Day: November 22, 2007

Media Lens: INVASION – A COMPARISON OF SOVIET AND WESTERN MEDIA PERFORMANCE – PART 2 By Nikolai Lanine and Media Lens

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MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

November 22, 2007

Blaming ‘External Interference’

A striking feature of Soviet media performance on Afghanistan was its focus on “external interference” – primarily US in origin – and the role of this interference in fuelling the war.

In 1988, Pravda reported that Afghan president Najibula had criticised this “interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan”. (Pravda, February 9, 1988) The newspaper failed to mention that the Soviet Union was itself guilty of illegal external “interference”. Instead, journalists blamed the West for “pouring oil onto the fire of the Afghan conflict”. (Pravda, February 22, 1987) Ignoring the fact that much of the fighting in Afghanistan was in +response+ to the Soviet occupation, the media were also heavily critical of Iran and Pakistan.

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The nature of the beast by William Bowles

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22 November, 2007

Darling admits 25m records lost

Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing.

The Child Benefit data on them includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25m people.

Alistair Darling, the chancellor, urged people to monitor their bank accounts. — BBC News Website 20/11/07[1]

I get the occasional letter asking me why I do this? I mean it doesn’t generate an income worth counting, it consumes an awful lot of time, but then time is the only thing I actually own, hence how I use it is an issue partly of choice and partly because it’s very difficult for me to ignore what I know and feel about events and my fellow humans and the planet that we inhabit. As Engels said, “Freedom is the recognition of necessity,” so I freely chose to do this.

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