What's in Rossis Mail Box
DCPers:
http://wcco.com/realitycheck
Look at the top right of the screen on this link where it has superimposed "Partly True" - You can click on 'Play' for the Reality Check segment that I saw on the 10 p.m. news that they aired about that revolting war propaganda commercial. If you have dial-up, it may be as jerky on the playback as I got the first time through. Once you get through that jerky stuff, hit play again and it runs smoothly, just as it was aired when I saw it on TV. Pat Kessler is the one who does the Reality Check segments for WCCO-TV (CBS affiliate) in the Twin Cities. He didn't get as detailed in debunking the myths found in that stupid commercial as I would like to have seen, but for a Lamestream Media TV station, it was a good start toward telling at least one or two truths.
I got too wordy, as usual, but I had my say-so anyway... and I'm sharing the letter with you. It's more of a regional issue (at the moment, unless the national part of the organization that financed the stupid ad runs it in other states), so I don't think it's appropriate for the blog, or I'd post it there. I think I should probably send this to my rep or one of my senators, too....
IF - only IF - WCCO listens, even if I did get too wordy (and hopefully others who may have written in), they will take that damned pack of lies off the air.....
I've been up all night with this, it feels like someone is sticking a sharp pointed knife into the small of my back where it was fused because I've been sitting too long, so I gotta go lay down for a while....
Hope you have a great day!
Bev
NonnyO
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pat Kessler:
I was pleasantly astonished to see Reality Check debunking the war ad that has so horrified me since I first saw it a few days ago. I already checked out the web site for the sponsors of the ad after the second time I saw the commercial, checked out the name of the people who paid for the ad, Googled the organization, and I checked out the Wikipedia web site about their connections to Bush - and, incidentally, their lawyer is the same person who is the lawyer for the Swift-Boaters, FYI. And, no. PFA is NOT "similar to" MoveOn.org. MoveOn.org at least attempts to tell people the truth. I would have selected the phrase "war facts and war propaganda" and not "war politics." The commercial is pure war propaganda based on lies, and you know it.
9/11 could have been prevented if Bush had read his Aug. 2001 PDB and acted on it. He CHOSE to ignore adequate intelligence and LET 9/11 happen; intelligence legally gathered BEFORE the Patriot Act, I might add. Bush's monumental stupidity is the only reason 9/11 happened; he could have prevented it. We were NOT 'attacked' on 9/11. The individuals who carried out the plane hijackings were criminals who committed terrorist acts, yes, but they were not representing any government, so 9/11 was NOT an 'act of war' committed by any country. That's a delusion fostered on us by Bu$hCo and Pentagon war propagandists - a delusion repeated or implied by Bush and/or his administration at least weekly to keep some kind of false support for their illegal war in Iraq and to now sound the drumbeat for another illegal war in Iran. I suspect Bu$hCo thought people would run out and enlist after 9/11 like they did after Pearl Harbor, so he and his administration may have assumed they would have a ready military. That didn't happen. Instead, our military is over-extended, our Guard and Reserve troops are not here to protect us on our own soil where they belong, but overseas fighting an illegal war of choice, and we just do not have the military personnel to attack another country. China and other countries hold the loans that are financing our government (gee, ya think the tax breaks for corporations and rich people were so wise now?), and all they have to do is call in their loans and this whole nation is bankrupt, not merely in so much debt that our great-grandchildren will have to pay it off. (And, I might add, a bankrupt nation is in no position to finance a defensive war if any nations who hold our loans that finance our treasury call them in and demand that we either pay up or become their territory....)
You indicated Minnesota is the "test audience" for the ad. I beg to differ. WCCO is heard/seen not only in MN, but WI, IA, and if you have repeaters around Alexandria (as KSTP does), the ad would also be heard/seen in SD and ND (and the middle and some northern sections of MN). PFA is killing five birds with one stone, so to speak, by running a commercial like their war propaganda ad in all Twin Cities TV stations. The "test audience" is technically MN, WI, IA, SD, and ND. I think I saw this same war commercial air when 'Boston Legal' was on ABC Sun. night, too. If PFA is running the same commercials on all Twin Cities TV stations, they're saturating the market to target voters in five states, and they already know that, even if you don't seem to realize it. The Rovian slime machine knows exactly what it is doing, and they know how to use media as a brainwashing tool with constantly repeating lies and false innuendo. They're running a war propaganda ad full of lies in the bluest area of the north central states to attempt to gain voters in this fall's election, as well as convert people to believe their war propaganda and support them! Additionally, in an effort to get support for attacking Iran (before the Iranian Oil Bourse is set to open ca. March 20, and there is information on the internet about a March attack of Iran, just as the US attacked Iraq when they opened their oil bourse), the neoCons need to get any kind of war support they can, lies or not.... D-u-h!
