"Whose word are we going to take?"-Christiane Amanpour

Christiane Amanpour on Larry King -January 30, 2006.
But I think to the bigger point, why are we there? We're there because if we're not, whose word are we going to take for it? For instance, over the bombing in Pakistan, and for instance, over the constant atrocities in Iraq.
Are we going to take the Pentagon paid Lincoln Group who are paying positive stories to be written in the Iraqi press? Are we going to take what the administration tells us? Do you remember at the beginning of this war, Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, told us that these insurgents were just a bunch of dead enders who amounted to absolutely nothing.
Well, that was three years ago. You remember on your own show, not so long ago, the vice president of the United States said that the insurgency was in its death throes, in its last throes.
Well, we're there to report what's actually going on and we pay a heavy price for trying to get to the truth. And the truth is what our business is all about. And that's why we're out there, despite the enormous, enormous personal cost to us, to our families, and to our networks.

Disinformation: Rumsfeld's Information Operations Roadmap

From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war. The Information Operations Roadmap. A secret Pentagon "roadmap" on war propaganda, personally approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not "targeted," any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and posted on the web Jan.26,2006, the 74-page "Information Operations Roadmap" admits that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa," but argues that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices."

Steven Milloy of Fox News belittled science and was paid by Philip Morris

The New Republic article, "Pundit for Hire," reports Steven Milloy,of FoxNews. has taken money from Philip Morris. On March 9, 2001, he wrote a column "secondhand smokescreen" attacking a study by Stephen Hecht, who found that women living with smokers had higher levels of chemicals associated with risk of lung cancer. "If spin were science, Hecht would win a Nobel Prize," Milloy wrote. For good measure, he heaped scorn on a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency report that also linked health risks and secondhand smoke. All the while, he was on the payroll of big tobacco.
Reminds me of Hudson Institute Fellow Michael Fumento in the pay of Monsanto. Reminds me of Cato Institute Fellow, Doug Bandow, who told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles.

COST OF WAR IN IRAQ

COST OF WAR in IRAQ by Linda Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz. January, 2006.
...while military spending has contributed to economic growth, that growth would have been greater if the outlays had gone instead to highways, schools, civilian research and other more productive investment.
"We did not have to fight this war, and we did not have to go to war when we did," Mr. Stiglitz said. "We could have waited until we had more safe body armor and we chose not to wait."
It is the eve of the day we celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King day. It is time to recall his wisdom about non-violence.

existence of a library is an assertion

An assertion/ "The existence of a library is an assertion, a proposition nailed like Luther's to the door of time."--
Archibald MacLeish

Agribusiness Giant Monsanto Pays Hudson Fellow

Michael Fumento's failure to disclose payments to him in 1999 from the agribusiness giant have now caused Scripps Howard to sever its ties to him. Fumento, is a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute.Fumento's column will no longer be distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.Other conservative commentators -- in a series of 2005 revelations -- were found to have accepted money to promote programs and initiatives without disclosing the funding. They included Armstrong Williams of Tribune Media Services (which dropped Williams), Maggie Gallagher of Universal Press Syndicate, and the self-syndicated Michael McManus.

Rebuts Bush on Spying

Report Rebuts Bush on Spying : Domestic Action's Legality Challenged

The Washington Post : A report by Congress's research arm concluded yesterday that the administration's justification for the warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments.The Congressional Research Service's report rebuts the central assertions made recently by Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales about the president's authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the report makes it clear that Congress has exerted power over domestic surveillance. He urged Congress to address what he called the president's abuse of citizens' privacy rights and the larger issue of presidential power.

Library Services Act Turns 50.

This year the Library Services Act turns 50. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed on June 19, 1956.