“We denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties: The Extremes of Good and Evil, 44 BCE, translated by H. Rackham (1914).
This is part 4 of the following 4-part series:
Part 1: Why Occupy? A government/economics teacher explains
Part 2: How a government teacher easily proves Occupy’s claim of US War Crimes
Part 3: How an economics teacher presents Occupy’s economic argument, victory
Part 4: Why everyone should Occupy US 1% corporate media: they lie (you’re reading it)
Important history that makes crimes in the present easy to see and understand:
Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now (6-part series)
Parts 2 and 3 of this series explains, documents, and proves that US “leadership” in politics, economics, and corporate media engage in War Crimes and looting in the trillions. Their respective criminal roles are policy, money (fake money as credit/debt, actually), and propaganda (easily provable lies of commission and omission).
They’re complicit in criminal acts that annually kill millions, harm billions, and transfer trillions from the 99% to the 1% (a fraction of the 1% actually).
Occupy’s mission includes public education to the 99% to recognize these crimes, arrest the criminals to end the crimes, and enact policy for 100% of Earth’s inhabitants.
Let’s examine the lies of commission and omission of US corporate media in this part of our series. The factual evidence in parts 2 and 3 of War Crimes and economic looting may have been new and surprising to you. Given the importance of these independently verifiable facts, and the stunning supportive expert testimony, the fact that corporate media will not comprehensively report it reveals their support of these criminal and ongoing actions that harm the 99%. These actions provide money to the 1%, but do not help them in any comprehensive sense.
Slave-owners’ lives are woven into the vices and justifications of slavery, vicious control, and are loveless.
The 1% are to be pitied for their lack of experiencing and expressing available human virtues. And that said, I support their immediate arrest and removal from any power to engage in further violence, looting, and “official” lying. For years I’ve offered to represent their interests in corporate media for Truth and Reconciliation to exchange their surrender and return of assets for no prosecution and living the remaining years of their lives in peace. Indeed, I’d welcome their teaching roles to improve the 99%’s critical thinking skills from their lessons of how they played us as suckers for so long. I even suggest a stipend for relative lives of ease for the benefits of ending their destructive acts without a “fight to the finish” that likely would include attempts to kill millions (or billions) of the 99% and countless other planetary species’ members.
Onto the evidence of corporate media lies that become “emperor has no clothes” obvious upon inspection:
We have verified history of official government propaganda having infiltrated corporate media. The Church Senate Committee hearings had the cooperation of CIA Director William Colby’s testimony thatover 400 CIA operatives were controlling US corporate media reporting on specific issues of national interest in Operation Mockingbird. This game-changing testimony was confirmed by Pulitzer Prize reporter Carl Bernstein’s research. Of course, corporate media refused to publish Bernstein’s article; it became a cover-story for Rolling Stone. Bernstein provided additional information of CIA control in the Senate report and corporate media subsequent “reporting”:
“Pages 191 to 201 were entitled “Covert Relationships with the United States Media.” “It hardly reflects what we found,” stated Senator Gary Hart. “There was a prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA] over what would be said.”
Obscuring the facts was relatively simple. No mention was made of the 400 summaries or what they showed. Instead the report noted blandly that some fifty recent contacts with journalists had been studied by the committee staff—thus conveying the impression that the Agency’s dealings with the press had been limited to those instances. The Agency files, the report noted, contained little evidence that the editorial content of American news reports had been affected by the CIA’s dealings with journalists. Colby’s misleading public statements about the use of journalists were repeated without serious contradiction or elaboration. The role of cooperating news executives was given short shrift. The fact that the Agency had concentrated its relationships in the most prominent sectors of the press went unmentioned. That the CIA continued to regard the press as up for grabs was not even suggested.”
Importantly, US corporate media is heavily concentrated in just six corporations, making the message much easier to control.
Let’s consider a specific case of corporate media collusion with official government rhetoric to lie about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s October 2005 speech to contrive a non-existent physical threat to Israel. First: for US political leaders and corporate media to accuse the president of Iran with threatening to destroy Israel is the most serious of accusations. A threat of national destruction is the most vicious statement a head of state can make. For corporate media to not be in collusion to “report” this proven lie would have to mean that everyone involved in the story never read the speech in question, never consulted with Persian experts, disregarded all people like me who informed them of their egregious “error,” and then failed to correct the “error” for seven years.
This is textbook “guilt beyond reasonable doubt” because is is not at all reasonable under any spin to find the above “reporting” some kind of innocent mistake. It is deliberate and persistent lies of commission and omission that killed up to a million Iranians in recent history, and threatens to kill millions more today.
