BREAKING NEWS

Press Release: “I thought you would be interested to know that Carrie Underwood has been named the 2008 “Female Celebrity Smile of the Year” by Dear Doctor, the nation’s leading consumer dentistry magazine.”

US ESCALATING CAMPAIGN AGAINST IRAN
CONSUMER CONFIDENCE FALLS AGAIN
PENTAGON MEDIA MEDDLING IS ILLEGAL

Join me in a media watch. Today, April 30 is the anniversary of the “fall” of Saigon, the military takeover that finally and decisively ended our Vietnam War which went back to US support for the French in the late forties. It was a military victory for the people then considered by our government and media to be the insurgents, the guerillas, the terrorists, the communists, the bad, bad guys. (Now we recognize and basically have good relations with these people in a flourishing Vietnam.)

Let’s see how this anniversary is marked in our media, and whether any connection is drawn to the war in Iraq in which the Green Zone is now being bombarded by the people we now see as a faceless force of the uncivilized. (Notice how the progressive term “Green” was appropriated to name the area expropriated for the headquarters of our occupation.) When the US Embassy was attacked in Saigon, it was the beginning of the end.

The “Liberation”, as the North Vietnamese military and the Southern based NLF called it then was not pain-free or injustice-free. It was part of a brutal war that seemed to go on forever. Many people suffered in the repression that followed. No question. Many more suffered in the war itself. Need I remind us about napalm, torture in tiger cages, assasinaton by the Phoenix program, agent orange, massive bombing etc etc. How many more would have suffered if the war went on is never asked. 50 thousand Americans died and uncounted millions of South East Asians.

I had been in Vietnam months earlier and was relieved when that murderous ordeal came to an end, but it has taken decades for that country and ours to move beyond it if we ever will.

With John McCain running for President, that war is likely to stay with us. To his admirers, he was a noble POW hero. To some of his detractors, he is still the pilot of a plane that bombed civilians in the city of Hanoi. That is considered a war crime in most countries, just not our own.

No one thought we would “lose’ the war the way we did. Many don’t believe we are losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT) the way we are. Will history repeat itself? Given the balance of forces, probably not exactly, but when we look back as we will, we will see it all as big a mistake, if not a crime, as the Vietnam war that proceeded it.

And no surge can or will change that.

SAM GARDINER: IRAN MAY BE NEXT

Presentation on Iranian involvement in Iraq is supposed to be made in Baghdad this week. After that an ultimatum will be issued. According to CBS News this evening the State Department is working on the wording of the message to Iran.

STEVE WEISSMAN ON TRUTH OUT: “when Senator John McCain serenaded reporters last April with his ‘Bomb Bomb Iran,’ I had to wonder. Was this a taste of his aging flyboy humor? Or was he telling us what to expect should he ever become president? We may never find out. If Vice President Dick Cheney has his way, he will beat McCain to the punch, possibly as soon as late May, after President George W. Bush returns from celebrating the 60th anniversary of Israel’s creation.”

BRAIN INJURIES MULTIPLY FOR IRAQ VETS

NOW BUSH IS CONCERNED: NYT: Saying Times Are Difficult, Bush Presses Congress to Act

The president admits the economy will not be easy to “fix,” and calls on Congress to expand energy production, stem the mortgage crisis and reduce subsidies to farmers. Of course he blames the Democrats as you would expect.

BUSH’S ENEMIES LIST

RELEASE: In the May/June issue on newsstands today, Radar magazine exposes that for decades the federal government has been developing a highly classified plan that would override the Constitution in the event of a terrorist attack. It’s also compiling a secret list of citizens who could face detention under martial law.

Everyday invasive government surveillance networks are giving each of us an electronic full cavity search. Every time you make a call, surf the web or purchase something with a credit card, information maybe harvested and socked away in a variety of massive databases, allegedly including a highly classified one called Main Core, designed to flag potential trouble makers in case of an emergency.

I will have more on this storytomorrow.
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UN sets up food crisis task force

Secretary General Ban said the world faced “widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale” because of soaring food prices. …

Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law Reports Sheldon Rampton

The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week’s exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, “No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.”

CONGRATS TO PR WATCH’S JOHN STAUBER

Debate on Pentagon Media Program finally making it on air.Watch Stauber debate on the Jim Lehrer News Hour.

