The GOP/Bush propaganda machine has been spewing its latest mantra, this time about the supposed “social security crisis.” Laura Tyson in Business Week:
After years of repeated warnings by conservative political thinkers, the word crisis has become the mental frame that shapes the way many Americans think about Social Security’s future. But as a recent Brookings […]

What ethical standards should apply to bloggers? … The SPJ’s code of ethics is a great starting point. It is now up to all of us to determine where we go with this and how blogging will be perceived in the future.

I strongly recommend Jonathan Raban’s new essay in the New York Review of Books.

The Truth About Terrorism

1.

In his November 3 victory speech, President Bush, sounding the keynote of his second administration, pledged to “fight this war on terror with every resource of our national power.” By saying “this” rather than “the” Bush stressed the palpable, near-at-hand quality of the war whose symbols have grown to surround us in the last three years—the tilted barrels of security cameras, BioWatch pathogen-sniffers, and all the rest of the technology of security and surveillance that Matthew Brzezinski somewhat overexcitedly details in Fortress America. Voters, at least, have been impressed. Responding to the exit pollers’ question “Which ONE issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?” 32 percent of Bush supporters named “Terrorism” (as against 5 percent of Kerry supporters), 85 percent of Bush supporters said that the country was “safer from terrorism” in 2004 than it was in 2000, and 79 percent said that the war in Iraq “has improved the long-term security of the United States.”

Today, I received an email on one of the many mailing lists I am on entitled:

“I thought it was a joke, but…CNN:Bush arrested in Canada for war crimes”

George Lakoff has written a series of 4 articles for the UC Berkeley News on how the Republicans framed… or was it the American people who were framed… anyway… on how they “carefully crafted a tri-partite frame for George W. Bush’s Thursday acceptance speech.”

For the next week, everyone will be trying to get their message out, many different ways. Some of it will be broadcast on the mainstream commercial media. Other messages will come out on IndyMedia, the blogs, and who knows where else.

Glenn Smith at Drive Democracy posts a few revelations about John E. O’Neill, co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry…

In March 2003, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks made a comment in London about being ashamed that Bush is from her home state of Texas. There were threatened boycotts and some radio stations stopped playing songs by the Dixie Chicks. …. I am not a big fan of the financial tit for tat that political discourse has degenerated to. However, until we can get the debate on the right track again, we must let people like >Kathi Eckler, and Jeff Stoll know that we hold them in part responsible for the decline of democracy in our country.

Friends,

Ignorance is not bliss. It is the handmaiden of tyranny.

Here is some useful material on propaganda and its study since 1937.

I note that if you rely on RSS feeds to bring you the latest news, far too many of the main stream sites do not yet support RSS. Not ACT. Not Center for American Progress. Not either of the sites below. Also note that the PropagandaCritic site has not been updated since 2002.

We can not reclaim our democracy if we are disconnected and stay invisibly below the radar.

An excellent site that is current and has an RSS feed is Media Matters at

www.mediamatters.org

How often have you heard or used that phrase? In a fight with a spouse? In a fight with a parent or child? How does it apply to Greater Democracy?
Jock Gill often talks about ‘Post Broadcast’ politics. Over the past couple decades, people’s involvement with politics have been driven, in many […]