Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman | Did the US Supreme Court Just Elect John McCain?

According to Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman in The Free Press, “The US Supreme Court has just dealt a serious blow to voters’ rights that could help put John McCain in the White House by eliminating tens of thousands of voters who generally vote Democratic.”

HAROLD MYERSON (WP) ON BARACK OBAMA AND THE WHITE WORKING CLASS

CHINA: ATTACKS DALAI LAMA–_WAS ALMOST ATTACKED

China’s campaign against the Dalai Lama continues with unrestrained vehemence.:ie: Dalai Lama is spewing lies

While these attacks on the Dalai Lama are polemical and exaggerated, there is a basis for China’s paranoia. Read this: THERE WERE PLANS TO NUKE CHINA!

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Dwight D. Eisenhower overruled some of his military commanders in the summer of 1958, ordering them not to use nuclear weapons against China if communist forces blockaded the Taiwan Strait, according to declassified Air Force documents.

Eisenhower “made it clear that the Chinese would be given a warning with conventional explosives before he would authorize dropping of the deadlier ordnance” on Chinese territories, according to the documents made public by George Washington University’s National Security Archive.

The president had the support of a congressional resolution to use force in defense of Taiwan. His decision not to use nuclear weapons still left them available if needed for subsequent attacks, according to the newly released narrative by a contemporary Air Force historian, Bernard C. Nalty.

Disclosure of the top-secret document was one in a collection obtained by a freedom-of-information lawsuit filed by the Archive after more than a decade of requests that the documents be declassified, said William Burr of the Archive.

As the crisis grew, according to the papers, five B-47 bombers on Guam went on alert in mid-August to conduct nuclear raids against Chinese airfields.

MURDOCH IS

OUR MEDIA MISHIGAS

My Pastor Is Holier Than Yours By Mary Pitt

The mainstream media is having a field day with this minutia while parading “experts” on both politics and religion across our screen. Hours of air time are spent on this trivia while the soldiers keep dying in Iraq, the criminality of the Pentagon policies, the brutal treatment, not only of our prisoners, but of our “all-volunteer” servicewomen, is conveniently swept under the rug and onto the back pages of the newspapers.

MEDDLING AT WSJ?

WSJ oversight group miffed over Murdoch meddling

It took a mere four months for News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch to be accused of
meddling with the editorial affairs of his newly acquired Wall Street Journal.
An independent committee tasked with ensuring that Murdoch did not interfere
with the business paper’s editorial decisions accused the mogul of doing just
that yesterday, a week after managing editor Marcus Brauchli said he was
stepping down. “Although our charter does not directly envision a process for
dealing with a resignation, committee members expressed the view that learning
of the Brauchli matter after the fact failed to meet the letter and the spirit
of the agreement,” a statement released last night said. The committee was a
condition of the Bancroft family’s sale of Dow Jones to News Corp., which went
through in December. There’s been much speculation over the circumstances of
Brauchli’s departure, reportedly because the 46-year-old felt like key newsroom
decisions had been taken out of his hands. Many WSJ employees had complained
bitterly of the Murdoch takeover, worrying that editorial quality would be
compromised.

For more on Murdoch’s Empire–see Marvin Kitman’s Mediachannel.org exclusive today.

“Marines on Taliban Killing Hunt!” Shoot Afghans in Afghanistan, but It’s Wright Who is Outrageous
By Jay Janson, published 04/30/08, OpEdNews

Albert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, Dies at 102

“That perception, of union… all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light … joy, oneness and blissful security.”

“Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom … I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.”

“LSD could be used to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place in nature and help curb society’s ultimately self-destructive degradation of the natural world.”

Dr. Hofmann “succeeded in synthesizing the active compounds in the Psilocybe mexicana mushroom, which he named psilocybin and psilocin. He also isolated the active compound in morning glory seeds, which the Mazatec also used as an intoxicant, and found that its chemical structure was close to that of LSD.”

Dr. Hofmann called LSD “medicine for the soul.”

ABC: Father of LSD Takes Final Trip

BBC: Albert Hoffman, the inventor LSD has died.

NOTE: The U.S. government banned LSD in 1966 and other countries followed suit.

Hofmann maintained this was unfair, arguing that the drug was not addictive. He
repeatedly argued for the ban to be lifted to allow LSD to be used in medical
research.

Last December, Swiss authorities decided to allow LSD for psychotherapy in
exceptional cases.

“For me, this is a very big wish come true. I always wanted to see LSD get its
proper place in medicine,” he told Swiss TV at the time.

ON THE CANDIDATE AND THE REVEREND

Mike Whitney: Barack Obama held a press conference yesterday and made it official; his friendship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is over, terminated, kaput. He would no longer associate with a man who believed that the United States of America could do horrible things to its people or that 9-11 might have been the result of US foreign policy. As Obama said, that’s just “outrageous.

