The Cellar - How corrupt the media?

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- - How corrupt the media? (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=3968)

Quote:

the War Between the States

      Oh yeah, the War of Northern Aggression. The US's war of conquest. After all, you had two countries, one took over the other. Sounds like conquest to me.
      There, that should stir the pot a bit... Did I say that outloud?

Further evidence of weather-related media hysteria...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...n_re_us/isabel

Said it before, and I'll say it again - the South ever rises again, I'm carving out my own little fiefdom, not too sure where yet.

Hey, show of hands, who wants to help me out? Come on, a land of our own, with a government of the geek, by the geek, and for the geek. And should it/we ever perish from the Earth, it's because we've taken the Earth with us. Who's with me?!

      Are you kidding? How many of the last several Presidents have been southerners? The south already rose and took over. Mostly 'cause yanks like Syc are boring. Not that the south is proud of our politicians or anything. But hey, who is?

But the Prez is just a whipping boy for the press and congress. We all know the Stonecutters are really running things.
STONE CUTTERS SONG
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Who robs the cave fish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscars night?
We do! We do!
:rolleyes:

Oh Bruce ... :(

You had to go and tell, didn't you.

I'll certainly miss you, after your mysterious accident which leaves you a drooling hulk whose best friend is a green bean ... I'll visit your bedside and read you Chaucer for as long as they leave your feeding tube installed ...

Me? Boring?

Yeah, you're high.

Novak/Wilson Story

Let me see if I have the broader points of this story straight.

1. Former Ambassador Wilson makes noise about Bush exaggerating Iraq WMD capabilities.

2. A reporter, Robert Novak, decides to run a story on July 14, 2003, regarding Amb. Wilson's involvement in the "exaggeration" process, and decides to divulge the name of Wilson's wife, a "covered" CIA agent

3. Turns out 2 senior officials at the Bush Administration were happy to divulge this information not only to Novak, but to anywhere from 2 to 5 more induhviduals.

Now, my question is this: Was it ethical for Novak to publish the information? Should he now divulge the sources of the leak?

I've read the article (linked above). I can find no need to include the name of the Ambassador's wife in the article. It seems to be extraneous information to me.

Even Novak, in his recent article on CNN.com, states "I had thought I never again would write about retired diplomat Joseph Wilson's CIA-employee wife". If she was so insignificant, why include her at all?

I placed this in this thread, because it is obvious that Mr. Novak could give a shit less about Ms. Plame and her safety/well being/livelyhood, and more about his irrelevant reporting, which to me is worse than corruption.

3 other journalists were given her name, and declined to report it. Only Novak did. He states:

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He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered.

OK, let's review.

...exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad....

He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife...would be endangered.

Let's think about it. CIA agent. Leakage would cause difficulties. You think it MIGHT..even remotely...cause a problem for her, her contacts, her front, or ANY other aspect of her position? What gave him the right to compromise ANY part of her job?

He says, "To protect my own integrity and credibility..."

Yeah. Too late.

Quote:

Originally posted by Undertoad on 16 September 2003
Let me take that a step further. It's the opinion of 99% of the media that there ARE no WMDs. Most of the outlets I watch have made that decision at a very high level somewhere and have spent time pushing that as fact. CNN was absolutely relentless for two weeks in the beginning of the summer. Only one newspaper bothered to publish the documents that were found suggesting that the al Qaeda connection could be real, and that newspaper is in the UK.

Now regardless of all of that, there are a few people in the world who know about the actual WMD situation and the actual al Qaeda connection, and none of those people work in the media.

And now we know those "few people" were political hacks working for the administration. Scientific fact after fact was distorted to prove the administration's lies. Why is it that the press got it all right, and yet some still believed the administration's lies about WMD? To believe a lying administration, the press was described as corrupt!

Having been part of too many lies too many times, insiders - little people who really do the work and know the truth - are coming forth. Not just member of the Joint Chiefs or White House officials. Many are leaking reality to the press from every part of this administration. Many doing so discretely because we know this administration will even out a CIA agent - a crime regarded so serious as to be considered treasoness - to take revenge on purveyors of truth.

