Why I Will Never Believe AmeriKa’s MSM Again

“Simply practicing what you learn in kindergarten – burn me once, shame on you, burn me twice, shame on me.”

IRAQ.

Don’t worry; we won’t.

PRESSTV Versus CNN

I am so thankful that other bloggers and writers are paying attention to the AmeriKan MSM because I don’t watch.

“PRESSTV Versus CNN

Just when the Iranian protesters decided not to defy their government’s ban on street trouble, CNN and the rest of the American media went into an overdrive today to provoke the Iranian protesters, and especially mislead the younger ones into creating a situation that could result in bloodshed.

In twenty years of watching CNN, I have never seen it stoop so low as it did today.

The question is: If an American or British newspaper or TV network’s agenda begins to eerily resemble that of CIA or MI-6 [the Am-Brit enterprise], does this mean that these custodians of media independence are actually government mouthpieces?

Obviously, the US government and the CIA will not let this opportunity in Iran slip out of hand. Remeber that the CIA, the NSA and other American spy agencies were given millions of dollars for covert operations targeting Iran under Bush. These programs are still operational and have not been cancelled by Obama. Once there is violence, all you need to do is to unleash local agents connected to foreign elements, coupled with massive media propaganda to encourage chaos in order to create maximum trouble and instability for the government in Iran.

The US government and CIA are already using Afghanistan to insert terrorists into eastern parts of Iran.

CNN today was no different than any state-run TV channel in a dictatorship in central Africa or the Middle East. And it was funny. I mean really. CNN never devotes more than 10 or 15 minutes in extreme cases for even the most important world leaders, and here it was devoting nonstop hours to endless drivel by ‘Iran experts’ some of them quite literally full of s**** and a majority of them wasn’t even able to give intelligent answers. Most of whom had nothing new to say but CNN needed wanted to create a worldwide hype to keep Iran’s government under the spotlight. CNN editors allowed many unimpressive speakers to sit and speak for hours. But since there was nothing to “cover” today in Iran, CNN resorted to “creating” a crisis, manufacturing a hype about something that wasn’t even happening: the ‘expected’ turnout of protestors defying the government.

Protestors largely stayed indoors. But CNN kept insisting that something was happening. For special effect, CNN used old footage to mislead the international audience about the size of today’s protestors.

Obviously I can’t imagine that it is any of CNN’s business to keep the protests alive and prevent them from dying out. But it is certainly the interest of the US government and the CIA.

So there is only one explanation to what CNN was doing:

To encourage the younger protestors to come out and defy the security and risk deaths.

CNN also directly attacked PRESSTV, Iran’s dynamic international English-language TV news channel. CNN anchors were apparently instructed to disparage PRESSTV calling it a ‘government mouthpiece’.

Mouthpiece, eh? Compared to what? FoxNews, which spent the last eight years working as a mouthpiece to Bush? Or CNN and BBC that often become one with their governments when it comes to foreign policy and military aggression?

If CNN’s agenda appears to mirror that of US government and the CIA, with no questions asked and no room for the opposite viewpoint, doesn’t that make CNN a government mouthpiece too?

How about CNN and New York Times and others airing and printing absolute lies about Iraq’s nuclear program in order to convince the world that an invasion was necessary? And then when everything turned out to be a ruse created by CIA and MI6 and promoted by CNN, NYT and others as truth, do we see the Am-Brit free media apologizing for becoming government puppets?

When nothing happened on the streets in Tehran most of the day today, CNN anchorwoman Rosemary Church kept announcing with emphasis and with Broadway-dramatism, “There is a tense calm” in Iran.

Ooooh.

But my personal favorite was this line, “A very balanced reporting” or “a very balanced analysis” that Ms. Church repeated whenever a biased one-sided reporter or ‘expert’ finished his or her rant on Iran.

There were two exceptions in the CNN coverage coming from two journalists: Christian Amanpour and Jonathan Mann. Both refused to turn off their professional instincts and blindly follow the instructions from the newsroom.

Ms. Amanpour surprised everyone at one point when she inadvertently exposed CNN’s hypocrisy by telling her interviewer Rosemary Church that it was important to underline that a majority of Iranian protestors stayed away today after the government warning.

And then Amanpour said that most of the videos that CNN kept showing throughout the day today were old footage. Amanpour appeared to be emphasizing that viewers need to be told that CNN was playing footage from yesterday and the day before and that there were no crowds on Tehran’s streets of the size being shown in the footage.

Amanpour’s comment seemed to have struck Ms. Church smack in the face. She appeared dumbstruck for a minute. It was almost as if she knew [from the instructions she must be receiving thru an earphone from the newsroom] that she was not supposed to say these things and expose CNN’s game plan.

