posted 12-03-2001 02:37 PM            

Six trans-national corporations, all with identical consumer based agendas, work together to sell off our communication and information flow to the highest bidder, and we have to accept it. Why? With the communication technology that is around today this no longer has to be the case!

OUR 1st target: The elite controlled MASS MEDIA.

Six corporations control the American mass media and work together with one goal in mind - PUSHING their CONSUMER agenda! The average American has become so propagandized and manipulated by this COMMUNICATIONS CARTEL that they have no concept of what is truly happening in the world. Since the end of World War II the "corporate elite" have worked against the American public. Their first goal was to consolidate all forms of media. Then, eliminate the middle class and turn America into a third world inequality model. They are now executing this agenda by saturating the masses with a 24/7 mass media blitz that has produced a culture that thinks first and foremost about consumption. The elite work extremely hard to keep the masses happily consuming and not caring or thinking about much else. Do not take our word for it, look at the facts:


The US leads the industrialized world in the inequality of wealth - as inequalities reach depression era levels.

The overwhelming majority of public taxes and subsidies go straight to the economic top 1% - public investment becomes private profit.

Poverty is on the rise as corporate profits soar higher than ever.

Millions of citizens have no health care coverage.

Unions have been crippled and sweatshops are rampant as the elite ignore the Wagner Act.

The International Labor Organization ranks the US at top of worker’s rights violations list.

The US has the highest percentage of its population in prison.

The US routinely violates the United Nation’s human rights laws.

Natural resources are dwindling.

Species are becoming extinct much faster then at any point in earth's history.

1700 of the world's top scientists (including the majority of all living Nobel prize winners) prepared and signed an official document at the United Nations, stating that our current consumptive behavior has thrown the world environment out of control!

We could go on and on and on but we think you get the point. THEY HAVE CONTROL OF OUR POLITICIANS AND OUR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS. They have reduced the majority into a consuming herd! WE MUST ACT NOW!

We believe that the key to eliminating elite tyranny is to start with a massive demonstration against the media system that they have STOLEN from the people! We are currently working to establish a massive protest in Times Square, New York City - which also has been taken over by the corporate elite. In this highest of profile places the media will be forced to cover the event. We will get our message heard and then we can study exactly how they cover it and use it against them in the future. And if they don't cover it, we will instantly be proven correct and massive suspicion will spread like wild fire.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To be put forth in Times Square, NYC:

We strongly feel that it would be in the American citizens' best interest to have the mass media give in depth commercial free coverage of citizen based public debate. If we live in a free society, it would be a given that our mass media system would give close commercial free coverage to these issues.

Then, we'll close with this:
If the mass media companies refuse to cover these in depth commercial free debates, they'll need to publicly state why these topics are not considered important enough to deem such evaluation.

And one threat:
Unless an acceptable response is delivered, the companies that refuse to air these debates will be boycotted, and we, the public, will seek CHARTERS in the name that the company is not serving a public good!

If you don't think we have the support and power to do this, we'll see you in court! We have a small army of lawyers who would love nothing more than to go down in the history books as being a contributor to your demise!

posted 12-05-2001 07:40 PM            

http://members.tripod.com/therev67/antitrust/index.htm

"The logic involved with controlling the planet is simple. This world is based on money, so the controllers must make money to finance their operations. Income from Taxes doesn't cut it for them. They must make as much money as they can while YOU do all the work! Remember, the Adam was created to WORK for God, and "God" is the ELOHIM.

All of the below companies are owned by the Brotherhood. There are many more, to many to list them all. The give-away is how they incorporate their symbols into company logos that they own and control. The "A" only needs to be slightly altered to make a pyramid.

VIACOM owns BlockBuster Entertainment, Infintity Broadcasting, Music Television (MTV), CBS Corporation, Showtime (pay Television)".

... also see; McDonalds, Arbys, Columbia Pictures, AOL....
http://members.tripod.com/therev67/antitrust/index.htm

posted 12-08-2001 04:27 PM            

This is something kind of interesting, not sure if it means anything, but in the space of one or 2 days this week, the heads of 2 of those 6 media conglomerates stepped down, or had major shake-ups of some kind. I'll have to dig it up unless someone else knows. It'll probably be in rumormill news.

