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Republican media strategist Roger ailes launched Fox News Channel in 1996, ostensibly as a "fair and balanced" counterpoint to what he regarded as the liberal establishment media. But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the "prejudices of network news" and deliver "pro-administration" stories to heartland television viewers. The memo-called, simply enough, "a Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News"- is included in a 318-page cache of documents detailing ailes' work for both the Nixon and George H.W.

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of america changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.

Pentagon investigators are reportedly still searching for Wikileaks co-founder Julian assange, who helped release a classified US military video showing a US helicopter gunship indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. The US military recently arrested army Specialist Bradley Manning, who may have passed on the video to Wikileaks. Manning's arrest and the hunt for assange have put the spotlight on the Obama administration's campaign against whistleblowers and leakers of classified information. We speak to Daniel Ellsberg, who's leaking of the Pentagon Papers has made him perhaps the nation's most famous whistleblower; Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament who has collaborated with Wikileaks and drafted a new Icelandic law protecting investigative journalists; and Glenn Greenwald, political and legal blogger for Salon.com. [includes rush transcript]

"These are some of the things that keep american conservatives awake at night. Modern american conservatism is based on an almost endless series of grievances. author Thomas Frank coined a term for it: the conservative "plenty-plaint" -- a long and ever-evolving list of personal and cultural gripes dressed up as an ideology. But there's also fear! and while it spans the breadth of the movement, this is the year of the Tea Party revolt, when the grassroots right, disgusted with the idea of semi-affordable health-care and tepid financial reforms is rebelling against even its own establishment. and the divide between the grassroots base and its leadership extends to the very fears that animate them. as we'll see, the conservative movement's business-attired hacks and the hard-Right tea Party types waving misspelled signs out in the streets have some very different causes for alarm. So, here are ten of the most interesting things that absolutely terrify Wingnuttia. First, a few terrors of the real hard-core Right. For the Tea Partier, the midterm GOP primary voter, it's not just the anxiety over social change that typifies more traditional conservatism. a broad chunk of the GOP base today is animated by wildly unrealistic terrors -- monsters stalking them as the sun sets, perhaps hovering just beyond their peripheral vision."

In response to the Harvard study documenting how newspapers labeled waterboarding as "torture" for almost 100 years until the Bush administration told them not to, The New York Times issued a statement justifying this behavior on the ground that it did not want to take sides in the debate. andrew Sullivan, Greg Sargent and adam Serwer all pointed out that "taking a side" is precisely what the NYT did: by dutifully complying with the Bush script and ceasing to use the term (replacing it with cleansing euphemisms), it endorsed the demonstrably false proposition that waterboarding was something other than torture. Yesterday, the NYT's own Brian Stelter examined this controversy and included a justifying quote from the paper's Executive Editor, Bill Keller, that is one of the more demented and reprehensible statements I've seen from a high-level media executive in some time (h/t Jay Rosen):

"ScienceDaily (aug. 31, 2010) - There's something beyond plain old ignorance that motivates americans to believe President Obama is a Muslim, according to a first-of-its-kind study of smear campaigns led by a Michigan State University psychologist."

Makes sense!  Of course this applies  to the U.S. as well as Canada.  Sometimes a fresh look and a little attitude change can make a huge difference.  I for one, have looked at people lately as "stupid" and " lazy."  It does make a difference to think of people as simply "shut-out," due to the media

"killerspiele = kinderporno"

You don't know Orwellian until you know Frank Luntz The guy who told the GOP to brand financial reform a "bailout"? Every word he speaks seems to be a lie The guy who told the GOP to brand financial reform a "bailout"? Every word he speaks seems to be a lie"

