Press Releases & PPR
PPR: periodic press release. We will post here on this page a periodic written article which is not one of the updated press releases above; when you click on either of those buttons there will be different press releases in the documents provided, Ed.
Lying on Air
America to Support the War
Al Franken
is a Big Fat Phony
JOHN WALSH, CounterPunch
May 4, 2005
Cambridge, Mass.
Al Franken is a shrewd guy, which is why he can write some good comedy. He is also something of a student of the lie, having written a book, using considerable student slave labor, entitled "Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." That book followed another, "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot," in which he debunks the stuff that Rush "pulls out of his butt," as Franken puts it. So Franken certainly knows that one of the most insidious forms of prevarication is lying by omission. And on the subject of rapid and total withdrawal from Iraq, that is precisely what Franken and most of the rest of Air America Radio do day in and day out omit any mention of the topic. Their attitude to grass roots opposition to the war is the same - bury it. And compared to Franken's favorite topics, that is the ones sanctioned by the Democratic establishment, for example, the corrupt practices of Tom DeLay, the war in Iraq which is laying waste an entire country and claiming tens of thousands of lives, takes a back seat far, far back.
Coverage of Iraq is largely confined to the corruption of Halliburton and the general idea that whatever has gone wrong there is the fault of George W. Bush and the Republicans. That the war was a "mistake" is laid at the feet of Bush, with no mention of the Democrats' role in voting for it, including J. Kerry and H. Clinton. "Incompetence" over the waging of the war is a frequent complaint as though it would be better for an "unjust and unnecessary war," in the words of Jimmy Carter, to be waged more competently. (Would that Hitler had been a little more competent!) At one point last December at the time of his last visit to "the troops," Franken exclaimed that he "did not know what to do" about Iraq. Several weeks ago Franken was in fine fettle over the first anniversary of his Air America program to which considerable time was devoted; but it was also about the time of the second anniversary of the war's beginning. The numerous anti-war demonstrations at that time received not a word of coverage
Franken himself is full of praise for "the troops." He does not say that these troops are being used as cannon fodder in a criminal war simply that they are doing "a great job." There is no systematic tracking of either U.S. or Iraqi casualties. Each week the conservative, John McLaughlin, on his PBS program tracks the Iraqis killed and the Americans killed and wounded in Iraq. No such segment exists on Franken's program - nor on any other Air American Radio program as far as I know. It speaks volumes that the conservative McLaughlin provides a more biting critque of the war than Franken and his cronies can muster.
Adversaries of the war who call for immediate and total withdrawal, like Ralph Nader or Michael Moore, are not to be found on the Franken frequency. Surprisingly, a few days back Franken had as a guest Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, and a proponent of withdrawal from Iraq. Franken did not seem to know much about him. As Khalidi broached the subject of withdrawal form Iraq, Franken's co-host, Katherine Lanpher, interrupted with the observation that American troops might need to stay in Iraq "to make that part of the world safe for democracy." Ever on his toes, Franken changed the subject, a break ensued, and the subject was dropped. There was no further mention of withdrawal. Even after Ted Kennedy proposed immediate and prompt withdrawal, Democratic stalwart Franken did not take up this call. Like the rest of the Democratic establishment, he lent no support to Kennedy who has now fallen silent on the topic.
Franken reached a nadir of sorts with the appearance on his show of Democratic Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher of the House Armed Services Committee who is proposing legislation to expand the military by 36,000 troops. She has argued in a press release: "Iraq is a two-year engagement that could go on for at least five to seven years." So her solution is to scare up more cannon fodder for Iraq. Franken has a son in college and a daughter just out of school whom he mentions often. Do you suppose he will allow them to be among the 36,000 troops that his guest Tauscher wants to mint? The next logical step for Franken is to turn recruiter for the military. (He carries no mention of the student campaigns to get army recruits out of the high school and off the campus.)