Head of AOL/Time Warner stepped down
Head of Vivendi/Univeral stepped down

Also in that time period, Pat Robertson of CBN decided to retire. Not sure if it's all a coincidence or they had similar reasons for quitting?

posted 12-10-2001 07:51 PM            

Secret Service deputy director heading to AOL
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/062979.htm

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Larry Cockell, the deputy director of the Secret Service and once the head of President Bill Clinton's protective detail, is retiring to become chief security officer for AOL-TimeWarner, the Secret Service said Monday.

Cockell is the first African-American to hold the position of deputy director and is the highest ranking minority agent in the organization's history.

As Clinton's chief of presidential protection, Cockell could always be spotted at the president's side. In 1998 he testified before the federal grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal after the White House lost a court battle over whether agents could be compelled to testify.

A native of St. Louis, Cockell served as an officer with the St. Louis Police Department before joining the Secret Service.

posted 01-01-2002 01:00 AM            

Big Brother Network (BBN) to Follow?

PHOENIX, Oct. 13 - First he cuts off the flow of “classified” information to all but eight members of the American people’s representatives in Congress. Then he lashes out at the American media for acting “irresponsibly” by showing an Osama bin Laden videotaped statement released after the start of our bombing of Afghanistan. Then he goes on national TV to urge American kids to donate money for the Afghan children who manage to survive his bombs.

Imperial autocracy coupled with arrogance laced with cynicism. In its wake, (voluntary) censorship is coming to America, “the land of the (once) free.”

posted 01-01-2002 01:13 AM            

But don’t take our word for it. Let’s check in with some of the leaders of the New World Order media. Here’s, for example, what the CBS news anchor, Dan Rather, a CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) member, by the way, said after the Sep. 11 attack:

"George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as just one American, (if) he wants me to line up, just tell me where."

And that’s how a free and independent media work? No wonder independent-minded viewers are tuning out from such broadcasters, as you saw from the letters to the TiM editor.

The CNN put its and other major networks’ acceptance of censorship on the air and at its web site. Here’s what it said:

“The U.S. administration urged U.S. television networks on Wednesday (Oct. 10) to curb broadcasts of bin Laden's statements, saying he might be trying to tell his followers to launch new attacks.

News chiefs from ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC television networks pledged to vet incoming feeds and not broadcast them live. CNN said it would no longer air statements from al Qaeda live, and would review them first before deciding how to handle them.

"CNN's policy is to avoid airing any material that we believe would directly facilitate any terrorist acts," the network said. "In deciding what to air, CNN will consider guidance from appropriate authorities."

So it's now official: “CNN will consider guidance from appropriate authorities.” As we all know from the Kosovo War, the CNN owner - AOL, has already been practicing for years what CNN now OPENLY preaches - a censorship of its customers’ views that are disagreeable with policies of the U.S. government (see “Why Not Quit the Big Brother's ISP - AOL!”).

“In Australia, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said his networks would not broadcast bin Laden video if it contained coded messages. "We'll do whatever is our patriotic duty," said Australian-born Murdoch, now a U.S. citizen. His family interests control News Corp, whose holdings include the Fox News channel, Fox Television, Twentieth Century Fox, television stations and a stable of newspapers.”

As you can see, therefore, Big Brother has arrived in America and has taken on the facial features of one George “Dubya” Bush. George Orwell would be pleased. He never even suspected that America’s Big Brother would bear his name. Stand by for a major consolidation of all above heretofore separate media entities into a Big Brother Network (BBN).

Meanwhile, major television networks outside the “land of the (once) free” say they will continue to air statements by Osama bin Laden despite White House calls to show caution because they might contain coded messages, CNN reported.

All but one Italian news broadcaster, for example, have decided not to ban bin Laden video statements. Only TG4, a center-right news broadcaster, has said it will no longer air old or future bin Laden material. Albino Longhi, director of TG1, told Reuters: "We think news cannot be censored or hidden."

So it looks like the new Washington-controlled “freedom” of the press will be limited mostly to the U.S. establishment media. Which is why the time has come for Americans to brush up on reading between the lines of such “free press,” by inserting the opposites and inverting the meanings (see “Orwell Would Have a Blast,” Apr. 3, 1999):

"War is peace"

"Freedom is slavery"

"Ignorance is strength"
www.truthinmedia.org

posted 01-10-2002 07:15 PM            

http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/network.zombies.html

During the summer of 1997, the ABC television network launched a campaign to attract more viewers called TV Is Good. The ads were framed in bright yellow and seemed to use some form of reverse psychology. The campaign included ads in magazines, newspapers, radio and billboards in addition to on-air spots.

