The American journalism profession long ago ceased functioning as a news gathering operation, and instead became, as David Barsamian labeled them in his book, “Stenographers to Power.” It’s a tough way to live, undignified, so behind the veneer of “professionalism” journalists these days actually brag about their fealty, claiming it’s a requirement of the profession. They call it “objectivity,” better described as “see nothing, know nothing.” In practice they get a quote from both sides and move on, and learn nothing, tell nothing.*

It is interesting, however, to see how real journalists function, never trusting power, burrowing on their own, uncovering lies and reporting back to us on what powerful people are doing.

They are sports journalists. If Ray Rice was a senator instead of a Raven, he’s have gotten a free pass on his elevator activities. If Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the NFL, were the head of the Nataional Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front, for example, he’d have a free pass to do whatever it is he does in the shadows without fear of reporters snooping around.

We still have some journalists in our Empire of Lies. They work in sports.
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*This led to Krugman’s famous observation that if Republicans claimed the earth was flat, journalists would report “Shape of earth: Views Differ.”
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PS: It has been suggested to me not only in the comments below, but other people I read and listen to, that there are many good and curious people in the American news media who simply know to avoid career suicide. I believe that to be true and at the same time note that whether they are voluntarily shutting off their brains or just naturally incurious, the result is the same.

If any are curious about whether the Edward Snowden is the real deal or a “limited hangout,” here is evidence of the latter: .

Real deals do not get such favorable exposure. Time Magazine is not now, was not ever, a subversive journalistic enterprise. It’s a hack news operation that almost always supports the National Security State, reporting or not reporting as the situation demands.

Case in point: Do you know of the Strange Case of Barrett Brown? He’s a man who faces life imprisonment for messing for real with NSA and corporations like Stratfor who are in-bedded therein. Not a word in Time Magazine about him.
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Footnote: Naomi Wolf, who has also suggested that Snowden might not have actually left NSA employment, and so endures ridicule now from liberals, makes an interesting point that has not escaped me either:

But do consider that in Eastern Germany, for instance, it was the fear of a machine of surveillance that people believed watched them at all times — rather than the machine itself — that drove compliance and passivity. From the standpoint of the police state and its interests — why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times — unless we know about it?

Could it be that by doing his big reveal of what was already known, that Snowden is merely reinforcing a regime of fear?
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One more footnote: Time Magazine covers are like Playboy’s, each a cultural comment, one without big tits. This is my favorite of all time. It was 1999, Serbia was resisting Wall Street penetration, all kinds of behind-the-scenes manipulations were going on (including a 1996 plane crash that killed numerous US corporate executives and commerce secretary Ron Brown). In the propaganda system, to prepare the US public for an attack, it was necessary to put a face on the new enemy, and that of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was chosen. Time, performing its role as servant of the state, ran the cover shown here. Please notice, and it is no accident, that the “I” and the “M” in the word Time form horns on the poor slob, who was later imprisoned, and when found to be very effective in defending himself in court, was found dead in his cell. (OK, maybe you don’t think Time put horns on the enemy du jour, but I gotta ask: Why the blue face?)
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(Thanks for link, BFA)

In my brief lifetime I have witnessed four assassination attempts on members of the Kennedy family, three successful. A pilot who flew members of the JFK assassination team out of Dallas confided to a witness, Wayne January (as reported post-mortem by British author Mathew Smith), “They are not only going to kill the president, they are going to kill Robert Kennedy and any other Kennedy who gets into that position.”

Such intrigue is unfathomable to innocent Americans who imagine they are governed by people who are like them. This is the great advantage that people who seek power for power’s sake have over regular people. It is the central focus of Machiavelli’s The Prince. They understand us. We do not understand them. They can imitate us, we only imitate them in movies and TV shows, and not well. Hannibal Lechter only bears faint resemblance to a true psychopath. Dick Cheney, Zbigniew Brzezinski are the real deal.