As I’ve continuously reported for three years and wrote a comprehensive brief for publication and members of Congress beginning in 2006, here are the explanations and documentation of the facts versus corporate media’s “reporting” regarding Iran. This is criminal conspiracy between the 1% in politics and media, with both required for these paper-thin criminal lies:
US overthrew Iran’s democracy 1953-1979, helped Iraq invade 1980-1988, now lies for more war (andan analogy if the US were the victim of empire)
What Iran’s president said about Israel, and how US War Criminal 1% lie for war
What IAEA reports on Iran’s nuclear energy/medicine, how US War Criminal 1% lie
US constantly violates war law: arrest Obama before ‘false flag’ war on Iran
Analogy: US wars on Iraq, Iran as US criminal gangster “business”
Of course, you have to verify the facts in order to see for yourself. In the example of the Iranian president’s speech, corporate media “reporting” this as a war threat to Israel is tragic-comic impossible given the crystal-clear content and context of the speech as encouraging Israel’s government to act lawfully with Palestinians.
It is verifiable in just a few minutes of reading the speech for yourself.
This is appropriately analogous to checking the instant replay of a pitch at a baseball game that appeared ten feet over the batter’s head to make sure it really was so outrageously outside the strike-zone that an “official” call that the pitch was a strike is stating a known lie. If it was even possible to be an error when it occurred, it becomes impossible to be an error when it was not “corrected” after seven years.
This one example is absolute evidence of an official propaganda arm of the same oligarchy spinning for unlawful war against Iran.
I’ve written articles revealing similar obvious war propaganda identical to what we witnessed before the US attacked Iraq. An example from my article on CNN’s “reporting”:
When we now know that all claims for war with Iraq were known lies as they were told (and verbally explained here), and CNN provides similar innuendo for war by an unsourced alleged report with concerns of what might occur in the future allegedly stated by an unnamed US source reporting on an unnamed foreign source, this is propaganda and not news.
You might need to read the above twice to feel the impact of this lying sack of spin 1% choice of communication.
For another damning example, Mike Wallace of the famed television show 60 Minutes won an Emmy for a contrived interview with President Ahmadinejad in 2006, where Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments encouraging democracy for Palestinians was edited to appear that he was hostile to Israel. You can verify this “emperor has no clothes” obvious lies and propaganda by watching the brief 5-minute clip for yourself in this article.
US corporate media lie to allow torture, a War Crime, as official US policy:
“Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media,” a paper published from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that reviewed the US’ four most-read newspapers, found from the 1930s to 2004 that The New York Times reported waterboarding as torture 82% of the time, and The Los Angeles Times did so 96%. After stories broke that the US was waterboarding “detainees” in US unlawful wars, the papers’ reporting of waterboarding as torture dropped to 1% and 5%, respectfully. In addition, after the US admitted to waterboarding, The Wall Street Journal called it torture in just 1 of 63 articles (2%), andUSA Today never called it torture.
US 1% corporate media lie to allow a million children to die excruciating deaths from poverty every month:
And check this “reporting” from the NY Times to bury after the comics the largest meeting of heads of state in world history. The topic was ending global poverty with proven solutions that, yes, was an investment of only 1% of the developed nations’ income. I had personal experience with this. Of course, the 1% in political “leadership” of both parties reneged on every promise to end poverty, with corporate media allowing the story, and a million children every month, to die.
Polling proves the 99% are waking to US corporate media lies:
Just as only one in five Americans report trust and satisfaction with their government (and here), Americans also perceive corporate media disinformation and are rejecting their “reporting.” According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, the majority of the American public see the US major media news organizations as politically biased, inaccurate, and uncaring. Among those who use the Internet, two-thirds report that major media news do not care about the people they report on, 59% say the news is inaccurate, 64% see bias, and 53% summarize their view on major media news as, “failing to stand up for America.” In their latest poll, “just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.”
A June 2010 Rasmussen poll found 66% of voters “angry” at the media, with 33% “very angry.” Rasmussen also found 70% “angry” at current federal government policies.
And how long has corporate media been lying to the 99%….?
The genesis of oligarchic control of American major media was reported in the US Congressional Record in 1917. US Congressperson Oscar Callaway claimed evidence that J.P. Morgan had purchased editorial control over 25 of the nation’s most influential publications in order to create public support for US entry into World War 1 and his new banking legislative victory: creation of the Federal Reserve system. Mr. Callaway’s colleagues voted down an official investigation. Read this to see how even Abraham Lincoln’s powerful prose to explain and document how US war on Mexico was in obvious treaty violation didn’t have the votes to stop it. And read this to see how ridiculous the spin for US involvement in WW1 was compared to the absence of any threat to national security, followed by the 1%’s violent suppression of political dissent allegedly protected by the 1st Amendment. Of course, corporate media owns the history textbook publishing companies that “taught” you this history with the lies of omission of Lincoln’s actionsto point to the rule of law and what you’ll recognize from WW1 history.
Related history is summarized and documented in this brief article, The news media at war, andMainstream Media: Presstitutes for the Rich and Powerful.
War pimps and sock puppets:
Importantly, disinformation programs infiltrate the comments of independent writers, probably including the source that you’re reading. Expect classic rhetorical fallacies such as slurs of my character, straw-man arguments, denial of facts, lies of omission of central facts, and whatever other BS (thank you, Professor Frankfurt, for your best-seller to help explain).