The revealing aspect of ABC's TV Is Good campaign and rival NBC's Must See TV mantra is how it portrays the average television viewer. Put simply: The networks want zombies!

A zombie is defined in the dictionary as "the body of a dead person given the semblance of life by a supernatural force" and "a person who is extremely unperceptive, unresponsive, and apathetic." The networks want people to sit in their houses and stare for hours at the television. No thought, no opinions, no action. Just watch the tube.

The ABC ads were bright and humorous and they were a response to the steady decline of network viewership. Since 1990 viewers have been turning away from the big four networks -- ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX -- and instead watch more cable channels or watch less TV overall. ABC's statement is that "television" is good; not "ABC" is good.

"A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll confirms that as the audience splinters, television's powerful grip on the nation's collective psyche is weakening," reported The Journal on June 27, 1997. "To a large extent, the network's loss has been cable TV's gain -- although some established cable channels are losing viewers, too."

The poll indicated that 65 percent of TV households are watching less than they did five years ago. The most popular reasons for turning off the tube include a dislike for commercials; competing activities like work and exercise; lack of interesting programs; PCs and on-line services; and a belief that TV is a bad influence on children.

Interestingly, 79 percent of those polled wanted to see more programming about history, documentaries and the arts; 60 percent wanted to see less game shows and 85 percent wanted less Soap operas. The poll also noted that 59 percent of regular viewers believe TV has changed for the worse in the past decade.

And in the face these statistics, NBC's heavily advertised Must See TV lineup includes a batch of absolutely moronic sitcoms.

One of the polled viewers told The Journal that prime-time programs have "become a landscape of unfunny sitcoms and excessively violent cops-and-robbers shows. The stuff that's on now is so lowbrow, it's stupefying."

ABC's response: Lousy TV is good TV. It just doesn't get any better. Sorry.

"This is an absurd -- and desperate -- attempt to make it cool to park in front of the tube all day long," said TV-Free America executive director, Henry Labalme about ABC's ad campaign. "In the face of steadily declining ratings and market share, ABC is panicking. They're trying to put on a brave, carefree face and to turn that into a marketing slogan."

"Americans are finally moving beyond the old debates about whose show is better than whose and recognizing that all TV- watching displaces interactions and activities that are simply healthier, more productive and more fun. It is this trend that really worries the networks," said Labalme.

"ABC wants to be ironic and hip, but the new ad campaign is liable to backfire. After fifty years of televised schlock, Americans are fed up, and they're tuning out in record numbers. After all -- and despite what ABC would have us believe -- nobody ever lay on their death bed wishing they had spent more time watching Geraldo Rivera or Rosie O'Donnell," said Labalme.

Human beings who spend between four and eight hours a day in a zombified state are just not getting all they can out of life.

Copyright 1997 by Ron Kaufman

posted 01-25-2002 03:53 PM            

By Patricia C. Crouch
http://www.rumormillnews.com/jefferson.htm

I am a lineal descendant of Thomas Jefferson, and as such I feel compelled to respond to the ongoing attempt to ruin his reputation and smear his memory in the public eye. A certain coalition of interests has made a concerted effort to foster the tale of a relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, a woman who was a slave on his estate at Monticello. These interests seem intent on ensconcing this tale firmly in the Pantheon of American Myths. Let’s have a look at the history of this lie.

The tale of Jefferson’s alleged dalliance with Sally Hemings has circulated for 200 years. It was first put forward by James Callender, a muckraking journalist who approached Jefferson after his election to the Presidency seeking a position as Postmaster of Richmond,VA. Jefferson declined to assist him, as he had no power to confer this position on anyone. Callender took exception to this rebuff, and began to publish lurid stories claiming that Jefferson had several children by a beautiful slave named Sally Hemings. It is said that her children all appeared to be of mixed race.

Jefferson refused to comment publicly on these calumnies, surely feeling it was beneath him to respond! These stories were not taken seriously at the time, and little attention was paid to them until Fawn Brodie’s book,”Jefferson, An Intimate History” was published in 1974. Again, the tide of interest surged and receded, and not much was heard about the Jefferson-Hemings controversy until the fall of 1998.

