The Times
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Media Lens: Fallujah, Iraq 2004 – Misrata, Libya 2011
Our point – an obvious one, we would hope – is not at all to suggest that we support Gaddafi’s tyranny or his atrocities. Our point is that, time and again, our ostensibly independent mass media fall into line when the state declares war. When the official enemy attacks civilians our media howl with righteous… Continue reading
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FT journalist accuses press warmongers
A leading Financial Times journalist accused the British media today of ‘buttering up’ the population to support the war on Libya. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Yemen’s Useful Tyranny – The Forgotten History of Britain’s ‘Dirty War’: Part 1
All revolutions are not equal. While Libya is deemed worthy of the West’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ – express delivery by B-2 bomber, F-15 fighter and cruise missile – protesters elsewhere have been denied such Western largesse. In response to the atrocities in Yemen, for example, Obama has sent mere words. The reason, as one astute commentator… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Collateral Damage – WikiLeaks In The Crosshairs
Speech that incites violence against individuals at home is unacceptable. Speech that incites mass death and destruction against entire nations is met with indifference, and/or high office and awards! Continue reading
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Media Lens: Wikileaks – The smear and the denial – Part 1
The rising level of dissent really is wonderful news. It is a sign that a public empowered by the internet is beginning to seriously challenge the propaganda, lies and smears of the “responsible” media that make mass killing possible. Life will never be the same again – the Burnses, Baronets and Rifkinds +are+ going to… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: MCCHRYSTAL – DEATH SQUAD POSTER BOY
In May 2009, Petras sampled from McChrystal’s CV. The general had played a central role in directing units involved in “extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions”. He was “the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building”. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: BROTHERS-IN-ARMS: CAPITALISM AND CORPORATE JOURNALISM
An essential role of corporate journalism is to shore up public confidence in an unjust, crisis-riven financial and economic system. Although plenty of gloom and doom is permitted, especially in the face of obvious crisis, the legitimacy of the system is rarely questioned. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: HEADSHOT – PROPAGANDA, STATE RELIGION AND THE ATTACK ON THE GAZA PEACE FLOTILLA – PART 2
As discussed in Part 1, media coverage of the non-violent Iranian capture of 15 British sailors (in Iranian waters) focused on the humiliating failure of the sailors to open fire in self-defence. Journalists took a very different view of the May 31 Israeli attack on the ship Mavi Marmara carrying human rights activists and supplies… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: HEADSHOT – PROPAGANDA, STATE RELIGION AND THE ATTACK ON THE GAZA PEACE FLOTILLA – PART 1
The public, in a sense, does not receive news – it receives the +same+ event repeated over and over again. The same security forces are always taking regrettable but necessary action against terrorists and militants. The public no longer sees real, changing, complex events; it sees the same frozen, benevolent image of the world. As… Continue reading
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The Gaza Flotilla and Israel’s Many, Many Rights By Charles Glass
Even if no international law, and certainly no Law of the Sea, actually permits armed soldiers to board unarmed merchant ships in international waters, it is good that Gelb had the guts to say there’s one. Israel can rely as well on Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor who years ago proposed that Israel destroy Palestinian… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: VICTORY FOR THE OVERLORDS – OBAMA’S HEALTHCARE REFORM
In November 2008, the historic importance of Barack Obama’s presidential victory was a relentless theme across the media spectrum. Even the pretence of a mainstream commitment to balanced reporting vanished from sight in deference to the self-evident Truth. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: HAITI – THE BROKEN WING
In our search of the Lexis Nexis media database (February 3) we checked for articles containing the word ‘Haiti’ over the last month. This gave 2,256 results (some online press articles are not captured by Lexis Nexis). Our search for articles containing ‘Aristide’ gave 47 results. The words ‘Haiti’ and ‘Voodoo’ gave 53 results. The… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: NUCLEAR DECEIT – THE TIMES AND IRAN
On December 14, The Times announced that it had obtained documents about Iran’s nuclear programme that revealed “a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator. This is the component of a nuclear weapon that triggers the explosion”. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: WERE AFGHAN CHILDREN EXECUTED BY US-LED FORCES? AND WHY AREN’T THE MEDIA INTERESTED?
American-led troops dragged Afghan children from their beds and shot them during a night raid on December 27 last year, leaving ten people dead. Afghan government investigators said that eight of the dead were schoolchildren, and that some of them had been handcuffed before being killed. Kabul-based Times correspondent Jerome Starkey reported the shocking accusations… Continue reading
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Media Lens Alert: Chilcot Inquiry – the establishment goes to work – part 2
The Iraqi “threat” was a fantasy invented by the immensely powerful, nuclear-armed bullies of the West. This is why former British ambassador to Washington, Christopher Meyer, was able to observe last month that prior to the attacks on September 11, 2001, Iraq was merely “a grumbling appendix”. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: CHILCOT INQUIRY – THE ESTABLISHMENT GOES TO WORK – PART 1
The use of military and economic force to control and exploit the world is non-negotiable for these interests. We are free to vote for the Labour party to attack ‘threatening’, but in fact defenceless, Third World countries, or we can vote for the Conservative party to do the same. We can buy the Guardian that… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: DANCING ON A MASS GRAVE – OLIVER KAMM OF THE TIMES SMEARS MEDIA LENS
One of our most relentless critics is Oliver Kamm, leader writer and blogger at The Times. Kamm joined the paper in 2008 having been an investment banker and co-founder of a hedge fund. In a 2006 blog, Kamm described us as “a shrill group of malcontents”, an “aggressively simple-minded lobby” guilty of “unprofessional and often… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Guardian, Climate And Advertising – An Open Email To George Monbiot
Why do you, George Monbiot (and others at the Guardian) not simply challenge the false picture of the world generated by the advertisers in your newspaper? This avoids the problem, which you deem “inescapable”, of running a newspaper without advertising. Why do you not write articles exposing named campaigns by named advertisers that appear in… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: CARTOON KOREA – FILTERED TO FIT: How The Media Keep Us Angry, Ignorant And Afraid
The message being delivered is that North Korea is of the James Bond school of cackling, malevolent villains. This is signalled through unsubtle trigger words whose true meaning is hidden but understood Continue reading
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Media Lens 18 May, 2009: Beholden To The Big Powers: Israel, Gaza And The UN
For the corporate media, then, there is no need for forensic analysis of this latest cynical sidelining of the UN, a body set up to promote world peace after all. There has been no rottweiler unearthing of this UN capitulation which, once again, effectively covers up major atrocities committed by Israel with heavy backing from… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 