And as with Franken, so with most of the rest of Air America Radio. When I called Randi Rhodes (Air America afternoons) and managed to bring up the question of withdrawal she went ballistic, yelling that, now that "we" were there, "we" could not simply leave. She then shouted that I was a "creep," and off the air I went. I called Sam Seder and Janeane Garafalo (Air America evenings), and the screener suggested that Sam "probably did not want to discuss withdrawal." But I got on anyway after telling the screener that he was serving as a censor, and I asked Sam and Janeane why they did not discuss the withdrawal option. They went berserk, accusing me of not listening "enough," and off the air I went amidst their shouting. There are some exceptions to the pro-war stance on Air America or I should say there were. Liz Winstead, Rachel Maddow and Chuck D. used to have the mid-morning show where there was some discussion of withdrawal. Liz, who is a talented comedian and co-creator of the Daily Show, disappeared mysteriously without explanation. Maddow with co-host Chuck D, lasted a bit longer. One day Maddow ran a segment stating that withdrawal from Iraq should be THE main point of discussion on the left. It was clear that she favored withdrawal in opposition to her guest, the strange and devious Paul Rieckhoff of Operation "Truth," who also calls for "staying the course." (She also challenged Ed Rendell, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, for supporting an anti-choice candidate to run against Rick Santorum for Senate, despite the existence of a pro-choice majority in Pennsylvania. Embarrassed and befuddled, Rendell said on air he was put up to this by Senate leaders, including H. Clinton and Charles Schumer.) Now Chuck D has also disappeared, and Maddow has gone quietly into the night, quite literally, with a one-hour show at 5 am. The final song on her last mid-morning show was: "What would you give in exchange for your soul"?
Most of Air America Radio is only marginally different from Franken who is little more than a shill for the Democratic Party establishment. Franken faithfully parrots its pro-war line. Fundamentally. he is just like Rush who is a Republican partisan, not a principled conservative. Franken is simply a Democratic partisan, a pitiful hack at heart. A progressive he is not. And disappointingly, Air America has turned out to be little more than a mouthpiece for the DNC and one more way to divert the anti-war movement to DNC-approved "issues" like DeLay, Bolton and the other trivia that are like so many straws in the wind compared to the carnage in Iraq.
At its heart the war on Iraq is the most carefully and ingeniously orchestrated propaganda effort on record. In this Franken and his ilk play a key role, going just far enough to maintain credibility among the "liberals" they must reach, while diverting attention from the criminal nature of the war and the option of ending it.
Air America takes its name from an air company in Southeast Asia at the time of the Vietnam war which turned out to be a CIA asset, a company masquerading as a simple commercial airline. The folks at Air America Radio were supposed to be kidding when they chose their name, but perhaps they were, in Franken's phrase, "kidding on the square."
John
Walsh who has listened to Air America for all too many hours on daily commutes
and to its "best" on weekends can be reached at bioscimd@yahoo.com
PRESS RELEASE Oct. 01,
2003
Iraq’s Oil Industry
Craig B Hulet?
The United States of America, having invaded Iraq, is faced with a political quagmire and a commercial opportunity. Recent efforts to enroll the United Nations to help pay the costs of the occupation and “reconstruction” are disingenuous. Everything except for the oil industry is already up for grabs at fire sale prices. It’s the proposed WTO GATS revision and NAFTA all rolled into one except that US pro-consul Bremer and his unelected Council have a veto over every sale. The veto ensures Iraq will be sold mainly to US firms, giving US permanent economic control of the country whatever the UN or EU want, think or say. Money raised from the sales will go to offset US occupation costs, ostensibly to pay for “reconstruction” for which the US and UK are fully liable under international conventions. Iraq’s main industry, OIL, which used to account for the bulk of the country’s foreign income, is not being sold. This has little if anything to do with the security of the oil infrastructure as news reports have claimed.
Energy is critical to maintaining US power. So one US strategy is to control the
Iraq oil supply indefinitely. A pliant Iraq council/government is easier to manage
than private profit seeking multinational oil companies. Indirect US control of
Iraqi oil is also a foil for Saudi Arabia and OPEC. Enough oil will be pumped
from Iraq in the coming years to keep oil prices within the US comfort zone. That
way, the US will be able to manage world oil prices in its own interest rather
than those of the Iraqi people. There is, however, a second more sinister financial
strategy. Much of Iraq’s reconstruction will be financed from “AID”,
in the form of loans rather than from grants. Since the “AID” will be
coming from outside Iraq, the country will be put into long term debt. JP Morgan
has already been appointed to “manage” Iraq’s banking system. There
will be no truly independent national banks or banking, and no Islamic banking
system. Western foreign bankers will run Iraq’s banking system for western
foreign interests.
Oil is the security for the loans, interest and reparations
the US is planning to extract from Iraq, completing the economic rape begun by
selling off its assets.
Iraqis will be paying many times over for the privilege of being invaded
and occupied by the US and UK. They will eventually pay for all the reconstruction,
and perhaps even for the costs of the war itself. On top of that they will pay
interest on the "AID" debt forever. The sales and AID therefore represent
reparations far more severe than those applied to Germany at the Treaty of Versailles
following World War I. Versailles led inexorably to World War II. The German reparations
were so draconian as to be utterly urepayable.
