of corporate controlled media, blog reader & contributor, Peter Coyote writes:
"Gary, If you want to give readers a REAL view of the anti-democratic nature of mass media, recommend they read, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communications Politics in Dubious Times by Robert McChesney. It explains neoliberalism (the reigning oligarchic philosophy) extremely clearly as the 'policies that maximize the role of markets and profit-making and minimize the role of non-market institutions'. It is a political theory that posits 'that society works best when business runs things and there is as little possibility of government 'interference.'
The book chronicles the monopolization and hyper-commercialization of media; scores the Democrats equally miserably with the Republicans as aiders and abettors and argues that 'the subject of how the media are controlled, structured, and subsidized should be at the center of democratic debate.'
McChesney points out that a democracy where the people are not free to vote on the economic system (ours) is not really a democracy at all, but a form of liberalism which developed in Europe in the movement to protect the rights of feudal lords from Monarch, and became an important set of principles to protect...private property from the state." A very important read.
Our Media, Not Theirs
Coincidentally, Robert McChesney was also a guest on last week's NOW along with John Nichols. Together they have written another important book on the subject that advocates a whole new movement; like the environmental movement & the civil rights movement before it, focused on taking back the airwaves from what I've been calling the neo-robber barons. Another evocative interview.
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript208_full.html (middle of the transcript)
Massive Media: Facts and Figures Not convinced this is as big a deal as Rhino's makin out? Check the statistics summary Moyers assembled: http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/fcc.html
THE BOTTOM LINE is an in depth evaluation of the goal of the shrub gang's looming war. Jonathan Schell, The Nation's peace and disarmament correspondent, evaluates what it means to really WIN a war, not just on the battle field, but in terms of the original intention of the conflict. Thoughtful analysis here.
9:16:21 AM 
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by Jonathan Schell, The Nation, 2/12/03
This autumn and winter, nuclear danger has returned, in a new form, accompanied by danger from the junior siblings in the mass destruction family, chemical and biological weapons. Now it is not a crisis between two superpowers but the planned war to overthrow the government of Iraq that, like a sentence of execution that has been passed but must go through its final appeals before being carried out, we have talked to death. (Has any war been so lengthily premeditated before it was launched?) Iraq, the United States insists, possesses some of these weapons. To take them away, the United States will overthrow the Iraqi government. No circumstance is more likely to provoke Iraq to use any forbidden weapons it has. In that event, the Bush Administration has repeatedly said, it will itself consider the use of nuclear weapons. Has there ever been a clearer or more present danger of the use of weapons of mass destruction?
While we were all talking and the danger was growing, strange to say, the war was being lost. For wars, let us recall, are not fought for their own sake but to achieve aims. Victory cannot be judged only by the outcome of battles. In the American Revolutionary War, for example, Edmund Burke, a leader of England's antiwar movement, said, "Our victories can only complete our ruin." Almost two centuries later, in Vietnam, the United States triumphed in almost every military engagement, yet lost the war. If the aim is lost, the war is lost, whatever happens on the battlefield. The novelty this time is that the defeat has preceded the inauguration of hostilities.
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030303&s=schell
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8:34:51 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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