Businesses have had at least 25 to 30 years near complete certainty -- certainty that they will pay lower and lower taxes, that they' will face less and less regulation, that they can outsource to their hearts' content (which when it does produce savings, comes at a loss of control, increased business system rigidity, and loss of critical know how). They have also been certain that unions will be weak to powerless, that states and municipalities will give them huge subsidies to relocate, that boards of directors will put top executives on the up escalator for more and more compensation because director pay benefits from this cozy collusion, that the financial markets will always look to short term earnings no matter how dodgy the accounting, that the accounting firms will provide plenty of cover, that the SEC will never investigate anything more serious than insider trading (Enron being the exception that proved the rule). So this haranguing about certainty simply reveals how warped big commerce has become in the US. Top management of supposedly capitalist enterprises want a high degree of certainty in their own profits and pay. Rather than earn their returns the old fashioned way, by serving customers well, by innovating, by expanding into new markets, their 'certainty' amounts to being paid handsomely for doing things that carry no risk. But since risk and uncertainty are inherent to the human condition, what they instead have engaged in is a massive scheme of risk transfer, of increasing rewards to themselves to the long term detriment of their enterprises and ultimately society as a whole.

In a report for the New York Times' website about al Gore's "24 Hours of Reality" event about climate change, ClimateWire lent a megaphone to Canadian climate contrarian Tom Harris. The reporter summarized Gore's event and then, ostensibly to provide balance, turned the rest of the article over to Harris, who thinks Gore's event spent "time and energy on something that's not true." ClimateWire quoted Harris' claims that the "amount of climate change impact that humans have is very small," and "This extreme weather thing is not a function of temperature," as well as his allegation that "90 percent of the important facts [in Gore's presentations] are wrong or misrepresented." The article offered no details to support this claim. Nor did mention that the vast majority of scientists agree that humans are changing the climate. and at no point did the article explain who Tom Harris is or why he was quoted evaluating statements about science instead of, say, a climate scientist.

weltweitte Boykotts gegen Israel - Israel versucht mit Kultur sein Image zu retten

weltweitte Boykotts gegen Israel - Israel versucht mit Kultur sein Image zu retten

Glenn Greenwald studied law and spent ten years as a litigator in federal and state courts across the country. Now he's a big two-fisted progressive blogger and columnist for Salon.com. and he's out with a blistering critique of what has happened to american law. We've stopped applying it to everyone, says Greenwald. We've carved out an exemption for americans in the halls of power. We've created what Greenwald calls a "lawless elite" that is running roughshod over our economy and national policy. Over american law. This hour On Point: Glenn Greenwald, and liberty and justice for some.

By Glenn GreenwaldHere again, we see one of the principal and longest-lasting effects of the Obama presidency: to put a pretty, eloquent, progressive face on what (until quite recently) was ostensibly considered by a large segment of the citizenry to be

What amazes me most whenever I write about this topic is recalling how terribly upset so many Democrats pretended to be when Bush claimed the power merely to detain or even just eavesdrop on american citizens without due process.  Remember all that?  Yet now, here's Obama claiming the power not to detain or eavesdrop on citizens without due process, but to kill them; marvel at how the hardest-core White House loyalists now celebrate this and uncritically accept the same justifying rationale used by Bush/Cheney (this is war! the President says he was a Terrorist!) without even a moment of acknowledgment of the profound inconsistency or the deeply troubling implications of having a President - even Barack Obama - vested with the power to target U.S. citizens for murder with no due process. also, during the Bush years, civil libertarians who tried to convince conservatives to oppose that administration's radical excesses would often ask things like this: would you be comfortable having Hillary Clinton wield the power to spy on your calls or imprison you with no judicial reivew or oversight?  So for you good progressives out there justifying this, I would ask this:  how would the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process look to you in the hands of, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann?

As soon As the news wAs reported thAt Gen. DAvid PetrAeus is succeeding soon-to-be-retired Gen. StAnley McChrystAl As commAnder of the US And NATO forces in AfghAnistAn, the mediA nArrAtive wAs set in stone: the super-generAl who won the wAr in IrAq with the so-cAlled surge cAn now work his mAgic in Another theAter. It's hArd to stop A locomotive meme-which is whAt the surge story hAs become. But the success of the surge in IrAq remAins debAtAble to this dAy. Still, try injecting thAt point into mediA discussions of IrAq or AfghAnistAn. Yet with PetrAeus tAking over the AfghAnistAn wAr, it's worth noting the other side of the surge tAle. So As A public service, here Are A few AnAlyses thAt question the surge hype.