Thursday, March 10, 2005

Journalism = Butt Prints In The Sand...

Because in life, there comes a time, 
When one must fight, and one must climb, 
When we must rise and take a stand, 
Or leave our butt prints in the sand. 
~~author unknown 

By Sheila Samples 

03/09/05 "Information Clearing House" - - It's time. Before this obscene, gaping hole gets any deeper, it's time we convinced the media to stop digging. As someone once said...and said...and said -- time is not on our side. Storm clouds are gathering on the dashboard of our democracy. We must act, sooner rather than later -- before we are faced with sudden horror like we've never known before. I couldn't agree more, because when you consider the media horror show of the last four years, it could get hairy out there unless we wake up, stand up, and do something about it... 

It's time we told the media it's either them -- or us. We need to pass them by, boycott their advertisers, protest them -- shake them until their teeth rattle. It's time we realized there is no entity more to blame for the mess we're in nor for the needless loss of life than our shameless and treasonous media. The media is even more obscene than Bush and the glowering, power-mad warmongers who surround him in both his administration and in his Congress. 

Face it. Bush gets away with murder for just one reason -- because the media allows it, encourages it, and spends big bucks producing it. Bush's war-on-evildoers-turned-war-on-terror-turned-regime-change-turned-crusade-for-freedom-and-democracy is a media-orchestrated production, complete with banners, flag backdrops, bells and whistles. In case you haven't noticed what the rest of the world knew at the outset -- the illusion of Bush as a strong, principled leader is also a media creation. Totally. 

It is folly to think we can continue to sit on our butts and there will be no day of reckoning for the total breakdown of fundamental journalistic principles. I hate to keep dragging poor Walter Williams, the first University of Missouri Journalism dean, across these pages like some old worn-out "Weekend at Bernie's" skit, but the Journalist's Creed Williams wrote a century ago still applies today, and is a clear statement of journalistic ethics. Williams fervently believed that journalists were totally -- and only -- trustees for the public, and that anything less than accuracy and fairness in reporting the news was betrayal. He believed that suppressing or ignoring news that might embarrass the powerbrokers is indefensible. 

Betrayal. Indefensible betrayal. 

If Williams had an idealistic vision of what journalism should be, John Swinton, former Chief of Staff at the New York Times, was more realistic about what the business of journalism really is. In a confession before the New York Press Club, Swinton said -- 

"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." 

Corporate giants such as Time-Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Viacom, General Electric, and Vivendi own all media in this country; therefore, they own everything we see, hear, feel, smell or touch. They are our sensory masters. If it were not so, we would rise up against the racuous, political-agendae-driven, circle-jerk speculation by paid political activists that passes for today's news. 

It's time we woke up and realized that not everyone who "journals" is a journalist, especially in the electronic media, and most notably on cable TV. Can you imagine the consternation of folks like Fox's Greta Van Susteren and CNN's Jeffery Toobin, attorneys who abandoned their law careers for the bright lights, if each were handed a pair of scissors and a jug of glue and told to "cut and paste" their transcripts, uh, after they pounded them out on manual typewriters? 

How long would CNN's resident brain surgeon, Dr. Sonjay Gupta, last as a full-time "journalist" if Americans stopped dieting, refused a breakfast of Total cereal, and boycotted Walgreen's? Thanks to CNN, Dr. Gupta will save us a trip to the hospital -- he will come right into our homes and perform the lobotomies. 

"Mainstream media" is the mother of all oxymorons. To really appreciate "fair and balanced" in action, see Robert Greenwald's "Outfoxed." Aside from daily humdrum chores of cleaning up George Bush's tortured rhetoric and rewriting quoted material to reflect what Bush meant to say rather than what he actually said -- aside from covering up or completely ignoring critical matters such as a revengeful White House leak blowing the cover of a covert CIA agent and endangering the lives of contacts throughout the world, a stolen election, a teetering economy, the unconstitutional silencing of an FBI translator, billions of taxpayers' dollars missing in Iraq, rampant abuse and torture of prisoners, the cruel abandonment of veterans -- the media continue to whoop it up in one huge journalistic Karaoke gig. There seems to be no end to their capacity to embarrass themselves by singing along to the propaganda track furnished them by the White House. 