COMMENT BY AE STUTOR:

Let me share something with you first as a human being and hopefully to you as a media insider. What the media forced Barack Obama to do yesterday, that is to disavow any connection to Rev Wright, was tantamount to spitting on the constitution. When is it ever appropriate for a mob of people, in this case the MSM, to gang up on a person and demand that the person (Obama) think and do what they (Media Pundits and MSM journalists) want them to think and do? Whatever happened to the concept of freedom, that is free to choose? Whatever happened to reasoned, educated people not only stating but practicing “you may not like what I’m saying but I’ll defend your right to say it until death?”

LETTER RE A NEW PBS SERIES FROM A VIEWER IN THE TWIN CITIES

Willard B. Shapira writes:

The 10-hour documentary “Carrier “on PBS (and Twin Cities Public TV) is, in my view, nothing more than a free commercial for the U.S. Navy. As a member of TPT, I strenuously object to whatever amount of my annual pledge to TPT is keeping “Carrier” afloat and I intend to follow the instructions given me by a courteous and efficient member of TPT’s Member Services department April 29 to lodge my objection. You may wish to do likewise or opposite.

She told me one could voice an opinion on any program to PBS’ ombudsman Michael Getler via www.pbs.org/ombudsman/feedback.html. She also said that if there is a particular program you wish to discuss, go to the website for the program. She said you can find most websites using www.google.com by entering the name of the program (Carrier in this case), then a space, then the letters PBS or tpt.

I fully intend to do just that and specifically, I want to know when PBS is going to do a 10-hour documentary on us peaceniks who not only deplore the war-mongering mission but the huge waste of taxpayer dollars on the cost and maintenance of the super-carrier “Nimitz” featured in the program produced by super-patriot Mel Gibson.

LETTER FROM STUDENT IN INDONESIA

It Is heartening to receive letters like this. Earlier today I was interviewed by a student at a British university on the media coverage of the war, and then I got this letter:

Muhamad Nur Hidayat wrote:

Hi Danny, how are you. I know you must be really busy.

I just want to let you know that, after I arrived in Yogyakarta, I have organized a movie festival in my campus.

I have a discussion group named Orong-orong (i.e.: a species of nocturnal insect whose sound really disturbs people sleeping at night), and have started the movie festival every weekend in my campus (Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta). We have been doing so in the last two months. The audience was great (mainly from English Letters and Education students), they respond positively, since we play documentary movies that are very rarely found in Indonesia….

And we wonder if we could play your WMD movie in the festival. I have watched the trailer in youtube, it’s just important.

We wonder if you could help us send the movie. And one of my friends had an idea that, if possible, you could send me a special 5-minute video/audio, just to introduce the movie and say hello to our audience here (and to support us). We think that it would be so cool and interesting. And we would have a justification that we really exist, since we are in contact with one of the famous movie makers.

I know it sounds stupid, but that is our last hope. None of us in Orong-orong has a credit card, so we cannot buy any movies from the internet.

I am sorry for the inconvenience, but we are not shy to do so.

Of course I am sending WMD and a special statement as well.

HUMOR: ANDY BOROWITZ ON THE “DEFRIENDING” OF REVEREND WRIGHT

In an act that campaign insiders said indicated an irrevocable break with his former pastor, Sen. Barack Obama today de-friended the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Facebook.

Sen. Obama’s comments about Rev. Wright on Tuesday seemed to indicate that a total rift with his former minister was underway, but his decision to de-friend Rev. Wright on Facebook underscores the seriousness of his decision.

At a press conference in Gary, Indiana, chief Obama strategist David Axelrod said that Sen. Obama had to de-friend the Rev. Wright on Facebook “because he was getting really annoying.”

“Every day, Rev. Wright was sending Sen. Obama new Facebook applications like ‘What Superhero Are You?’ and ‘What 1980’s Toy Are You?’” Mr. Axelrod said. “After awhile, enough is enough.”

This may be funnier: Larry King asked Jon Stewart if America was ready for a woman or a black president.

Jon looked at him quizzically and said, “This is such a non-question…. Did anyone ask us in 2000 if Americans were ready for a moron?”

Yuk.

That’s my May Day Blog. Tomorrow I will have an analysis of recent economic developments.

To mark the anniversary of the day that peace broke out in Vietnam.I spent the night at New York’s wonderful Viet Cafe in Tribeca with friends and superchef Lan Cao. We saw a slide show of photos I had never seen before of celebrations in Hanoi in April 1975, and was then moved by singing and a passionate talk by Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary who discussed his visit to Vietnam and the failure of many Americans to come to grips with the legacy of the war. He cited the lack of compensation to the many, many victims of Agent Orange spraying.

We also heard about Vietnam’s turn towards being a successful market economy, and becoming a close trading partner with the United States. The new Economist has a report on business mania in a country we were told to fear as THE ENEMY and Communist to the core.

Thanks to various people who responded to my appeal for web and other assistance and I hope to get back to you soonest. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org