Then Jonathan Mann also violated the script and at one point stopped to ask CNN to replay a rare video that came out of Tehran today. The fresh video showed fewer protestors than ever before.

Mann inquired from his biased commentator that he couldn’t see the streets in previous videos because of the huge number of protestors. But the new video showed empty streets barring a few protestors. Again, the commentator, who was pro-American Iranian, was dumbfounded.

Here’s another fine evidence of who is motivating CNN and other ‘Am-Brit independent international media outlets’:

CNN did not go into overdrive until quite late in the day when it became clear that the protests were dying down. My guess is that some people within the US government freaked out at this. Someone might have said [probably at Langley], ‘If the protests die down, that’s it. Find a way to keep the momentum and encourage the kids there to come out on the streets. Let’s push the Iranian security into a murderous mishap.’

And suddenly CNN goes into a nonstop one-sided ethically-questionable coverage. I am sure that simultaneously CIA’s Iran desk must be busy in quiet outreach through Facebook and Twitter.

It is time that the Am-Brit ‘international media’ realize that many people outside Europe and America can see through their machinations, the way they gang up on certain countries or on certain issues that hide other interests of the Am-Brit combine. We’ve seen this happen so many times, in Georgia and elsewhere, that it stands exposed.

To me this has nothing to do with democracy and human rights. Sure, the Iranian government has problems and it has opponents within the Iranian populace. So it’s not a big deal if a few of them gather in Los Angeles and Washington in small demos. What IS a big deal is how the Am-Brit media has scurried to play a strategic game disguised as journalism. This is the same Am-Brit media that continues to produce CIA and MI6 agents hiding as accredited journalists. The latest example is of an Iranian woman who was sent back to Iran as an American journalist so that she could get in touch with her former colleagues in a sensitive government department and obtain secret documents. She was caught with those documents. And now we have two American journalists from Korean descent sent to North Korea for the same purpose, espionage. This is the state of the Am-Brit media that sets the world news agenda.

This episode should also serve as a lesson for Iran. The Iranian government actually helped Washington and London invade Iraq and Afghanistan and supported the two invasions on military and intelligence levels. The hope was that somehow this will convince Washington and London to accept the Iranian government and start working with it.

Today, the Iranian government learns the lesson the hard way.

And the Am-Brit media can be and is manipulated by the governments in London and Washington just like anywhere else. The best part of it, of course, is that the US State Department gets to issue grade reports about how other countries fare on media freedoms.

The Am-Brit media had been exposed during the false campaign against Iraq in 2003. But people have short memories. Iran’s elections in 2009 should serve as a welcome reminder on the performance of the Am-Brit media.

And these elections should also become a permanent signpost for CNN’s amazing fall.

—MORE–“

Invisible Refugees

If not for blogs I wouldn’t know it; I never visit the NY Times website.

Also see: Pashtun Hospitality

“Pakistan’s ‘invisible refugees’ burden cities: NYT

The Khan family made it through Taliban rule, a military offensive and the three-day journey to this crowded city. But after more than a month of living together — 75 people, three rooms, one bathroom — they might not survive one another.

“This is a test for us,” said Akhtar Jan, a mother of four who is part of the extended family. “If we don’t smile, we would be dead from crying.”

Pakistan is experiencing its worst refugee crisis since partition from India in 1947, and while the world may be familiar with the tent camps that have rolled out like carpets since its operation against the Taliban started in April, the overwhelming majority of the nearly three million people who have fled live unseen in houses and schools, according to aid agencies.

They are the invisible refugees, and their numbers have swollen the populations of towns like this one northwest of the capital, Islamabad, multiplying burdens on already sagging roads, schools, sewers and water supplies, and, not least, on their host families.

Most fled suddenly, without cash or belongings, and many have limited access to the millions of dollars in international aid that has been flowing in.

“People aren’t noticing them,” said Michael McGrath, Pakistan director of Save the Children, an aid organization that has focused on refugees outside of camps. “Their needs are not being met.”

Their hardships have made time of the essence. Refugees said they left their homes because they believed that the government was serious about stopping the militants this time. The more time passes, the more good will is lost, and the more likely they are to become frustrated with the war effort.

“This is it,” Hamid Akbar, 25, a refugee from the Swat Valley, said in Peshawar, the regional capital. “The military isn’t going to get another chance.”

But as far as the refugee crisis goes, the provincial and federal governments’ response has been haphazard, or non-existent. Refugees said in interviews last week that they saw no evidence of government assistance. The main relief effort is instead carried out by aid organizations and the United Nations, which register refugees in the tent camps, most which are far from the city centers.

Many of the displaced did not know how to register, or even that they could. All of this puts the burden on their host families, who, according to a survey conducted by Save the Children, have taken in more than two families each. (The average family size is 10.)