The four Kennedy assassination attempts, John, Robert, Ted and John Jr., stand out like bright stars, and not just dots. I have not seen or read one person in our news media who has the ability (or at least admits it) to connect those dots, even as they are so bright as to hurt the eyes. All events are random. Add a host of other murders and unexplained deaths, timely scandals, even coincidences as obscure as a powerful congressman* caught in a public fountain late at night with a hooker … and perhaps it is but a matter of attrition. The good journalists go do something else. The ones we are left with, even if they do have some dot-connecting ability, are either clueless or know to shut up.

Not knowing, or knowing and keeping quiet … same difference.
Continue reading “What’s up with our news media?” →

A word again about blogging – it’s nature and importance.

Blogs are forums for expressions of feelings, attitudes, and sometimes ideas. They are a personal outlet. They are criticized for not being fact-checked or accurate. They are criticized for excess emotionalism and dis-inhibition. Most of what goes on in blogs disappears the next day as bloggers and commenters move on to the next topic, unaffected by the last.

It’s pointless, so why do it? (It’s fun.)

Blogs are looked down upon by newspaper employees, journalists and editors. The closest comparison to blogging in their sphere is the editorial page. Consider the following:
Continue reading “Newspapers versus blogs*” →

In light of everything that has transpired here, it might help to go back and revisit the words of a “White House official” to Ron Suskind back in 2005:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

That’s widely thought to be a chicken-dancing Karl Rove, but I would not be surprised if it was Cheney – the phrase “judiciously, as you will” sounds more like him. Suskind, typical of American journalists, finds it better to keep secrets from us in order to better preserve his role as bearer of official truth. I wonder if he caught the condescending tone of the remark towards the intellectual class, the dung beetles in the feedlot of power.
Continue reading “History’s actors” →

What to the following people and organizations all have in common?

Bill Kristol
Bill O’Reilly
Sarah Palin
Mike Huckabee
Kathleen McFarland
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Mark Joyella
Jeffrey Kuhner
Tom Flanagan, spokesman for Stephen Harper
New Gingrich
Bob Beckel
Bo Dietl
Marc Thiessen
John Hawkins
Christian Whiton
Jonah Goldberg

Answer: They have all called for the murder of Julian Assange.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Vice President Joe Biden are more restrained – Biden only called him a “terrorist.” Under the “who says A must say B” dictum, that is as good as a death sentence. Holder is merely pursuing Assange with all his heart and soul, apparently working with Karl Rove* to capture him and bring him to American justice via Sweden.
Continue reading “Ugly people, ugly country” →

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. (Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar)

From the Guardian:

The BBC has pulled a film about the experiences of rioters during last summer’s disturbances just hours before it was due to be broadcast after a ruling from a judge. The film, due to be broadcast on BBC2 at 9pm on Monday, was a dramatisation based on the testimony of interviews conducted for the Guardian and London School of Economics research into the disorder.

The British public is not allowed to know the “nature of the order or the identity of the judge who handed down the ruling.”

Contrast this with the United States, where we have had uprisings and even some rioting, and where we have a first amendment. We have large corporate-owned broadcasting outlets free of government censorship. These corporations are staffed by highly trained journalists and fronted by pretty faces who emphasize selected news with great sincerity and ignore other selected news with a high measure of opacity.

These organizations have the good sense never to make documentaries that are such an affront power. We don’t need no stinking court to tell us that.

As Glenn Greenwald reports, the reason we know that an American airstrike in December of 2009 killed 14 women and 21 kids is because of Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye. Consequently, Obama has him imprisoned.

Here in this country, Jeremy Scahill reports in the Nation about the imprisonment.

What are you going to do next, Big O – throw Jeremy Scahill in jail? Murder him?

Greenwald writes about the deafening silence on this side of the world about the imprisonment, the air strike itself, which the New York Times has blatantly lied about, and of course, the complicity of Democrats, who are apparently OK with murder and mayhem so long is it is their guy at the wheel.

Stratfor says that the Anonymous hack and Wilileaks release of its internal data (much of which is gathered by means of illegal (and bribed?) internal government sources) …

a deplorable, unfortunate — and illegal — breach of privacy…

That can only mean one thing: Wikileaks struck gold.