Glenn on the drums beating for war with Iran

where did we hear all this nonsense before...? oh, yeah... i remember...

U.S. media takes the lead on Iran

Many have compared the coordinated propaganda campaign now being disseminated about The Iranian Threat to that which preceded the Iraq War, but there is one notable difference. Whereas the American media in 2002 followed the lead of the U.S. government in beating the war drums against Saddam, they now seem even more eager for war against Iran than the U.S. government itself, which actually appears somewhat reluctant. Consider this highly illustrative, one-minute report yesterday from the nightly broadcast of NBC News with Brian Williams, by the network’s Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim “Mik” Miklaszewski, which packs multiple misleading narratives into one short package:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross belong in a fear-mongering museum

I just saw this two-minute ABC News report from Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross that sinks to even lower depths than what I highlighted yesterday. It has to be seen to be believed. It’s a perfect museum exhibit for how empty-headed American media stars uncritically recite whatever they are told by government officials, exaggerate or fabricate bad acts by the designated Enemy du Jour while ignoring and suppressing the precipitating acts of America and its client states, and just generally do whatever they can to keep fear levels and war thirst as high as possible. This is nothing short of irresponsible propagandistic trash:

what a load of bollocks...

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RIP Tim Russert [UPDATE]

he was two years younger than i am...

more when it's available...

[UPDATE]

Tim Russert, the host of “Meet the Press,” and NBC’s Washington bureau chief, has died. He was 58.

Mr. Russert was a towering figure in American journalism and moderated several debates during the recent presidential primary season.

Tom Brokaw, the former anchor of NBC Nightly News, came on the air at 3:39 p.m. and reported that Mr. Russert had collapsed and died early this afternoon while at work. He had just returned from Italy with his family.

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Propaganda

from postmodern times...

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Here we go, ISP-initiated spying, just like Mettle said would happen

mettle has been scarce around these parts recently, but i simply couldn't read this without hearkening back to one of his posts from last july talking about this very thing... (because i think it's so highly relevant, i'm going to repost it below...)

For the last 15 years, Internet service providers have acted - to use an old cliche - as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet.

But I.S.P.’s may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop.

At a small panel discussion about digital piracy at NBC’s booth on the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and the telecom giant AT&T said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.

Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.

Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright.

“What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T.

from mettle, 31 july 2007...

Some tools for total surveillance are located on-site of telcos and ISPs, in that cozy Government/Corporate marriage. Other tools include OLAPs.

Types of tools coming online at present include "Deep packet inspection", an example of which is discussed here.

Much ballyhoo has been made of making particular digital pictures into crime. Those, as well as mp3 music files or other types of data files have identifiable "signatures", by means of "CRC", (cyclic redundancy check) and/or "checksum".

Much has been written already that the Vista operating system is Orwellian in nature. Now it is being reported that some anti virus companies may abandon scanning files for viruses and use "whitelisting" instead. Whitelisting will certify known files by their CRC or checksum. It is easy to see how that will fit into a police state.

The DoJ has already demanded records from major search engine companies. Apparently, only Google put up a substantial fight.

This article shows preliminary means to join the government grid.

For a peek ahead you can jump right to a look at the Global Justice Justice XML Data Model, or right ahead to see the National Information Exchange Model.

Of course, ultimately "users might need access to the global Centrix network, the Secret IP Router Network and the Non-classified IP Router Network to get all the information they require".

This report, among other topics, contemplates Information Sharing. (.pdf)

The pretexts for government to monitor all financial transactions seem similar to their need to know what library books people read and what Web sites they visit.

Starting with problems of a cashless society: government can cancel credit cards at a mere whim. And Government has been all over the alternate-forms-of-payment industry:

Consider E-gold and some of their tribulations.

The pretexts to monitor all electronic financial transactions are of course, framed in the emotional bugaboos of the day.

From comments on Press Esc:

'The Patriot Act is only temporary. It includes sunset provisions.' We all know what happened with that."

Similar legislation has already been shot down. (.pdf) (COPA was originally the basis for compelling the search engine records sharing compliance.)

So what else will Deep Packet Inspection look for? Consider this. (h/t slashdot)

just keep cranking out the ways the government can come after us...

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Lockheed Martin, CNN, and the promotion of war

from brasscheck tv...

Every now and then we win.

CNN - and in this pointed case Glenn Beck - likes to paint itself as a reliable, unbiased source of news.

For an "unbiased source" then do seem to have tremendous enthusiasm for promoting wars.

Could that have anything to do with the fact that Lockheed Martin pays its bills?

Media analyst Norman Solomon sucker punches professional jackass Glenn Beck with the facts. Watch Beck squirm.

What I wouldn't pay to hear the transmission from the control room to Beck's head phones as the news director - those nameless invisible creeps who control what we see on TV news - tries impotently to blunt Solomon's point.

This is probably the last time Norman Solomon will appear live on CNN, but I say it was worth it.

Watch it, enjoy it and pass it on.

The truth made it to TV...for a few minutes as least.

if indeed full disclosure was the order of the day, one of two things would happen... either we would find out the massive extent to which corporations influence what is passed to us as "news," OR it would be so totally embarrassing to the news outlets that we might actually start getting REAL news...

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The REAL benefit of having a Glenn Greenwald fighting for decent journalism

glenn's excerpt from chris colvin in glenn's salon column of today...

From NBC News writer Chris Colvin, writing on the NBC Nightly News blog:

Salon's Glenn Greenwald has engaged in a fairly brutal takedown of something TIME columnist Joe Klein wrote about Congressional Democrats' updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- which turned into a series of posts that culminated with Greenwald today demanding answers from Klein's editor. (And incidentally, raising the issue of a false story one of our competitors ran with back in 2001, which had a particularly nasty resonance in our newsroom -- and for which there was never an apology or any accountability.)

Believe me, I'm not pointing this out because it involves competitors. Browse around the archives of DailyHowler.com or MediaMatters.org if you want to see harsh criticism of us. The point is, journalists, particularly in Washington, aren't going to be able to repeat partisan spin that contains falsehoods as analysis without being called on it anymore. And as Greenwald notes, it's rather telling that the calling-out is coming from the blogosphere and not the actual Democrats who Klein misrepresented. Maybe that's why there is a blogosphere to begin with.

goddam right... if colvin is correct, and journalists "aren't going to be able to repeat partisan spin that contains falsehoods as analysis without being called on it anymore," that would be extremely good news, and, despite the respect i hold for media matters, the lion's share of credit is going to go to glenn for jumping into the ring and doing what's long been needed - a full-fledged, wwe take-down...

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The question that should have been asked four years ago

the answer is, "hell, yes," and it should have been asked of the entire bush administration and its congressional enablers...

"Has the vice-president gone too far?" asked NBC [Today Show, broadcast on June 25], adding that "the National Archives thinks so," because Cheney alone in the executive branch has refused to file required reports or permit inspections of his office's handling of classified material.

now, we're deep into the hole and nobody's stepping forward to help us climb out...

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