Who Can You Believe? Some thoughts on the news industry

I happened to find a documentary on the topic of how the media is used by the official authorities to provide disinformation in support of government agendas.  The film is titled "The War You Don't See."  It is a John Pilger film.

Pilger jumps into this presentation with both feet naming names and places involved with providing official disinformation to the public.  You might wonder what official disinformation is.  Some may think such a phrase is an oxymoron. How could the official information be disinformation?

Pilger reveals the brains behind the mechanism of giving false information to the news outlets for distribution to the public consciousness.  He also shows how the government works hand in hand with the media outlets to combat truth in journalism by a preponderance of disinformation reported over and over again.  One very infamous incident is the WMD incident which was the stated reason to destroy Iraq was debunked by Scott Ritter who discovered the WMD's were non-existent.   

 

The disinformation provided by the Bush / Cheney policymakers
convinced an already terrorized American populace to kill baby kill and the same Americans a decade later were crying drill baby drill in the face of BP's criminal activity in the Gulf and the evidence of climate change bearing down on them.

Information is powerful, the only thing you can do to protect yourself is use you mind and refuse to be an unquestioning receptacle of information.  Here's a test, is the following statement true or false?   "It is not at all unlikely for three skyscrapers to fall at near free fall speed and disappear into a pile of powder on one day.  It happens all the time."

What was your answer?  Agnosticism will keep you from the lemming effect that is the goal of disinformation. The long history of leaders reveals that a fair number have not been able to be trusted.  I bet you can name a few.

An Open Letter to the Governor of Michigan From Michael Moore

As you are aware the activities of the government of Michigan have mismanaged the water quality of Flint Michigan.  To describe it in that way is to be kind.  They have produced a situation by their decisions which has left the people without safe water.  It did not need to happen except for those who decided not to keep it from happening. 

I was sent this by a friend  who felt it was his duty to take the bastards down.  I agree. Selling poison water to people who need a drink is just not cool. If it is not a crime I want to know why.

I encourage you to sign the petition and put these malefactors on notice.

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Subject: An Open Letter to Michigan's Governor Snyder (aka #ArrestGovSnyder) from Michael Moore, a resident of Traverse City, MI

I wrote a letter calling for the arrest of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder for poisoning the people of Flint. Read it here, sign the petition, and please share!

Dear Governor Snyder:

Thanks to you, sir, and the premeditated actions of your administrators, you have effectively poisoned, not just some, but apparently ALL of the children in my hometown of Flint, Michigan. 

And for that, you have to go to jail. 

To poison all the children in an historic American city is no small feat. Even international terrorist organizations haven't figured out yet how to do something on a magnitude like this.

But you did. Your staff and others knew that the water in the Flint River was poison -- but you decided that taking over the city and "cutting costs" to "balance the budget" was more important than the people's health (not to mention their democratic rights to elect their own leaders). So you cut off the clean, fresh glacial lake water of Lake Huron that the citizens of Flint (including myself) had been drinking for decades and, instead, made them drink water from the industrial cesspool we call the Flint River -- a body of "water" where toxins from a dozen General Motors and DuPont factories have been dumped for over a hundred years. And then you decided to put a chemical in this water to "clean" it -- which only ended up stripping the lead off of Flint's aging water pipes, placing that lead in the water and sending it straight into people's taps. Your callous -- and reckless (btw, "reckless" doesn't get you a pass; a reckless driver who kills a child, still goes to jail) -- decision to do this has now, as revealed by the city's top medical facility, caused "irreversible brain damage" in Flint's children, not to mention other bodily damage to all of Flint's adults. Here's how bad it is: Even GM won't let the auto parts they use in building cars touch the Flint water because that water "corrodes" them (link). This is a company that won't even fix an ignition switch after they've discovered it's already killed dozens of people. THAT's how bad the situation is. Even GM thinks you're the devil. 

Maybe you don't understand the science behind this. Lead, in water -- now, bear with me, this involves a science lesson and you belong to the anti-science party, the one that believes there's not a climate problem and that Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs 6,000 years ago. Lead is toxic to the human body. There's no way to fully eliminate it once it's in your system, and children are the most damaged by it.

By taking away the city's clean drinking water in order to "cut costs," and then switching the city's water supply to Flint River water, you have allowed massively unsafe levels of pollutants and lead into the water that travels in to everyone's home. Every Flint resident is trapped by this environmental nightmare which you, Governor, have created.

Like any real criminal, when you were confronted with the truth (by the EPA and other leading water experts across America), you denied what you did. Even worse, you decided to mock your accusers and their findings. As I said, I know you don't like to believe in a lot of science (after all, you used to run Gateway Computers, and that, really, is all anyone needs to know about you), but this time the science has caught up with you -- and this time, I hope, it's going to convict you.

The facts are all there, Mr. Snyder. Every agency involved in this scheme reported directly to you. The children of Flint didn't have a choice as to whether or not they were going to get to drink clean water. But soon it will be your turn to not have that choice about which water you'll be drinking. Because by this time next year, if there is an ounce of justice left in this land, the water you'll be drinking will be served to you from a tap inside Jackson Prison.

