April 2006
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Media Lens: BBC News Website Editor Responds On Amnesty Coverage
25 April 2006 — Media Lens On April 21, we published a Rapid Response Media Alert: ‘Demonising Iran – BBC Distorts Amnesty International Press Release,’ (www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060421_demonising_iran.php). Yesterday, we received this response from Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website: Continue reading
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Mixed(up) Messages By William Bowles
The hysteria being generated around Iran’s alleged nuclear ‘ambitions’ (the media’s favourite newspeak word these days) serves several purposes; one, it conveniently diverts attention away from the situation in Iraq; two, it acts as a warning to any other country challenging US imperialism’s increasingly desperate bid for global domination and, it also serves to divert… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Demonising Iran – BBC Distorts Amnesty International Press Release
21 April 2006 — Media Lens In a recent speech at New York’s Columbia University, John Pilger commented: “We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the secret intelligence service. In what was called ‘Operation Mass Appeal‘, MI6 agents planted stories about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction – Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘You Could Kill Whoever You Wanted’
An ancient Roman aphorism made a crucial point: “The senators are good men, but the senate is a beast.” In the same way, no matter how deeply media corporations may be compromised by profit-orientation and links to establishment power, some journalists will always be willing to respond reasonably to criticism. Continue reading
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In the Clutches of Capital By William Bowles
19 April 2006 It strikes me that the citizens of the capitalist world are in so deep with the ‘life style’ that like all addicts it is virtually impossible for them to escape the clutches of capital. Once on the conveyor belt of consumption there is no turning back. Chief among the addictions is the Continue reading
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From the Cold War to the Long War – only the name has been changed to protect the guilty By William Bowles
This past 10 April the Guardian published an extremely misleading article that is worth addressing for everything that it doesn’t say concerning US plans for the future and its so-called ‘long war’ against ‘international terrorism’ and it sums up the corporate media’s treatment of the continuation of the Cold War by another name. Continue reading
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States of denial – states of terror By William Bowles
For those of you who still bother to read/listen to/watch the mainstream news, you might be forgiven for thinking that the events of the past couple of decades have been proof of the overwhelming success/superiority of ‘Western civilisation’ in the battle with the heathen hordes hammering at the gates of Eden. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Iraq Body Count – A shame becoming shameful
10 April 2006 — Media Lens John Pilger And A Leading Epidemiologist Challenge IBC Noam Chomsky once observed: “If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you’re doing something wrong.” (www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/pubs/gater/spring95/apr27/chom.htm) One indication that the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project is doing something wrong is that it is deemed, not merely inoffensive, Continue reading
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Springtime in the Republic of Larry By Joe Bageant
10 April 2006 — Joe Bageant -Amid the comforts of empire, the citizens blithely bumble (Author’s warning! Rambling, pointless screed. But it contains some nice cuss words.) YOU SPEAK OF LIBERTY? OF AN ENLIGHTENED POLITY? YOU BEER-SOAKED KNUCKLE DRAGGERS AND PRECIOUS WET-LIPPED LIBERALS WOULDN’T KNOW LIBERTY FROM A CONGOLESE ASS-EATING TAPEWORM! YOU HAVEN’T GOT THE Continue reading
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Wakey-Wakey! By William Bowles
I’m tempted to say that the British have, with Tony Blair’s corporatist, security state, gotten no better than they deserve. After all, though deeply in debt, by and large they live in a kind of comfort zone albeit one that insulates them from the realities of a world gone totally insane. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Cartoon Time – Channel 4 Smears Chavez
5 April, 2006 — Media Lens On March 27, Channel 4 News included a report by Washington Correspondent Jonathan Rugman: ‘Hugo to go?’ (www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=2046) Rugman relentlessly smeared Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, in a piece described by John Pilger as “one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen”. (Email to Channel Continue reading
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Breaking News – UK Govt hurls BBC into alternate universe! By William Bowles
Then it was back to Downing Street, no doubt to plan how to sell us Phase II of the PNAC, taking out Iran and pushing the ‘final’ frontier further Eastward. Not that you’d know it from BBC ‘news’ reports as it seems that the BBC was reporting from what appears to be an almost identical… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 