Virgina Weldon, a regular correspondent writes:

Dear Danny: There are so many incredible stories that happened during 2005that one is hard-pressed to select one over the other, but this one has allthe earmarks of a real doozie and portends events that will play out in our immediate future. I refer to the Bird Flu Pandemic and to the Bird Flu Vaccine bill just passed by the House and sent to the Senate for ratification. LegitGov.org has amassed all the data and it is staggering. Please check out here: http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities.html. In the world of George Walker Bush paranoia runs deep and, as far as I’m concerned, ethnic cleansing (like data mining) could very easily become a domestic import as well as an overseas export.

KNOCK, KNOCK, NY TIMES

Ms Teddi Curtis writes:

“The news that isn’t fit to print in a timely manner, according to the New York Times. Holding a story for a year! Unbelievable.

“The single most reprehensible act of the news providers (I guess that’s what you call people who aren’t journalists, but act like them) is the lack of coverage of the fraud of our 2004 election. With, I assume, a straight face we are told that our decades of exit polling is incorrect while the Ukraine’s first exit poll is exactly right — in the same month, in the same papers. I know I’m off a year, but 2005 should have been the time we were reading all about it.

“Now our elections are just as representative as those held in the Banana Republics.We are being “lead” by a man who wasn’t elected twice. Just one more “unprecedented” to add to his list. Give the Smirking Chimp his banana.”

OIL–GOING, GOING….

Wendi Meremark says it all comes down to oil—and its disappearence:

”In January, Bush swore to “protect the Constitution” — it seems so long ago for him to just be getting started in second term, still without ever having counted ballots; then bobble-headed into his producer’s springtime, for Hitler, in Germany, burning Social Security books. During December, Bush swore at Congressmen (three reported) in his Evil Office, “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face; it’s only a goddamned piece of paper.” End quote.

“My bookends for 2005. In between are 2222 questions: What’s the noble cause, RummyBushCheney Condi? Hey, hey, neo con, whose families are you killing on? And ALL the questions go unanswered.

“Whether or how much it is the meadia’s fault and how the media labels lies they report, is beside my point that the Biggest Story that was MISSED was that ALL the people’s or reporters’ questions were missed, ignored, delayed, not answered. ALL of them, nevermind what the different subjects are. NO Answer. THAT’s the shape of a guilty secret.

“It helps to sort through the chaff-news nonsense, Danny, if you have a Master Narrative where every story relates. We, the people, humankind, DO: Our history. The narrative is oil, the plot is there’s less of it than we had….

“Media is the bandwagon of military industry politics as long as car companies buy the ads that pay for it, not solar panels and garden seeds companies.

“To preview the next chapter, in 2006 the story unfolds that boom-years Texans told tall tales about the oil they had, and were imitated internationally at other oil discoveries, so global estimates are not really there. Now the ground invaded for its oil has nearly empty wells. Imagine, liars were lied to.

“I see this reads long to spell out the narrative and motives of a theme in the media insanity, the method in the madness as it were. Yet we can build on this reference. Perhaps some length allowance can be made for the Biggest Story of our lifetimes. Oil rus out, as 2005 tips us off, which explains all the other news events.”

COMEDY OF TERROR

Terry Jones of Monty Python has some awards to give out to Bair, Cheneyand Rumsfeld:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1673894,00.html

FINAL NOTE TO THOSE WHO SPY ON US

Sam Smith of Progressive Review wrote a a beautiful essay yesterday. Here’s part of it: “BUT YOU DON’T KNOW ME”

”I don’t know for sure that you’re out there at all, but from what I read and hear there’s a pretty good chance, so I thought I would pass this along.

You may be tapping my phone, scanning my e-mails and collating my other electronic ephemera, but you don’t know me.

Any writer can tell you this: you don’t reveal character or describean individual by just dumpster diving for data. Your efforts are not only intrusive, they’re ineffective as well.

An individual is a product of experiences, some of which - thoughinfluential - may have been lost to memory, some of which – thoug searing - may never be mentioned again, and some of which - thoughexhilarating - may lack the words to describe them.

“You are eavesdropping only on my front to the world. If I am down, I try not to bring my friends down with me. If I am mad about some public act, I try not to bore my friends too much about it. If I am mad about some private act, I try for the calm and restraint I do not feel. If I am really happy, I often lack the words to express it well. And if I have been given something, I try for gratitude even though Ihave no idea what to do with the damn thing.

“You do not know my dreams, my fears, my stupid excesses of doubt, orhow I alternately rebel against, resent or am resigned to the entropy of aging. You do not know how sad I am about the world that the people you work for will leave my children and their children. You do not know that I do not like vinegar, have never read Joyce’s “Ulysses,”sometimes fall asleep while waiting my turn in a board game, neverwatch football, or that two of my uncles were killed in wartime service to our country. You do not know that my utopia would have,above all, no need for dentists as well having “This Land is My Land” as our national anthem.

“If you were to really know me, you would need to hear hundreds ofstories, visit hundreds of places, and meet hundreds of people. Only a few of them are listed on my credit cards.

“But you are not only misinformed. You are also a thief. You arestealing my privacy, my civil liberties, my peace of mind, and theincalculable pleasure of not having to worry about what someone else is doing to you. You are also a vandal. You are throwing rocks at the Constitution, scrawling graffiti on our national conscience, wrecking our reputation, and scratching the face of America.

“And still you do not know me.”

VALERIE PLAME’S COVER BLOWN AGAIN

Reuters reports:

” HOUSTON, Texas (Reuters) — The Washington couple at the heart of the CIA leak investigation had their cover blown by their small son as they tried to sneak away on vacation Thursday.

“My daddy’s famous, my mommy’s a secret spy,” declared the 5-year-old of his parents, former diplomat Joe Wilson and retired CIA operative Valerie Plame.”

And on that note, the final greeting. May old acquaintances return next week.

Happy News Year from your news dissector, Danny Schechter, still doing it after all these years.

Comments: dissector@mediachannel.org