The entire mainstream media apparatus appears to be in "stand down" mode, much like NORAD was on the morning of September 11, 2001. With malice aforethought they ignore the destructive blips on their news screens, knowing full well the majority of Americans will not venture beyond what they are told to believe. Most Americans have no idea of what is actually going on in the world, either at home or abroad. Most accept without question Bush's recent pronouncement during his news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin -- 

"I live in a transparent country. I live in a country where decisions made by government are wide open and people are able to call people to me (sic) to account, which many out here do on a regular basis. Our laws and the reasons we have laws on the books are perfectly explained to people," he said. "Every decision we make is within the Constitution of the United States. We have a constitution that we uphold." 

Think about that. Think about it while you're waiting for the media to report that policemen across this country are "tasering" our children in classrooms to shock them into submission -- zapping the elderly in nursing homes to keep them docile and obedient, handcuffing students and dragging them off to jail for wearing "anti-American" peace symbols on their T-shirts. Think about it while you're reading the repressive Patriot Acts I and II that literally strip the Bill of Rights from the US Constitution that Bush says he is so proud to uphold. 

You'll have time to think, and to read, if you're waiting for the media to report that many veterans are being stripped of their pay and benefits, are being charged for food while lying wounded in hospitals, and are being charged a fee (tax) for their health coverage. You'll have plenty of time to think before the media breaks the news that, just last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was hit with a lawsuit in an Illinois federal court charging him with being directly responsible for the torture and abuse of detainees in US military custody. The lawsuit, far from being frivolous, was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First on behalf of eight men who were subject to such treatment and, if there is a God, Rumsfeld will be convicted of violating that most "quaint" of documents, the US Constitution, as well as federal statutes and international law. 

Those who don't read foreign media will never know that the International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq (ICTI) this week found both Bush and Tony Blair guilty of a series of charges, and found they deserve life sentences for war crimes and genocide in Iraq. 

Kohki Abe, a professor of law at Tokyo's Kanagawa University, said Bush and Blair should face the "maximum penalty available." He added that they should have been tried in the International Criminal Court, but admitted that, for "political reasons," they would not be prosecuted. Abe explained the ICTI had been set up so that acts such as those Bush and Blair are guilty of "do not go past without the criminals behind them being tried." 

Like all thuggish bullies, George Bush, who is ever more deluded by both his senses and his judgment, is getting so full of himself he's itching for a new fight. Like he told a cheering crowd at the National Defense University this week, "We will fight the enemy, we will lift the shadows of fear and lead free nations to victory. No matter how long it takes." So, Bush is back on the hunt, and he says ironically that he will topple "tyrants who don't respect the rules of warfare..." 

The darkness is closing around us. If ever there was a time in our history for the media to just do the right thing -- that time is NOW. It's time the media faced the fact that, sooner or later, Bush will pick a fight with someone who's capable of fighting back, and then ratings and profits won't matter. When that mushroom cloud hits the fan, it will affect us all, and it will be too late to do anything about it. 

And nothing will remain but our butt prints in the sand. 

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net 

© 2005 Sheila Samples . All rights reserved. You may republish under the following conditions: An active link to the original publication must be provided. You must not alter, edit or remove any text within the article, including this copyright notice.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Forward - FPF/HR

THANK YOU AMERICA ! AFTER THE WAR COMES CANCER  

Pls. Click on the title to get working Urls/links - or 'cut and paste'.

Extra: In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects.*

FPF/Germany: 'Deutsche Welle' is an official national broadcasting corporation.

THANK YOU AMERICA ! AFTER THE WAR COMES CANCER  

Iraqi women fear for their children's future
 
DEUTSCHE WELLE - 09.03.2005 - Information collected for a German project investigating the use of uranium-charged ammunition in Iraq shows that when Iraqi women fear for their children's health, it is with good reason.

After two wars where oil wells were torched, chemical factories bombed and radioactive ammunition fired, the first thing Iraqi women ask when giving birth is not if it is a boy or a girl, but if it is normal or deformed. The number of cancer cases and children born with deformities has skyrocketed after the two Gulf Wars.

"Since 1991 the number of children born with birth deformities has quadrupled," said Dr. Janan Hassan, who runs a children's clinic at a hospital in Basra in southern Iraq. "The same is the case for the number of children under 15 who are diagnosed with cancer. Mostly, it is leukemia. Almost 80 percent of the children die because we neither have medicine nor the possibility to give them chemotherapy."

Doctors have also recorded an extreme rise in cancer cases among adults. "In 2004 we diagnosed 25 percent more cancer cases than the year before and the mortality rate increased eight-fold between 1988 and 1991," said Dr. Jawad al-Ali of the Sadr Hospital in Basra.
Doctors against nuclear war

Hassan and al-Ali are two of 15 Iraqi specialists who have joined forces with German scientists in a project to research diseases provoked by acts of war, financed by the German Academic Exchange Service.

In Iraq, burning oil wells, bombed chemical factories, demolished production sites for chemical weapons and even the use of radioactive ammunition are just a few of the things which may have triggered diseases there.

"As epidemiologists, we are quite sure that other diseases than cancer and birth deformities also have to be considered," said project leader Wolfgang Hoffmann from the University of Greifswald.
The scientists involved in the project met through the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). All have a special interest in the consequences of using depleted-uranium (DU) ammunition, the German project's main focus. 

British and American uranium bombs

In the two US-led wars on Iraq, missile warheads containing the depleted uranium-238 were used. While it is only lightly radioactive, it is an extremely tough waste-product to contain because the uranium pulverizes and contaminates the whole surrounding area with radioactivity at the moment of the explosion.

"Naturally, the nations leading the war refuse to acknowldege that this type of uranium can be harmful. But as an epidemiologist, I have to say that every bit of radiation can give rise to cancer. It's just a question if what was fired in this case led to an increase in the number of cancer cases," said Professor Eberhard Greiser from the University of Bremen.

As with many of the questions arising from the project so far, there is no definite answer. But al-Ali tried to give a partial answer.

"In Basra in 1991, the Americans and the British dropped at least 300 tons of this kind of ammunition in one battle. That was the battle where they destroyed all the tanks of the then Republican Army. After the war, the population was urged to gather all weapons and sell them to the government. Also if people had guns or bazookas or whatever they found in the desert, they were told to bring it with them," he said.

According to al-Ali's calculations, approximately 750,000 people in Basra and the surrounding areas were exposed to radiation as a result.

Finding the evidence

The doctors say the connection between the contamination of hundred of thousands of people on one side and the rising number of cancer cases on the other is beyond doubt, but proving it is not easy.

"To prove it, we would have to demonstrate that there was uranium 238 on the patients' clothes or in their body fluid. And besides, cancer is a multi-causal disease. How would we be able to give 100 percent proof?" al-Ali asked.

Despite the resigned attitudes among many of her colleagues, Hassan firmly believes that the radioactive missiles used by the Americans and the British are responsible for the increased incidence of cancer in Iraq since the early 1990s.

She hopes a future independent Iraqi government will seek compensation from Washington and London.

"We have to demand it. That is the price of the war," she said.

Jürgen Hanefeld (nk)

[and end - Deutsche Welle - article/English - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/57cqp

FPF-links:

Annan: 'The war in Iraq is illegal' -BBC - Url.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm

''The Lancet'' and the ''Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health'' report:
''Over 100.000 killed in the illegal Iraq war'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5gys7

Iraq War Body Count - Url.: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Iraq / DU-disaster Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6o4na

Professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki report - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/6ljxa

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark Calls For Bush Impeachment - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6rcwc

Bush interv. ABC: No WMD's but many killed: "It was worth it". - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6bal9

Former Secr. of State Madeleine Albright in her comment on half a million dead children in Iraq: "We think it's worth it" On CBS 60' Minutes - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2vmc8

A crime against humanity is an act of persecution against a group, so heinous as to warrant punishment under international law: Please scroll - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6rphj

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4f6u
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/5zmhl
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

The Dutch author this far has worked abroad 4 decades for international media as a foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism ! - At present 'Persona non Grata' in Holland :-)

He who travels far will often see things
Far removed from what he believed was the Truth.
When he talks about it in the fields at home,
He is often accused of lying,
For the obdurate people will not believe
Inexperience, I believe,
Will give little credence to my song.

'Journey to the East' - Hermann Hesse

A 55' seconds 'sound bite' concerning the US-Israeli 'Dogs of War'
'bringing democracy' everywhere. Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5u98v

Former PM 'Wim Kok' and other Dutch Govt's Warcriminals in Court:
Url.: http://tinyurl.com/662pp -

Sued: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Over U.S. Torture Policies -
Url.: http://tinyurl.com/62353

It can and must be done!

Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org
We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments':
Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

HR