One big irony, Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner was one of the News Hour’s leading military commentators, and also one of the first to blow the whistle on the way the Pentagon used the media and the way the media allowed itself to be used. You can see him critiquing this program of information dominance in my film WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception. (Http://www.wmdthefilm.com) But in all the time he was with the “show” , he was never asked about, or allowed to report on, the subject he was researching and had the goods on. It took years for PBS—which was unfortunately contributing to the fear machine to discuss this issue on the New Hour, without of course, any discussion of the NewsHOur’s own role.

Jeff Cohen | Military Propaganda Pushed Me off TV

Truthout contributor Jeff Cohen writes: “In the fall of 2002, week after week in debates televised on MSNBC, I argued vigorously against invading Iraq. I used every possible argument that might sway mainstream viewers - no real threat, cost, instability. But as the war neared, my debates were terminated.”

DIRELAND: RIGHT WING TRIUMPHS IN ROME

The Italian right, headed by corrupt billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, which scored a stunning victory in parliamentary elections at the beginning of April, has also just won the municipal election on Sunday and Monday in Rome. In a special dispatch, DIRELAND’s Rome correspondent, veteran ex-pat journalist Judy Harris, explains the reasons for these dual conservative victories.

WORLD ACTIVISTS AND INTELLECTUALS FEAR FOR BOLIVIA
“The Conspiracy to Divide Bolivia Must Be Denounced”
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Rigoberta Menchú, Noam Chomsky…

Forwarded by MICHEL COLLON - 30 of April 08

The situation in Bolivia is each day more serious. It is now our duty to support the President Evo Morales, by signing and forwarding this petition. You can give your support to cabohorquez@gmail.com or to yamp@min.cult.cu

The process of changes in favor of the Bolivian majority is at risk of being brutally restrained. The rise to power of an Indigenous president with unprecedented support in that country and his programs of popular benefits and recovery of the natural resources have had to face the conspiracies of the oligarchy and United States interference from the very beginning.

In recent days the increase in conspiracy has reached its climax. The subversive and unconstitutional actions of the oligarchic groups to try to divide the Bolivian nation reflect the racist and elitist minds of these sectors and constitute a very dangerous precedent not only for the country’s integrity, but for other countries in our region.

Faced with this situation the signers below would like to express their support for the government of Evo Morales Ayma, for his policies for change and for the sovereign constituent process of the Bolivian people. At the same time we reject the so-called Santa Cruz Autonomy Statute due to its unconstitutionality and the attempt against the unity of a nation of our America.

GUARDIAN: CAMBODIA INVADED BY CAPITALISTS

Almost half of Cambodia has been sold to foreign speculators in the past 18 months - and hundreds of thousands who fled the Khmer Rouge are homeless once more…

Shortly after Hun Sen, Cambodia’s prime minister, came to power in 1985, frenzied landgrabbing began: influential political allies and wealthy business associates raced to claim land that the Khmer Rouge had seized, gobbling up such large chunks of the cities, forests and paddy fields that Cambodians used to say the rich were eating the country. By 2006, the World Bank estimated that 40,000 had been made homeless in Phnom Penh alone….

In July 2007, Hun Sen, gambling on his people’s tenuous connection with the land, changed the designation of the southern islands so they could be sold. The forests, lakes, beaches and reefs - and the lives of the thousands of residents - were quietly transferred into the hands of private western developers. Arguing that Cambodia could become a tourist magnet to challenge Thailand, the prime minister began a fire sale of mainland beaches. By March this year, virtually all Cambodia’s accessible and sandy coast was in private hands, either Cambodian or foreign. Those who lived or worked there were turfed out - some jailed, others beaten, virtually all denied meaningful compensation.

Eric Gemmell: ERITREANS MARCH AGAINST THEIR WAR

CRAWFORD - Some are calling the potential for a senseless war, but Eritrean-Americans want the U.S. government to step in to stop any bloodshed.

While President Bush was not in town this weekend in Crawford, that didn’t stop nearly a hundred Eritrean-Americans to take to the streets demonstrating for peace in the small East African country that borders the Red Sea.

Several years ago, neighboring Ethiopia took control of a small part of Eritrea starting a three year war. Now tensions have been mounting in that area of the two nations and they want the President Bush to step in and curtail its funding from Ethiopia.