Pentagon Posts Propaganda Papers

   If this does not warrant a criminal investigation by our congress, then nothing does.

Cross-posted from AlterNet

Pentagon Releases Propaganda Documents -- Will the Media Pay Attention?

By John Stauber, PR Watch. Posted May 7, 2008.

With 8,000 pages of documents online for the world to see, will the networks continue their media blackout?

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated U.S. law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.

News of the Pentagon's online posting of the documents came from Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who notes that NSNS provided the New York Times "limited information about a military office early in the reporting process."

Here is the official Pentagon website with the 8,000 pages of documents, the most interesting and revealing of them previously secret and only available to the Pentagon and the New York Times:

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/

More than two weeks after the New York Times reported on the Penatgon's military analyst program to sell controversial policies such as the invasion of Iraq, the broadcast television news outlets implicated in the program are hoping to tough out the scandal by refusing to report it. Recently Media Matters of America (MMA) reported that, according to a search of the Nexis database, "the three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have still not mentioned the report at all."

The Pew Excellence in Journalism project has a chart showing that " there was virtually no mainstream media follow up to The Times' expose" with the only national TV coverage being the introduction segment and live debate featuring CMD's John Stauber on the PBS NewsHour.

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro and three dozen colleagues have sent a letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General calling for an investigation of this "propaganda campaign aimed at deliberately misleading the American public."

John Stauber is the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Technorati Tags: Pentagon,NSNS,US Mlitary,Bush administration,DoD

Republicans: It's Alright If You're White

  This is just a brief comment about the double standard which does exist in our country's battle for the White House. We all know that the Republicans and even Hillary Clinton have used the Reverend Wright story to smear Barack Obama and to question his character. This must be some white republican thing because you aren't hearing anything about John McCain and his endorsement from Hell-Raising, War-Mongering, Pastor John Hagee, who has some pretty nutty/radical views, even for a preacher.

   Anyway, let's take a quick look at the Republican's and their bigoted political party. Just a few facts Here from the NYT.

   The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

An all-white Congressional delegation doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern strategy in the Nixon era. No one knows this better than Mr. McCain, whose own adopted daughter of color was the subject of a vicious smear in his party’s South Carolina primary of 2000.

Technorati Tags: John McCain.Barack Obama,John Hagee,Christian,Republican,racism