These so many scientific distortions have even disturbed the IEEE. This article includes a picture of the highly propagandised Saddam's aluminum tubes with this description:

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This photograph of high-grade aluminum tubes was used by Secretary of State Colin Powell in an address to the United Nations to support his argument that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program. It turns out that government scientists had disputed that claim, with support from Powell's own intelligence office.

So why were lies put forth by the George Jr administration?

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from IEEE Spectrum of April 2004 Bush Administration's "Science" is Under Fire
Whether or not one chooses to see irregularities, and whether one regards UCS [Union of Concerned Scientists] as an organization expressing merely the opinion of some scientists, the incidents documented in the report are indisputably disturbing and serious, bearing as they do on issues of the very highest policy import. In climate science, for example, the administration asked the US National Academy of Sciences to review work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gobal organization of scientists that meets regularly to reach scientific consensus on global warming. Yet, after the academy's review reaffirmed the opinion that human activity was playing a role in climate change - and did so with support from major scientific organizations, such as the American Geophysical Union, in Washington DC - the US government excised that conclusion from offical reports and statements of policy. [if done in other countries, we criticize censorship of free press]

In September of 2002 and again in June 2003, the US Environmental Protection Agency removed entire sections of reports rather than modifying language along lines the administration wanted. An internal EPA memo of 29 April 2003 is reproduced in an appendix to the UCS report; in it, the author tells the head of EPA that it might be advisable to delete the climate report section of the June environmental report rather than risk a confrontation with the White House, which the EPA inevitably would lose.

In short, politics (not facts) are the source of administration science. Heaven forbid should we learn science that contradicts The Vulcans. Do they follow the facts to reach a conclusion OR do they make conclusions based only upon a political agenda? Even the IEEE writes about science distorted by a political agenda. Best to call it what it is - a lying president.

IEEE Spectrum goes on to discuss the lies about those aluminum tubes. Then says this:

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Gregory Thielmann, a retired US Foreign Service officer who headed State Department intelligence unit, confirms the accuracy of the UCS report. "Senior officials in the US government misrepresented the evidence on the alunimum tubes", he told Spectrum, and ignored a growing consensus within the US intelligence that the tubes were not suitable for centrifuges. Further, Powell misrepresented technical arguments in his UN report, ignoring new evidence.

Yes, it turned out Powell was... mistaken.

I hear the centrifuges in Libya were real, what do you hear?

Quote:

Originally posted by Undertoad
Yes, it turned out Powell was... mistaken.

I hear the centrifuges in Libya were real, what do you hear?

Centrifuges in Libya were real. Khadaffi gave them to the US. Don't know if they are yet in the US. More interesting is where the centrifuges come from. Not from the Axis of Evil. They come from a close American ally - Pakistan.

There is much to worry about when it comes to 'dangerous' situations. Is it just an accident that more than one-half the world's plutonium is in Japan? One must remember that threats can arise from anywhere. According to the doctrine of pre-emption, we should attack Japan? Of course not. The doctrine is fundamentally flawed. But 'dangerous' situations is why, more than ever, we need the UN.

Threats are exposed by facts - not from a list of evil. Facts do not justify the Axis of Evil speech. Those facts justified an important mission by Carter to N Korea - and why the Russians were so actively helping CIA to monitor N Korea. Facts even say that Libya had been slowly trying to move back into the world of responsible nations over the last five years - which is why they gave up those centrifuges and its provider as proof of their desire to change.

Why is N Korea on the list whereas Libya and Pakistan were not? When the Axis of Evil speech was given, we had already known about these other two countries - and about those centrifuges. So what facts were used to create an Axis of Evil list? Were they mistaken or did the Vulcans already have a pre-ordained agenda?

The French have a shitload of nuke power plants, they should be on the list as well.;) Do we (anybody) really know how much plutonium there is?