The discerning characteristic of all propaganda is non-factual bravado and specious argument in order to maintain manipulative control of an agenda and distract attention from the damning facts.
You, the reader, are sharp enough to discern such propaganda. Or if not, you’d better learn if you want to end the killing of millions, harm to billions, and looting of trillions of the 99%’s dollars.
Occupy will win as Dr. King and Gandhi discovered: through trial and error. What we’ve learned through their process is broad public and political communication of the facts with simultaneous formal policy requests to honor what we’ve already won under the law. When the 1% ignore the law, it helps our cause because more of the 99% recognize the 1% are guilty of massive crimes of war and money.
Attributed to Gandhi (but unsourced) is today’s pattern we see from political and corporate media “leadership”:
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win.
Martin King and Mohandas Gandhi demonstrated that transformative civic education causes the 99% to wake-up and achieve game-changing public policy. The difference with Occupy is that the criminals will be arrested and removed from power; not allowed to psychopathically give lip-service to Occupy in strategic retreat while retaining power.
This is what the criminal 1% do when confronted with real change:
Dr. King was assassinated by the 1% to stop his “Occupy DC” plan for the summer of 1968. This is a legal fact; the verdict of the King Family Trial against the US government. This, of course, was ignored by corporate media and never spoken of by the 1% in politics today when they “praise” Dr. King’s life.Read this for the full story (you owe it to Dr. King to know the full truth); here’s the trial evidence summary:
The overwhelming evidence of government complicity introduced and agreed as comprehensively valid by the jury includes the 111th Military Intelligence Group were sent to Dr. King’s location, and that the usual police protection was pulled away just before the assassination. Military Intelligence set-up photographers on a roof of a fire station with a clear view to Dr. King’s balcony. 20th Special Forces Group had an 8-man sniper team at the assassination location on that day. Memphis police ordered the scene where multiple witnesses reported as the source of shooting cut down of their bushes that would have hid a sniper team. Along with sanitizing a crime scene, police abandoned investigative procedure to interview witnesses who lived by the scene of the shooting.
Please let that penetrate: the criminal 1% killed the US’ greatest Civil Rights figure in our nation’s history, our strongest voice for peace on Earth, and chose vicious dictatorial domination rather than confront Dr. King’s voice for Occupy.
Corporate media lies to this day so the 99% do not know the 1% killed Dr. King.
How dare anyone informed of the facts support the 1%?
Take heart, for Gandhi and Dr. King live within our hearts and minds. Please imagine: how could you have helped the Civil Rights movement if Dr. King had asked? What would you have done if Gandhi asked for your help?
In the converse: would you be proud today of rejecting Dr. King’s direct invitation for partnership in a Revolution for Civil Rights when he was only asking for public education on the clear letter and spirit of the 14th Amendment? Would you be proud today of rejecting Gandhi’s direct request for partnership in civic revolution to end the evils of unwanted imperialism by the strong against the weak?
Would you be proud to reject Occupy when the facts my colleagues and I document become “emperor has no clothes” obvious?
How Mr. Gandhi and Dr. King saw their civic educational challenge:
“One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding… can be removed.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian Opinion(1 October 1903)
“‘A time comes when silence is betrayal.’ That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
I do not place myself in Gandhi and Dr. King’s company, and I assert that We the People are like in spirit. We will stand to arrest these murderers of millions, torturers, and stop the destructive use of trillions of our families’ and children’s dollars.
Occupy in the steps from Gandhi and MLK are simple to understand:
Because the facts are so easily verified and all on our side, education of anyone and everyone is one component. This is becoming a sophisticated and multi-front campaign similar to the Civil Rights Movement.
Create public and political will. Gandhi demanded political independence of India. Dr. King demanded equal treatment under the law. Occupy demands an end of unlawful wars, return of Constitutional rights, and the end of parasitic criminal fraud of trillions of our dollars every year. The fact of “emperor has no clothes” obvious UNLAWFUL war is a trigger for those of us with Oaths to defend the US Constitution to refuse all orders for unlawful acts and to arrest those who issue them.
An elegant way for peaceful surrender of War Criminals and “banksters.” I’m happy to support Truth and Reconciliation, and also willing to arrest the criminal 1% right now without it. The criminal 1% need to choose: join 100% of humanity with what they can do for us in Scrooge conversions, or face the consequences of the law when the light exposes you.
There are related issues with war, economic oligarchy, and propaganda that are documented by other writers, that can and should be included in Occupy. To keep this paper relatively brief, I’ve kept the topics limited. These related issues include torture, unlimited detention, extrajudicial assassination (all of which are unconstitutionally applied, including to American citizens), unaccountable elections on electronic voting machines that exit poll data prove are “fixed,” and more; all or which cannot exist in a society worthy of the title, “free.”
Occupy is the 99%’s independence from the crimes and lies of the 1%. Occupy’s position is congruent to America’s beginning of independence from the crimes and lies of the 1% in 1776:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.”
US Declaration of Independence. July 4, 1776.
Occupy is what 21st century democracy looks like.
Carl Herman, Washington’s Blog