By Jim Naureckas, FAIR

August 6, 2011, when 38 soldiers, including 30 U.S. troops, were killed when their helicopter was shot down, was the "deadliest day" of the Afghan War, several media outlets told us:

  New York Times Support for Imperial Wars - by Stephen Lendman

The Times never met a US imperial war it didn't endorse or designated enemy it didn't vilify. Nor are concerns ever raised about constitutional and international law issues, crimes of war and against humanity, or mass slaughter and destruction. 

By John Hanrahan
hanrahan@niemanwatchdog.org

The United States is bogged down in a 10-year-old war in Afghanistan in which 100,000 American troops and 40,000 other NATO personnel are fighting at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $2 billion a week in a country beset by grinding poverty and ever-increasing civilian and military casualties. There is no shortage of news to be covered, all of it with serious ramifications for the Afghan people and for American foreign policy and military spending, decision-making and the ravages of war.

Yet, other than in its early stages in 2001-2002, the American press has greatly under-reported this war. Only handfuls of reporters are stationed there for more than brief periods. They often do remarkable reporting but face numerous problems that can affect coverage: roadside bombs; the threat of kidnapping if they stray too far from Kabul on their own; language barriers; strict constraints when they are embedded with the military; having to cope with the military’s spin on particular battle actions or policies; budget issues that can limit a reporter’s support personnel, etc. And when they overcome such problems the reporting is still sparse: There are just too few reporters to describe the war and life in Afghanistan.

READ THE REST AT NIEMAN WATCHDOG

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Democratic Congressman Bob Filner:  Why after 10 yrs of fighting for the progressive agenda in Congress is he leaving to run for Mayor of San Diego?
 
Author David Swanson:  What chilling cuts can we expect from in the Debt Ceiling Deal?  Is a major depression inevitable?  Is the movement  to challenge Obama in the Primary gaining momentum?  
 
Jeff Norman Exec Dir of Veteran Project describes the shut out of homeless vets from their own facility by the Veteran’s Administration. Is that facility being privatized?

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  Israeli Street Protests: Suppressed by US Media - by Stephen Lendman

Well, almost. Virtually nothing shows up on US television. Some gets print coverage, but not enough to explain a major story accurately and fully. More on that below.

For weeks, tens of thousands of Israelis have been protesting high prices, especially unaffordable housing, creating an intolerable burden for growing numbers being priced out of a place to live.

By Dave Lindorff

My wife Joyce and I were renting a car for the week this morning at a Hertz office just outside Philadelphia.  There was a line of people either waiting to pick up a vehicle, or to return one.  

The harried clerk behind the counter -- the only guy in the office -- was fielding calls while trying to serve the first guy in line, who was trying to rent a car for a vacation trip with his wife to North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  No sooner would the poor clerk sit down at the computer to start typing in the information from the man’s driver’s license than the phone would ring -- a phone that was located on a desk in a cubicle behind him, requiring him to get up and run around to the back cubicle.

The man at the counter, and others in the line, sighed audibly.

  America's Media: Dancing Around the Budget Debate Charade - by Stephen Lendman

Previous articles explained an Obama-led bipartisan conspiracy to destroy America's social contract, returning the nation to 19th harshness harshness. But you'd never know it from major media reports, op-eds and editorials, ducking the issue even when critical.

The debate charade's gone on for weeks, both sides concealing their basic agreement on major cuts for political advantage. 

By Jeff Cohen

If you were a spectator in a sky box seat looking directly down on the Washington debt debate, you’d be seeing a contest both narrow and off to one edge of the field -- like watching a football game being played entirely between the 10-yard line and the goal line.

The big items that added trillions to the debt are not even on the field of debate. Because the two teams are not contesting them.

** WARS:   When Obama expanded the Afghan war and asked for the largest military budget in world history, the GOP largely applauded.  It was bipartisan.

** BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY:  Obama extended them in December

** BANK BAILOUTS:  Bipartisan.  

** DECLINING TAX REVENUE:  Resulted from recession and financial meltdown caused by years of bipartisan (Reagan/Clinton) deregulation of Wall Street. And by big companies like General Electric (whose CEO is Obama’s jobs chairman) dodging their taxes.

By Nieman Watchdog

Part of a Nieman Watchdog series, 'Reporting the Endgame', and the second of two articles on the national news media's weak coverage of antiwar activities. Click here for the first one.

The fall of an empire?

Amid all the hype of the Murdoch saga, it is fascinating to see how the mighty rise and fall.

All eyes have been drawn to the shaming of the billionaire media mogul and the craven way in which leading politicians have seamlessly switched from fawning over Rupert Murdoch one moment and then attacking him for his newspapers' appalling methods of investigation the next.

But while it can be delectable to revel in schadenfreude, let's just remember a few things.