If the US succeeds in its plan (as is likely) Iraq will remain impoverished
for as long as the US remains the dominant power in the region. On past experience,
this is a recipe for instability and war, not peace. Most frightening of all is
the thought that that might just be the way the Bush administration wants it to
be.
The Four Ponies of Perdition: How Media Concentration Bans Local Experts
Couch
potatoes throughout the land see plenty wrong in
concentrating the power to
produce the content we see and hear in the
same hands that transmit those
broadcasts.
This is especially true when the same
Four Horsemen own many
satellite and
cable providers and already
influence key sites on the
Internet.
--William Safire
By Craig B Hulet? August 3, 2003
In a recent commentary William Safire wrote that “On the domestic front, President Bush is backing into a buzz saw. The sleeper issue is media giantism. People are beginning to grasp and resent the attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to allow the Four Horsemen of Big Media - Viacom (CBS, UPN), Disney (ABC), Murdoch's News Corporation (Fox) and G.E. (NBC) - to gobble up every independent station in sight.”
It couldn’t be more apt for Safire to use the Four Horsemen as metaphor; drawing on an apocalyptic one makes it even more so. What does Corporatism desire within its ideological system? to achieve and protect Empire the media outlets must be controlled as much as possible by the power elite (to use a socio/cultural term coined by C. Wright Mills in the fifties). That an elite exist is never discussed openly in the mainstream media, even when a self-appointed one like Paul Wolfowitz refers to himself and his small circle of friends as “a Cabal,” while true, only he can smugly state it as such. If you or I were to state it we are automatically smeared as a conspiracy theorist; which is also a euphemism for anti-Semite. One such elitist is Secretary of State Colin Powell’s son Michael Powell, who as head of the FCC which made the recent ruling Safire discussed, has stated that the further media concentration in the hands of the four horsemen would “guarrantee localism, diversity, competition and fairness.”(?) To allow one media giant to own up to 45 percent of a market, owing newspapers, television stations , cable and radio stations, not to mention their clout on the Internet, is going to dispense diversity? Create competition? Economics 101 dispels these myths too easily.
What we are already seeing is the media caving in to syndication programming; drive 100 miles in any direction, listen to ten different radio stations and you hear Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage until the hair on the nap of your neck gives warning that there are predators afoot. Should you stumble upon one of the local non-syndicated, or barely syndicated hosts in a market, they are discussing the importance of using caution at the tanning salon, whether biscuits and gravy cause arterial discomfort, and little Penny Pennpacker’s pet poodle was pounced upon by a panther prowling the park. That is to say, the local hosts are quietly quite systematically being forced into doing only local programming in any market, leaving the “important” issues of the day, like the warmongering of the Washington Cabal, to the likes of Sean Hannity! Hannity, who asks the question on what “authority” does Susan Sarandon speak out against the President, by what “expertise” does this rich actress have an opinion at all. Nobody thinks to ask by what “authority and expertise” does Hannity endorse the President’s every word and deed? Indeed? This very rich entertainer, and that is all Hannity, O’Reilly, Limbaugh and Savage are, “entertainers” just like Susan, the four ponies of perdition. They have little expertise in any area of importance with the obvious exception of self-aggrandizement, self-proclaimed self-importance and their own hifalutin air of superiority as corporate whores.
I could even do that if Susan couldn’t do it well enough. But some of us choose to actually be expert at some one thing or another. How does one gain the reputation as expert in some area? By being consistently correct, predictably proficient, by sticking one’s neck out and making statements that seem an awful lot like warnings. That is to say, by issuing a caveat consistently correct before the event runs its course, making the case before-hand, not commenting by rote what’s reported in the news. That is what, and this is all the four ponies do every day, rubber-stamping the White House press releases and shouting done anyone that disagrees.
But the four ponies are much needed to protect the Four Horsemen which every couch tater knows all-too-well. The four ponies will not interview any expert that disagrees with them, let alone disagrees with the corporate policies of empire. Indeed, the Four Horsemen are the sturdy limbs of empire as this has always been throughout the ages. The four ponies are the sorry steeds which carry the malignant message. The local ponies are put to pasture, or turned into groveling dogs, they too do not interview the nationally known expert who lives locally in the same state, or even town as his issues are now of little importance to “local programming.” the local dogs in other towns must do the same with the added ingredient that “he” isn’t a local expert, so he cannot be interviewed because, as the redneck Hannitys and the Hatfields would say “he ain’t from around here”! Diversity has already gone out the window with this trend. Should the FCC ruling stand, and Mr. Bush veto the bill from the House and Senate noted below, this trend will become irreversible.
Here is what the Senate Commerce Committee has done: reflecting the widespread worry, that the Four Horsemen will gobble-up everything in sight, Safire reported:
