*********BLACKOUT********* Things Your Media Momma Didn't Tell You

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff06122007.html

By DAVE LINDORFF

The fact that most Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and want the president impeached, is testimony to the native intelligence and common sense of the citizens of this nation.

It sure isn't thanks to the quality of the news we're getting here in America.!

Here are some of the things you don't know if you just depend on the corporate media for your information:

1. Most Americans would like to see this president and vice president impeached and removed from office. Newsweek magazine published a scientific poll last October showing that 51 percent of us favor impeachment (including 29 percent of Republicans!), but the corporate media, which normally hasn't met a poll it won't publish, didn't publicize this one. And now, when the numbers supporting impeachment are surely even higher, you can't even pay a polling outfit to ask the question. No wonder most people who favor impeachment still think they're odd ducks.

2. There is a bill, filed in the House of Representatives on April 24 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), calling for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Since it was filed, it has gained six co-sponsors, including a member of the House Democratic leadership, Rep. Janice Shakowsky (D-IL). Most major media have ignored this important story completely. Most Americans also don't know that the Vermont State Senate voted overwhelmingly this spring to call on Congress to impeach the president.

3. The president has been declared a felon in federal court. Yet even after Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled last August that President Bush and the National Security Agency were committing serial Class A felonies and were violating both the First and Fourth Amendments by spying on Americans' communications without first obtaining warrants, Bush continued ordering the NSA to continue the patently illegal program for at least half a year. In reports on the spying program, the corporate media never mention that it has been declared a felonious activity by the federal court.

[wildbilln864]

1. K&R! Those are only a small part! eom

[IndyOp]

2. Link to Dindorff please... Thx! :-) (n/t)

[seemslikeadream]

3. What's with me today?

:hi:

[IndyOp]

11. No sweat. You do GREAT work 'round here. :-)

[WiseButAngrySara]

5. And here's an alternative link! ....

http://www.nowpublic.com/blackout_things_your_media_momma_didnt_tell_you_by_dave_lindorff

[seemslikeadream]

12. Thanks WBAS

:hi:

SLaD

[WiseButAngrySara]

19. I just now sort of checked that site out and I came across

the article by googling when I saw that a link was requested. I have no idea about the site, and I think it's too late to delete/edit my post of the extra link! Thanks again for the original!

:hi:

[IndyOp]

13. Well-researched reports on the rampant theft of both the 2000 and 2004 elections

and on Republican plans for theft of the 2008 election, such as Mark Crispin Miller's Fooled Again, have gone unmentioned in the corporate media. Books on the subject, like Miller's and like Greg Palast's best selling Armed Madhouse, have never been reviewed.

Yup. :grr:

[Berry Cool]

4. Actually, I think I did learn all this

by watching Keith.

[loudsue]

24. Keith Olberman is prolly the ONLY person telling the truth in all of the MSM

:applause: Keith is the BEST!!! :loveya:

:kick:

[WiseButAngrySara]

6. Dumbing it down and tarting it up; NOT to increase ratings

IMO, but to control us. Why even call it "news" anymore?

[WiseButAngrySara]

7. KNR SLAD and thanks for the post! ....n/t

[annabanana]

8. Every day brings something new that Americans should know

about how their own Country is being mishandled.

[seemslikeadream]

9. And if they're able to read would they understand?

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001534.pdf

The National Adult Literacy Survey represents 190 million U.S. adults over age sixteen with an average school attendance of 12.4 years. The survey is conducted by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. It ranks adult Americans into five levels. Here is its 1993 analysis:

Forty-two million Americans over the age of sixteen can’t read. Some of this group can write their names on Social Security cards and fill in height, weight, and birth spaces on application forms.


Fifty million can recognize printed words on a fourth- and fifth-grade level. They cannot write simple messages or letters.


Fifty-five to sixty million are limited to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade reading. A majority of this group could not figure out the price per ounce of peanut butter in a 20-ounce jar costing $1.99 when told they could round the answer off to a whole number.


Thirty million have ninth- and tenth-grade reading proficiency. This group (and all preceding) cannot understand a simplified written explanation of the procedures used by attorneys and judges in selecting juries.


About 3.5 percent of the 26,000-member sample demonstrated literacy skills adequate to do traditional college study, a level 30 percent of all U.S. high school students reached in 1940, and which 30 percent of secondary students in other developed countries can reach today. This last fact alone should warn you how misleading comparisons drawn from international student competitions really are, since the samples each country sends are small elite ones, unrepresentative of the entire student population. But behind the bogus superiority a real one is concealed.


Ninety-six and a half percent of the American population is mediocre to illiterate where deciphering print is concerned. This is no commentary on their intelligence, but without ability to take in primary information from print and to interpret it they are at the mercy of commentators who tell them what things mean. A The National Adult Literacy Survey represents 190 million U.S. adults over age sixteen with an average school attendance of 12.4 years. The survey is conducted by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. It ranks adult Americans into five levels. Here is its 1993 analysis:

Forty-two million Americans over the age of sixteen can’t read. Some of this group can write their names on Social Security cards and fill in height, weight, and birth spaces on application forms.


Fifty million can recognize printed words on a fourth- and fifth-grade level. They cannot write simple messages or letters.


Fifty-five to sixty million are limited to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade reading. A majority of this group could not figure out the price per ounce of peanut butter in a 20-ounce jar costing $1.99 when told they could round the answer off to a whole number.


Thirty million have ninth- and tenth-grade reading proficiency. This group (and all preceding) cannot understand a simplified written explanation of the procedures used by attorneys and judges in selecting juries.


About 3.5 percent of the 26,000-member sample demonstrated literacy skills adequate to do traditional college study, a level 30 percent of all U.S. high school students reached in 1940, and which 30 percent of secondary students in other developed countries can reach today. This last fact alone should warn you how misleading comparisons drawn from international student competitions really are, since the samples each country sends are small elite ones, unrepresentative of the entire student population. But behind the bogus superiority a real one is concealed.


Ninety-six and a half percent of the American population is mediocre to illiterate where deciphering print is concerned. This is no commentary on their intelligence, but without ability to take in primary information from print and to interpret it they are at the mercy of commentators who tell them what things mean. A working definition of immaturity might include an excessive need for other people to interpret information for us.

[bonito]

10. K&R!

[eridani]

14. The most important lines of the article are at the end of it.

Thanks to the internet and to the grapevine, and thanks to their basic native intelligence, most Americans seem to understand that we're being lied to and cheated. What the media blackout of important news does manage to do, however, is keep us all thinking that we are in a minority in opposing things like illegal wars, a trampled Constitution, and stolen elections.

In fact, however, we're actually the majority.

Once we realize this, maybe we will have a movement, instead of a just nation of isolated cynics and complainers.

[Blue_Tires]

15. kick

i'd like to add a similar link for under-reported stuff

http://www.projectcensored.org/

[WiseButAngrySara]

16. thank you Blue_Tires and SLaD! ...n/t

[Pierzin]

17. My God! When how what thats the tip of the iceberg!!

I love Dave Lindorff!

We need to be more radicalized! The Dem House leadership has not done enough.
They have not fought hard enough against this would-be dictator who has dragged our good name into the mud.

[seemslikeadream]

18. put your bodies upon the gears, upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus,

Mario Savio's speech before the FSM sit-in


Editorial note: This is the conclusion of Mario Savio's memorable speech, before Free Speech Movement demonstrators entered Sproul Hall to begin their sit-in on December 3, 1964. His climactic words about "the operation of the machine" have been quoted widely ever since, out of context, as the existential emblem of the FSM. (Or mis-quoted, since he said "passively" rather than "tacitly.") The beginning of Savio's talk -- about the technical details of the failed negotiations and the administration's reprisal --has never been transcribed. We hope to make it available soon, for it provides a fuller view of the balance of thought and feeling in his speech, and in the FSM.



We have an autocracy which runs this university. It's managed. We asked the following: if President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received -- from a well-meaning liberal -- was the following: He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his board of directors?" That's the answer! Now, I ask you to consider: if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the board of directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I'll tell you something: the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw material that don't mean to have any process upon us, don't mean to be made into any product, don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!


There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!


Now, no more talking. We're going to march in singing "We Shall Overcome." Slowly; there are a lot of us. Up here to the left -- I didn't mean the pun.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Mf9j8co70&eurl=

[Occulus]

25. Aaah, I HAVE heard that quote before

Recently, on Sci-Fi. It was in one of the 'New Caprica' episodes of Battlestar, spoken by the colonials' union leader.

[seemslikeadream]

29. Did they give Mario Savio credit for it?

:hi:

[Canuckistanian]

39. At least Wikipedia does

Mario Savio's influence continues to be felt into the twenty-first century. A paraphrase of his famous "gears of the machine" speech appears in the March 2006 season 2 finale of the new Battlestar Galactica TV series. In a podcast about the episode, one of the producers revealed that the original speech had been hanging on his wall for the last five years, and that the paraphrase had been used with the permission of Savio's widow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio

[hootinholler]

20. Nice top ten there.

Thanks SLAD!
-Hoot

[althecat]

21. I can think of a fair few more.... n/t

[seemslikeadream]

22. I knew you could

:hi: :hug:

[Mrspeeker]

23. that poll on MSNBC was like 89% in favor of impeachment

with around 500,000 votes

And ive been so flamed on this site for posting about Kucinich's 333, I wont even comment, and you all know who you are!

[seemslikeadream]

27. Now don't let a couple of people bother you

If I did I wouldn't have lasted 5 years! :hug:

[spanone]

26. K&R

[G_j]

28. guilty

The media's complicity in hiding the truth and promoting propaganda is criminal in my book.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

30. 9/11 blackout

I didn't know about Cheney and the call girls - where is this evidence?

[Richard Steele]

31. Another K&R

[Karenina]

32. Rec #50!!!

:loveya:

[L0oniX]

33. K&R

I hate ABC CBS NBC FOX ...and yea I hate PBS too. PBS is also not giving us the full story.

:mad:

[greyghost]

34. Bump de Bump- K&R!

[HughBeaumont]

35. Sumner Redstone, head of Viacom, 2004 - "I support President Bush"

With the scandal at CBS still festering, questions are being raised about whether a felony was committed when the network broadcast apparently forged memos in an attempt to discredit George W. Bush. Yesterday, the chairman of CBS's parent company chose Hong Kong as a place to drop a little bomb. Sumner Redstone, who calls himself a "liberal Democrat," said he's supporting President Bush.

The chairman of the entertainment giant Viacom said the reason was simple: Republican values are what U.S. companies need. Speaking to some of America's and Asia's top executives gathered for Forbes magazine's annual Global CEO Conference, Mr. Redstone declared: "I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today, Viacom.

"I don't want to denigrate Kerry," he went on, "but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people. . . . But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company."

Sharing the stage with Mr. Redstone was Steve Forbes, CEO, president and editor in chief of Forbes and a former Republican presidential aspirant, who quipped: "Obviously you're a very enlightened CEO."

NO. YOU'RE NOT. PIG.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005669

Any wonder why we ain't-a hearin' these stories? Because it's what's BEST for the WEALTHY. Whether it's the RIGHT thing to do or NOT.

[Senator]

36. 67th Rec -- See, we can get the votes (kick)

[DemReadingDU]

37. Best post!

K&R

[Sancho]

38. K&R

wonder why some of us marched in the streets from 68 to 71? It's time to do it again...