More over, while Fox may be such, we are not doctrinaire. I cannot prove it, so I'll estimate it here and if I'm proved wrong I'll happily correct it: but my intuition tells me I criticized President Obama more **in the last week** than Fox's prime-time hosts criticized President Bush in eight years.
To equate this network with Fox, as Mr. Koppel did to accuse us of having our own facts is another manifestation of a dangerously simplified understanding of modern news. This guy says the moon is a planetary fragment orbiting the Earth; this other guy says it's actually the body of the late Vince Foster have them both on and let them debate. It's fair and balanced.
And to the charge that a bunch of bean-counters seized upon a business opportunity: I have been here for every moment of this network's evolution. It began in 2003 when slowly, one fact at a time, we began to challenge the government's rationalization for the war in Iraq.
above Quote by Keith Olbermann from: from transcript of Olbermann's Special Comment on Ted Koppel's article bemoaning the end of Journalistic Objectivity. Via Truthout.org
Paul Jay at Real News Network interviews David Swanson author of the recently published book "War Is A Lie"
Politicians, governments and those in power lie to their citizens to convince them of going to war . He applies this thesis to almost all wars throughout history. This might be a bit of overstatement as Paul Jay appears to believe .But he is right that more often than not wars are not necessary.
Note Swanson points out I believe correctly that WWII was not a war fought to save European Jewry. In fact the USA and Canada and other countries did nothing to help European Jews.
and in a related story on lying and deception by governments and those in authority.
Olbermann in this special comment points out that real journalist who care about the truth may from time to time point out when a government or others in authority are making dubious assumptions and are out to deceive the American people in general.
For example Vietnam was a war America could not win. The loss of the war was not the fault of Jane Fonda and the liberals.
Watergate was not a scandal created by the media and liberals to unfairly attack Nixon. Nixon had rather engaged in criminal and unethical actions .
Bush Cheney and the Neocons with the help of a spineless media sold Americans on going to war with Iraq based upon lies, falsehoods, deception, fraudulent evidence, facts ripped from their context. And now they are treating Bush and Cheney et al as unsung heroes. This is Obama's fault for not going after these war criminals and traitors to their country and their people.
Now the GOP, much of the Media including Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS and President Obama 's advisers want to sell Americans on going to war with Iran based upon questionable and dubious decontextualized facts.
This notion of objectivity and that there are not just two or more opinions on any story but that they are all of equal value is nonsense. If it were so then the Holocaust debunkers should be given equal time no they shouldn't. Hitler massacred some 6 million Jews not ten thousand or a million but rather close to 6 million.
And by the way Hitler did not invent anti-semitism or even prejudice against the Roma/Gypsies or other ethnic groups or those who were not heterosexual- and nor did the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as Robert Spencer , Pam Geller and the their ilk would have Americans believe.
And FDR was not as evil and destructive as Hitler or Stalin or Lenin as Glenn Beck would have people believe . Of course he goes further and labels and smears Obama as being a Fascist, a Socialist, a Nazi, a Maoist , a collectivists etc.
Or for instance these hysterical bigots would have Americans believe that the 9/11 attacks are somehow equivalent to the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide or the Invasion of Poland by Hitler .
And who in America speaks for or feels some bit of sadness over the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as the result of the illegal immoral unjustified invasion of Iraq.
And now they want to take America and the Western nations into an unjustified war in Iran based upon propaganda and hysteria and lies and fraudulent evidence. And such an attack on Iran is being pushed not just by American Neocons and Neoliberals and other believers in the sanctity of the American Empire but also by Israel and Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations especially those that are predominately Sunni Muslim who happen to dislike Iran in part because it is a Shiite Nation.
Odd there is all this anti-Iranian propaganda when the 9/11 terrorists were primarily Saudis and Al Qaeda had been supported by the Saudis and others to help fight against the Russians in Afghanistan. The Taliban and other extremist groups in Afghanistan were ostensibly financed by the USA and other nations to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. Well surprise they fed the beast until it turned on those who thought they were the ones calling the shots.
As Olbermann rightly points out like most of the US Media Ted Koppel as a journalist failed the American people in his unwillingness to question the Bush administrations policies regarding invading Iraq or its use of torture and its on going lies and deception to further its own narrow agenda.
Special Comment: False Promise of "Objectivity" Proves "Truth" Superior to "Fact"
Thursday 18 November 2010
by: Keith Olbermann, Countdown via Truthout & Youtube
also see:
Saturday 20 November 2010
New Afghan War Plans Could Cost US Taxpayers an Extra $125 Billion
Ben Arnoldy, The Christian Science Monitor: "'As leaders at the NATO summit in Lisbon meet this weekend to discuss strategy in Afghanistan, US war planners have been signaling that troop withdrawals set to begin in 2011 will be mostly symbolic and that the handover to Afghan forces in 2014 is "aspirational".... Such could cost American taxpayers handsomely at a time when deficit cutting has gripped Washington. According to one estimate, softening those deadlines could add at least $125 billion in war spending - not including long-term costs like debt servicing and health care for veterans."
Read the Article Truthout.orgNov. 20,2010
Nine Years Too Long
Lt. Col Barry Wingard, Truthout: "In 2002, my client, Kuwaiti citizen Fayiz Al-Kandari, was captured by Pakistani forces and sold to the United States military. Since that time, he has been confined without charge at America's notorious island prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for almost nine years."
Read the Article, Truthout.org
and a message from Truthout.org
and :US Wants to Widen Area in Pakistan Where It Can Operate Drones
Read the Article at The Washington Post
and : Exclusive Report: Evidence of Iran Nuclear Weapons Program May Be Fraudulent 18 November 2010 by: Gareth Porter, t r u t h o u t | Report
Dear Readers,
Will the war in Afghanistan ever end? Last December, President Obama told us he'd begin a significant withdrawal of troops from the country in 2011. Yet, in the lead-up to this weekend’s NATO summit, the administration changed its tune, admitting that many troops will likely remain in Afghanistan even after 2014. This extension will no doubt mean the tragic loss of thousands more American and Afghan lives. It’ll also mean $413 billion in remaining war costs - on the backs of struggling taxpayers.
Since the beginning, Truthout has been exposing the injustice of our endless war in Afghanistan. We were one of the few news outlets that never bought the "good war" line; even in the run-up to the 2008 election, we spoke the truth about Afghanistan - and we’re still doing it today. We bring you on-the-ground reporting on the lives of Afghan civilians from Kathy Kelly and David Smith-Ferri, war-profiteering investigations from Nick Mottern and Dina Rasor, and hard analysis from people like Robert Naiman, Ray McGovern and William Rivers Pitt.
Afghanistan may be "old news," as far as the mainstream media is concerned, but Truthout will never accept this blindness. As long as the death and destruction continues, we will continue bringing the tragedies of war to light.
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and so it goes,
GORD.
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