In November 1998, the influential British magazine “Nature” published an article about a DNA study that had been designed to determined whether there was any truth to the old tales about Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Misleadingly titled “ Jefferson Fathered Slave’s Last Child”, the article claimed that the “simplest and most probable explanations for our molecular findings are that Thomas Jefferson, rather than the Carr brothers ( Jefferson’s nephews and the traditional suspects within the family), was the father of Eston Hemings.” In reality, the study DID NOT PROVE that Thomas Jefferson was the guilty party, but rather that any of more than two dozen Jefferson males could have been the culprit. This fact was conveniently left out of the article, however, and parties with a variety of personal, political, and social agendas gleefully jumped in and proclaimed Jefferson a contemptible hypocrite and much worse. Some claimed that this was a long-term secret love affair that showed that Jefferson was “only human”. This notion was the fodder for a dreadful and ridiculous tv movie which aired on CBS a couple of years ago during February Sweeps.

...see the rest of this article at the link.

posted 01-27-2002 11:29 AM            

"I make my living off the Evening News
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry

Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry

Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em all around

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam
in her eye
It's interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry

You don't really need to find out what's going on
You don't really want to know just how far it's gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry

Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down

Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
Kick 'em when they're stiff
Kick 'em all around

Dirty little secrets
Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybody's pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry

We can do "The Innuendo"
We can dance and sing
When it's said and done we haven't told you a thing
We all know that Crap is King
Give us dirty laundry!

Dirty Laundry - Don Henley

posted 02-10-2002 09:55 AM            

ACTION ALERT:
ABC Omits U.S. From Human Rights Report

January 18, 2002

On its January 16 broadcast, ABC's World News Tonight aired this brief item about the annual report released that day by Human Rights Watch:

"The international human rights group Human Rights Watch has released its annual report, and it says that several countries are using the U.S.-led war against terrorism as a justification to ignore human rights. Human Rights Watch says that Russia, Egypt, Israel, China, Zimbabwe, Malaysia and Uzbekistan have all cracked down on domestic opponents in the name of terrorism."

That summary is close to what the group's press release stated (1/16/02): "The anti-terror campaign led by the United States is inspiring opportunistic attacks on civil liberties around the world, Human Rights Watch warned in its annual global survey released today."

But one country singled out for criticism by Human Rights Watch was conspicuously absent from ABC's report: the United States, whose anti-terrorism measures were described in the group's press release as "threatening long-held human rights principles."

Among Bush administration actions that were identified as demonstrating a "troubling disregard for well-established human rights safeguards" were "new laws permitting the indefinite detention of non-citizens, special military commissions to try suspected terrorists, the detention of over 1,000 people, and the abrogation of the confidentiality of attorney-client communications for certain detainees."

While ABC ignored this criticism of the U.S. in favor of pointing fingers at other countries, the rights report actually drew a connection between the erosion of human rights standards in the U.S. and overseas. As the London Guardian reported (1/17/02), "dictators 'need do nothing more than photocopy' measures introduced by the Bush administration, whose ability to criticise abuses in other countries was thus deeply compromised, said the New York-based Human Rights Watch in a devastating 660-page report."

ABC's exclusion of criticism of the U.S. did a disservice to its viewers. U.S. human rights problems are the ones that are most likely to affect them, and also those that they are most in a position to do something about.

ACTION: Please ask ABC to issue a correction to its original report about the Human Rights Watch Annual Report to reflect the group's criticisms of the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks of September 11.

CONTACT:
ABC's World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
Fax: 212-456-2795
PeterJennings@abcnews.com

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.

posted 02-10-2002 10:15 AM            

Feb. 7, 2002

American Journalism: A Class Act
By Norman Solomon

Like most people, American journalists are apt to look at the very rich with awe. Names like Bill Gates, George Soros and Warren Buffett have the ring of modern-day royalty -- high above the rest of us, and maybe even vaguely immortal.

The inclination to see wealth as a gauge of human worth goes back a long way. "They measure everything by the gold standard, men as well as mules," Joshua Speed observed during a visit to California in 1876. "You never hear of Mr. Smith as a good man, or Mr. Brown as an honest man, or Mr. Jones as a Christian, but Mr. S has twenty thousand million and so on. The more he has, the better he is -- and it matters not how he got it, so he has it."

Speed, who was a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, might not be any more upbeat in 2002. These days, in a society eager to condemn the Enron debacle, we might want to conclude that decent standards ultimately prevail. But media censure comes down hard on financial mismanagement, flagrant skullduggery and collapse -- not on zeal to keep maximizing profits and riches.