I am calling upon my fellow Michiganders -- and seekers of justice everywhere -- to petition U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, asking her to arrest you for corruption and assault (i.e., the physical assault you committed against the children of Flint when you knowingly poisoned them). 

Yesterday, the federal prosecutor in Flint, after many of us had called for months for this action, finally opened up an investigation into the matter (link). Now we need your arrest, prosecution and conviction.

And who will be cheering on that day when you are fitted with a bright orange jumpsuit? The poor and minority communities of Michigan who've endured your dictatorial firing of their mayors and school boards so you could place your business friends in charge of their mostly-black cities. They know you never would have done this to a wealthy white suburb

I welcome all to look at the appalling facts of this case, which have been reported brilliantly here, here, and especially here by the great Rachel Maddow. Thank you, Rachel, for caring so deeply when the rest of the national television media didn't. 

I'm asking everyone who agrees with me to sign on to this petition and call for your arrest, Governor Snyder. You are not allowed to run amok in my hometown like you have done. The children whom you have poisoned have to endure a life of pain and lower IQ's from your actions. You have destroyed a generation of children -- and for that, you must pay.

It is time for you to go to prison. Out of mercy, I'll ask that you have in your cell your own personal Gateway computer.

Sincerely,Michael Moore
Flint native
Michigan resident and voter

P.S. For everyone wanting to sign on to this petition calling for the IMMEDIATE resignation of Governor Snyder AND for the FBI to arrest him, please sign the petition petition here: http://michaelmoore.com/ArrestGovSnyder

Here It Is, 2016

Well here it is 2016 already. 

Seems like only yesterday it was 1967.  

Not much has changed. 

America was involved in its longest war at that time

and today America is now in another longer and apparently endless war.

Not much has changed,

just the names and places.

The years of the Obama Administration have been an endless oscillation of the Administration trying to accomplish some decent domestic policy and having to fight an irrational mob of mindless Republican and Tea Party robots whose pockets are filled with dark money which spreads into a 24 / 7 miasma of political propaganda.  I more or less watched the struggle with bafflement which in time turned to amusement as people as poor as myself and with more need than me agreed to vote against government sponsored Obamacare.  What madness can make people choose the option which makes it harder on themselves?  It seems that the answer in this instance is political ideology.  What is so unusual about this phenomenon is that while people may approve legislation that harms others, they rarely put their political energies into harming themselves and their families. But on the issue of healthcare they did. Crazy isn’t it?

And then we are forced to elect another President and I have a few words short and to the point.

As far as Republicans and Democrats go the only one I would feel comfortable with is Bernie Sanders.  His campaign is being sandbagged by lack of cooperation by the frigging Democrats themselves and the media.  Elections have become a farce.  The process of electing a major world leader in the U.S. is more like a traveling minstrel show designed to amuse children.  In the end what the dark money says is what happens

I’d like to digress some and give my impression of a few candidates.

1.  Trump. He reminds me of Benito Mussolini and his followers remind me of Mussolini’s followers.  I view this as a negative feature of the Trump campaign; his followers view it as positive.
2. Carson.  Not suited for the job.  He reminds me of Buckwheat of the Little Rascals movie series.
3. Clinton.  Not to be trusted under any circumstances. That’s it, that’s how I feel about a Clinton candidacy and Presidency.
4. Sanders is the only one among the major candidates who knows what the problem is and is prepared to do what is necessary to solve it. So he is not given appropriate media coverage.

Today, as I write the President has spoken out one more time about how violent a place American society has become and focusing on the use of guns in producing the violence.  The meme of the day is background checks at all points of the sale of firearms.  I’m okay with that as far as a commercial enterprise goes or sales to strangers on the internet. A buddy should be able to sell a gun to a buddy. It is in the interest of society to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and people who are certifiably mentally unfit to have a weapon.  Much caution should be used when implementing the last caveat.

There was one aspect of violence in need of abatement which the President did not mention.  That is police violence.  He made no mention of disarming the police or curtailing police violence.  If those who are employed to supervise our activities are allowed to have firearms I suggest they must undergo intense psychological profiling to see if they can be trusted. 

This may raise the hackles of some but the statistics indicate that the families in which a police officer lives are significantly more likely to be the object of domestic abuse.  If this is indeed the case then a thorough psychological profiling of someone who is entrusted with authority is certainly appropriate. Allowing persons who are abusive to their family to carry guns and meet the public on the basis of an ‘authority’ granted by the government is a dangerous mix.  So what I’m saying is that if mentally unfit persons can be barred from possessing firearms that must also apply to the police.  And because they are entrusted with ‘authority’ and a weapon they should logically be examined with greater scrutiny to see if they are fit to wield authority in a society like ours which values liberty and life.  For an overview of the problem of domestic violence in the families of police officer The National Center For Women & Policing has provided statistics which support my previous statements.

So we enter the first week of the year 2016 with the 21^st century version of a range war and an embattled group of patriots suffering through their personal Valley Forge of the long Oregon winter.  The Feds turned off the power LOL.  This is turning into a good old fashioned siege.  Get some popcorn, maybe start a pool on how this turns out and when or if the 'Frigid Few' surrender.

Sit back and enjoy the new year all you experience is brought to you in full cooperation with the Republican and Democratic committee to control the conversation and make the rules and generally pull the wool over everyone's eyes.