READ THE REST AT MORNING STAR.

By Dave Lindorff

Jeff Greenwald has just written that President Obama, by playing a leading role in pushing for cuts in Social Security benefits as part of the whole kabuki-theater drama over the debt ceiling, and the alleged crisis of America’s national debt, has cut out the “soul” of the Democratic Party.

Salon.com deleted these paragraphs:

After witnessing Israel's brutal assault of Gaza in 2008, many peace activists also joined the movement for human right and justice in Israel and Palestine, engaging in campaigns to boycott and divest from the occupation, organizing boats and caravans to break through the crippling blockade of Gaza, providing support to non-violent actions against home demolitions and the “apartheid wall” in the West Bank, and challenging the stranglehold that pro-Israel lobbies have on U.S. policy.

Finally, we have been busy trying to insert the anti-war message in the broader movements for social and economic justice. While our message is sometimes rebuffed or marginalized in activities closely linked to the Democratic Party, at every major rally for jobs, civil rights or corporate responsibility, you’ll find anti-war activists.

from this article. Was there some good reason for this?  Was one of the paragraphs just to accompany the other that Salon.com really didn't want?  Or did it really not want both of them? 

This "editing" job goes some way toward answering the question under discussion: why is the peace movement held back?

A government that works for Wall Street and a war machine will sooner or later create schools that work for the same ends.

Here's a vicious cycle: rather than funding good schools, we fund the military and its recruiters.  Then we lower the qualifications for teachers as long as the applicants have participated in wars.  We funnel the same "Troops to Teachers" applicants into "public charter schools" too, even though we're paying them public dollars.  And we move the whole program from the Department of Education to the Department of "Defense".  That was President Barack Obama's idea.  Do you like it?  Pretty creative, huh?  One step ahead of those teapartiers!

Imagine how radically different the current debate over the Giant Debt Ceiling Monster would look if we moved it to one of those nations we're bombing into a democracy. Imagine us all still U.S. residents with the same views we have now, but imagine that our representatives in Washington, D.C., were obliged to give a damn what we thought.

By John Bonifaz, FreeSpeechForPeople

It’s becoming clearer every day that News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire that includes Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, is out of control.   

As the scandal explodes, we now know that News Corp will stop at nothing—certainly not the law--  to smear people¹, corrupt law enforcement², and abuse victims of crimes and their families.³ Don’t think this can’t happen here in the USA.

News Corp. is the kind of “corporate person” that the Supreme Court turned our political system over to in Citizens United. In fact, according to Politico, “News Corp...  contributed $1 million [last] summer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby that has been running an aggressive campaign in support of the Republican effort to retake Congress.”⁴
   
    We’re calling on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to return that money.  Join us here.

By Linn Washington, Jr.

U.S. President Barack Obama suddenly takes hard-line stances against his Republican political adversaries after over two years of meek accommodation.

International media mogul Rupert Murdoch suddenly exhibits uncharacteristic humility when dealing with escalating scandals in England and America erupting from vicious and illegal activities by employees of his many media entities.

From Press TV

AUDIO HERE

The West's mainstream media outlets easily ignore serious government issues and only magnify diversionary stories and celebrity scandals, says David Swanson, an author and co-founder of Warisacrime.org.

“When it comes to investigating the claims of national governments and the arguments for wars based on blatant lies, these same media outlets act as dutiful stenographers," David Swanson told Press TV's U.S. Desk in a Sunday interview.

“So it really is giving a quite distorted picture of an aggressive reportorial organization that when it comes to matter of importance...it really isn't," the author of "War Is A Lie" added.

Swanson made a reference to the recent phone hacking scandal by a subsidiary newspaper of media magnate Rupert Murdoch and said that such issues receive media coverage in certain areas such as when a celebrity's phone is for instance also hacked in the scandal.

However, he said, "I just would much prefer that they (Murdoch) were prosecuted for the crimes of selling illegal wars, something that he openly confesses to and doesn't result in the same sort of scandal."

RG/KA/DB

  Murdoch's World: Demagoguery, Propaganda, Scandal, Sleaze, and Warmongering - by Stephen Lendman

Famed journalist George Seldes (1890 - 1995) condemned press prostitutes in books like "Lords of the Press," denouncing their corruption, suppression of  truth, and news censorship before television reached large audiences, saying:

"The most sacred cow of the press is the press itself - the most powerful force against the general welfare of the majority of the people."