Unless they appear to be headed for prison, frontrunners in money-mania derbies are good bets to remain media heroes. For years, Enron's hard-driving leader Ken Lay was awesome. His acquisitions dazzled many reporters and media consumers.

Mere insatiable greed -- always pushing for more, more, more -- is unlikely to cause bad press. In fact, journalists often cite enthusiasm for boosting "net worth" as evidence of exemplary character. As long as they don't get busted for breaking major laws, the extremely rich are epitomes of media success stories.

Coronated as virtual geniuses at a frenzied pace during the dot-com boom, quite a few investors and executives were quickly "worth" hundreds of millions or even more. With mucho dollars attesting to their greatness, brilliant tacticians of the business world were profiled in countless splashy news reports.

Such profuse adulation of the rich exists side-by-side with occasional media trashing of individuals as overly piggish or personally flawed. A Newsweek cover story, headlined "Rhymes With Rich," raised eyebrows in August 1989 for its harsh treatment of hotel mogul Leona Helmsley. But -- far from faulting her for being a billionaire in a country with millions of destitute people -- the article took Helmsley to task for instances of personal unkindness. Her outsized class privileges went unchallenged.

The current Enron scandal has already touched on many important issues. But if the firm had kept scrupulous accounts instead of cooking the books, it might still be considered a model corporate citizen. After all, while Enron was riding high on Wall Street, national media coverage was generally favorable as the company gorged itself on electricity privatization -- heralded as "reform" and boosted by political influence-leasing from California to India.

In 1993, Enron wrangled an agreement with India's state government of Maharashtra for a 695-megawatt plant. "The Enron project was the first private power project in India," Arundhati Roy wrote in her book "Power Politics," published last year. Lots of cash lubricated the fix.

"Enron had made no secret of the fact that, in order to secure the deal, it had paid out millions of dollars to 'educate' the politicians and bureaucrats involved in the deal," Roy recalled. For India, the size of the scheme was unprecedented: "Experts who have studied the project have called it the most massive fraud in the country's history." The project's gross profits were set to exceed $12 billion.

Not that such massive gouging bothered U.S. media. On the contrary. For the journalistic mainstream, privatization -- whether in Western India or Northern California -- was beneficent. Ken Lay and the rest of Enron's smart guys were ahead of the curve. Visionary hotshots.

Reverence for the super-rich pervaded America's "newspaper of record" during the recent World Economic Forum events in Manhattan. Several dozen New York Times articles breathlessly described chic interactions among top investors, business executives and government officials. Much was made of their notable willingness to acknowledge that the world they endeavor to run has not been going too well. Moving toward more enlightened self-interest, they recognized that global social problems merit deep concern!

Meanwhile, the Times reported in a number of stories, thousands of protesters were in the streets, demanding economic justice and stuff like that. Those articles included snippets of quotes. And the Times liberally published photos of creative-looking puppets and posters carried by demonstrators.

Naturally, people who have fundamental problems with corporate agendas shouldn't expect much in-depth or sympathetic news coverage in U.S. mass media. So, major outlets told us little about upwards of 50,000 activists from around the planet who converged on Porto Alegre, Brazil, for the second annual World Social Forum. While the bash for global elites in New York received extensive ink, the meeting in Porto Alegre got short shrift. That's called a free press.

Postscript: In contrast to a year ago, when the New York Times was able to muster a grand total of one paragraph to cover the World Social Forum, this time around the paper actually printed three news articles about the gathering. But quantitative measures of coverage can obscure the matter of quality.

In this case, the Times accounts of the event appeared with ascending levels of disparagement. By the time that the paper got to its Feb. 7 wrap-up story, the world's second historic grassroots summit in Brazil was "more than anything a campaign stop for the country's coming presidential election." And in the end, the Times reported, "little of substance was accomplished."

As for the Washington Post, which published a substantive news story about the World Social Forum a year ago, its journalistic eyes were on Manhattan. The Post made only a couple of passing references to the 2002 World Social Forum -- a brief wire-service dispatch and a single sniping sentence under a New York dateline, reporting that in Porto Alegre a "world conference on progressive alternatives to global capitalism has drawn 14,000 delegates and thousands of hangers-on."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media."

*** Note to readers of "Media Beat": If you'd like to see Norman Solomon's syndicated column appear in a local daily newspaper, you can help-- by contacting the opinion-page editors of papers in your area and urging that they give the column a try. Editors can make arrangements by phoning Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles or by sending an email note to mediabeat@igc.org.