It is a colossal act of charity. The survey found that only a third of refugees were living with relatives. The rest were staying with friends and even strangers.

“It would have been a disaster if these people didn’t take them into their homes,” said Azam Khanis, who is coordinating the provincial government’s aid effort.

But that generosity is not endless. It has been more than a month since Pakistan began the operation in Swat, and host families are tiring of their guests. Ms. Jan said her family navigated daily life by assigning numbers to family members, divvying up bathroom time, sleeping time, and the time for cooking, which takes place over two blue propane gas canisters in a courtyard.

At night, 25 women and children sleep together in her room, covering the stone floor like a blanket. “Foot on mouth, hand in face,” are the words Ms. Jan uses to describe it.

They have taken over three spare rooms in a building reserved for guests that belongs to a local businessman. They get free lunches at a nearby school, but the rice is full of pebbles. For dinner, they are on their own.

On a recent night, Ms. Jan cooked turnips.

“We are forgotten,” said Shah Khan, one of her cousins.

The Swat Valley, where the Khan family is from, is cool, green and full of streams and forests, and the searing heat of Mardan is unfamiliar. Children were lying in wilted forms on mats on the floor.

Hamza Bakht, 14, spends his days on the street for relief from the stifling two-room apartment where his 40-member family is living. When he was home in the Swat Valley, his parents shut him inside and forbade him to go out after school, for fear that he would be forcibly recruited by the Taliban, whose foot soldiers were mostly teenagers. “Mostly I watched TV,” he said.

None of Hamza’s friends had joined the Taliban, but he knew boys his age who had. They were tempted by simple things, he said, like military training exercises that “made you feel manlike, as if you were defending something.”

Members of his own family were convinced. One of his aunts giggled that her sister had given her jewelry to the Taliban.

“They told us they were building a seminary,” said the sister, looking apologetic. “We didn’t know they’d do this to us.”

For women, the dynamic is different. In many traditional families, women are not allowed to mix with men who are not close family members, a rule that now requires acrobatic feats and that can be infuriating for the hosts, making them unwelcome strangers in their own homes. They are Pashtun, an ethnicity famous for its hospitality, but tradition is being stretched to its limit.

“I thought they’d be living with us for a week, but it’s been a month,” said Noman Ashraf, a teacher, whose mother and sister moved to a relative’s house to make room for 16 Swat refugees, mostly women and children.

Every part of his daily routine is different. He cannot go into the kitchen to have his morning tea, because the women are there. He does not set his alarm for morning prayer so as not to wake the five men who are sleeping beside him.

Children — at least six — tumble through the house, hiding combs and rolls of tape, and demanding to watch television in Mr. Ashraf’s room just as he begins to grade papers.

“It’s a sort of hospitality,” he said. “I can’t tell them no.” But he added, “I can’t explain in words how much I am suffering.”

Shy to ask the new women to wash his dirty clothes, he sends them to his mother and sister in the village, about an hour’s drive away. One day, the water ran out because the women forgot to turn on the pump, leaving Mr. Ashraf fully soaped and shivering with fury.

“This could happen to my family too,” he said. “It’s a test. If I’m not patient, it’s possible that God will notice.”

In fact, let me tell you a little story about a guy I knew:

The guy I’m talking about used to look forward to getting his morning papers. He used to purchase the New York Times and Boston Globe every day and meticulously outlined the stories he would cover, marking them with red and blue ink. While understanding the biases of the MSM, he still believed they did report events as they happened. There was no reason to doubt the truth of America’s newspapers. Yes, there may have been some mistakes and omissions, but for the most part they did a decent job.

(For more on his journey see A Lifetime of Lies Since 9/11)

After about a year of increasingly poor MSM coverage and exposure to the blogs, his commentaries became more and more strident. He couldn’t believe the scale of lies he was seeing, not just on Iraq and 9/11, but on every single issue (the weather fer cryin’ out loud). Such behavior led him to stop purchasing the New York Times. That was part of his New Year’s resolution for 2008 and it stuck. The strange part is that he found himself visiting the New York Times website less and less.

He kept purchasing a Boston Globe in the belief that it added a certain perspective and kitsch to his blog, an on-the-ground report on the MSM from his home base; however, their agenda-pushing propaganda — oddly(?), the New York Times owns the Boston Globe — just got worse and worse and worse and continues to this day. I guess that’s why newspapers are failing: when they can’t even please their most faithful purchasers, what hope do they have? They shouldn’t tell all those lies.

Anyhow, he decided to scrap purchases of the Boston Globe as his New Years’ resolution for 2009.  Unfortunately, that resolution did not sick.

This is the guy I’m referring.

Explaining the MSM’s Economic Reporting

“Data can be manipulated to hide a lot.”

That must be why they didn’t report the recession for 10 months.