By PA Farruggio

We have failed as both a nation and a people. True, there are those of us out there who see through the hype and the rhetoric. Sadly, it is but a small minority, a tiny club of citizens who refuse to accept the disinformation and outright lying that has been our national inheritance for so long. Teddy Roosevelt, in history books as the great ‘progressive ‘who took on the big corporate trusts, was also a devout imperialist and war monger(Remember the Maine).  His colonial plan for the Philippines was savage and inhumane. Harry Truman allowed the Military Industrial Complex, in its early stages, to drop not one, but two A Bombs on Japan. This was not done to shorten the war, because history reveals that the Japanese high command had already offered to surrender peacefully, basically needing to have their emperor remain in place- everyone knew he was a figurehead anyway. Yet, Truman gave the order to drop those bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima for the sole purpose of showing the Russians that we could A) make such a devastating weapon and B) that we could make more than one. Ronald Reagan’s attack on Panama was primarily to control the Canal. Bush Sr.’s Iraq War # 1 was to keep Saddam Hussein from dealing with the Chinese and to lessen his influence in the Middle East. Bush Jr.’s wars to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq were really about controlling the oil in that region (Afghanistan’s future pipeline and Iraq’s 2^nd largest reserve in the world). As my old Sicilian friend would put it; “Things are never what they seem.”

Nailing Rupert Murdoch for his employees' phone tapping or bribery would be a little like bringing down Al Capone for tax fraud, or George W. Bush for torture. I'd be glad to see it happen but there'd still be something perverse about it.

I remember how outraged Americans were in 2005 learning about our government's warrantless spying, or for that matter how furious some of my compatriots become when a census form expects them to reveal how many bathrooms are in their home.

I'm entirely supportive of outrage. I just have larger crimes in mind. Specifically this:

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
"Article 20
"1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law."

The Fox News Channel is endless propaganda for war, and various other deadly policies. As Robin Beste points out,

Sensationalism In America's Media - by Stephen Lendman

Its history is long and sordid, dating back centuries elsewhere since the 1500s or earlier. In 19th century America, the penny press and yellow journalism featured it with regular coverage of crime, tragedy, gossip, and other ways to stimulate sales.

Newspaper editor Frederic Hudson published a history of American newspapers titled, "Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872," an authoritative text saying:

"The penny press arrived in New York on January 1, 1833, when Horatio David Shepard teamed up with Horace Greeley and Francis W. Story and issued the Morning Post."

Both found fame and fortune in New York, but "the concept of bringing out a penny paper belonged exclusively to Shepard."

Barbara Ehrenreich:

And in that may lie our last hope. With the decline of mass militaries and their possible replacement by machines, we may finally see that war is not just an extension of our needs and passions, however base or noble. Nor is it likely to be even a useful test of our courage, fitness, or national unity. War has its own dynamic or -- in case that sounds too anthropomorphic -- its own grim algorithms to work out. As it comes to need us less, maybe we will finally see that we don’t need it either. We can leave it to the ants.

By Dave Lindorff

It is part of America’s state religion, the Free Market fundamentalist religion that is accepted as gospel by all leading politicians, by the “brain trust” that sets goverrnment economic policy, and by the supposedly hard-nosed analysts who convince American investors where to put their money, that “markets know best.”

How then to explain the panicked reaction of investors and markets to the Labor Department’s monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report on the latest monthly jobs and unemployment figures?

Appeals Court Rejects More Media Consolidation - Stephen Lendman

In six editions of "The Media Monopoly" and subsequent update titled, "The New Media Monopoly," Ben Bagdikian explained how deregulation let major media corporations consolidate to oligopoly size.

Since 1983, the number of corporations owning most newspapers, magazines, book publishers, recorded music, movie studios, television and radio stations shrunk from 50 to a handful, including Time-Warner, Disney, News Corp., Viacom, Comcast, and Bertelsmann AG.

In 1996, Telecommunications Act backers claimed it would increase competition, lower prices, and improve service. In fact, TV station ownership limits were raised to let broadcast giants own twice as many local stations as before, charge what they wished, and dismiss public concerns in the process.

By Dave Lindorff

In ways little and huge, it is clear that we live in a nation, a culture and a society that is terminally ill.

The latest outrage -- the likely execution of a Mexican convicted in Texas of the brutal slaying of a 16-year-old girl in blatant violation of a universally adopted international treaty that requires that as a foreigner he be able to notify his home country’s consulate of his case -- is evidence of this sickness, which appears to have both physical and mental aspects.

As a journalist I have traveled widely in the world, often in police states like China or Laos, and I have always trusted in the fact that if I ran afoul of those police, at least I could count on the fact that the authorities would be legally bound to notify my embassy, so that I could get international attention and, hopefully, legal assistance.

By Michael Collins

Who knows if Casey Anthony is guilty or innocent? Even Casey might not know at this point. We do know one thing, without any doubt. As our economy and nation crumble around us, we're being amused to death by the corporate media. They've got good reason to keep the headlines on Casey. Absent a major distraction, there might be a focused look at the misrule and looting of this country for the past decades that has created the real threats to the health of children.