After your Reality Check segment ran, Don Shelby's comment made it sound like WCCO runs war propaganda commercials as public service announcements. That's patently false, since you (Kessler) said the ad was paid for by Progress for America. Shelby also said WCCO "won't air them if they are deemed outside the bounds of responsible content." In my humble opinion, running propaganda commercials containing lies and advocating a war of choice based on lies is WAY out of the bounds of "responsible content." If you want to take the moral high ground, you won't air such lies, even if you lose money in the process. I personally believe the war commercial is a neoCon way of getting their propaganda (and repeated lies) out to the American people (in five states, not just one state as a 'test audience')... a 'psy-ops war' against the American people to keep the sheeple in line, terrified of their own shadows and ready and willing to give up their rights to gain some false sense of security, and to gain voters and war supporters for this fall's election. If you're a student of history, this is all deja vu.
With torture going on in Gitmo, more photos released about the torture at Abu Ghraib, a "detention" facility being built in California by Halliburton, renditions, our civil rights being taken away from us under the Patriot Act, illegal surveillance, and an illegal, unjust, immoral, and unethical war of choice based on LIES, corporations writing laws that are enacted by Congress so those same corporations can make a profit from taxpayers, rigged elections because of voting machines that can be hacked into (those are just the highlights of the ills afflicting this country, thanks to Bu$hCo and our Clueless Congress!), America is now no different than Germany under Hitler, nor are we free of the paranoia being projected onto us like what happened during the McCarthy era. If you haven't checked out 'unitary executive' and found that a man named Schmitt used the 'unitary executive theory' to get Hitler into power with questionable 'legal' maneuvers as Hitler was picking and choosing which laws he did or did not want to follow (yes, just like Bush!), you really need to check it out (the background is on the Wikipedia web site - just Google "unitary executive"). The parallels between getting Hitler into power and Bush playing a wannabe dictator will make the hair on the back of your neck stand out; we are already a corporate fascist nation in all but name only. Check out the web site for the Project for the New American Century, while you're at it.... Jeb Bush and a few other familiar political names are on it, and their aim is world domination. If that doesn't make your blood run cold, you don't have any blood....
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
Personally, I am deeply ashamed to be an American right now. This America is NOT why my ancestors came here (some came to keep from having their government impose religion on them; and yes, some were Separatists who came on the Mayflower) or why other ancestors of mine fought in the Revolutionary War. (Seeing a propaganda war commercial didn't help my shame factor since I only read a couple of days ago that something like $7 million is being spent on propaganda in Iraq... or was it $7 billion? Now I'm wondering if some of that money was spent on the war propaganda commercial you have been running.)
And, please stop saying we were "mislead" into war, or that the al Qaida - Iraq connection is "misleading," as you labeled the connection in the war commercial. Politicians say "mislead," too, and it sounds so deceptively innocent. We were not merely "mislead." The TRUTH is, we were LIED to in the buildup for the Iraq war (among many other LIES), and the exact same thing is being done about Iran - and I don't for one second believe any of the things the administration is currently saying about Iran, either, just as I never believed any of the LIES we were told before the illegal, unjust, immoral, and unethical attack of Iraq! (On the other hand, I now rely on the internet for my primary news source, which gives me facts and opinions from overseas media as well as American, since I can no longer trust American media to give me FACTS without the 'interpretation' and spin of talking heads, most of whom seem to be neoCons who refuse to let anyone express any differing opinions than Bu$hCo warmongering party line.) War propaganda commercials only reinforce the LIES told to us by Bush and his Criminal Cabal.
Please be responsible about airing war propaganda commercials containing lies. If I were in the position of your general manager or station owner, I would have outright refused to run the war propaganda commercials just viewing them as a preview; the ad with it's lies would never have gotten to the air waves in the first place. It's not censorship to refuse to air lies and propaganda for an unpopular war of choice based on LIES. (Would you air a commercial for Nazi causes just for the money? Then why do it for an administration that is acting eerily like Hitler and his goons before WWII?) If you really want to become a TV station known for airing balanced and fair news, it would be morally responsible to stop airing commercials containing lies and war propaganda. It's the only ethical thing to do....
Thank you.
Sincerely,
P.S. You had a news blurb about an Andrew Kemple who died in Iraq, but didn't connect him with any branch of the military. Was he another mercenary with DynCorp or KBR, both Halliburton subsidiaries? I know of three other MN men killed in Iraq who were mercenaries in the employ of "private security" companies, and news broadcasts have listed two of them as DynCorp "private security" employees. A "private security" employee by any other name is still a mercenary, and still has the job because of the salary that is way above a military wage; patriotism has nothing to do with being a mercenary whose loyalty to a corporation or a man is bought and paid for - mercenaries do not take any oaths to 'protect and defend the Constitution' of any country, including the USA, and mercenaries are certainly NOT 'heroes'....
Neither are the US military 'heroes' - they're doing their job, but they are not responsible for stupid decisions made by politicians who start illegal wars, and they most certainly are NOT 'protecting and defending "our" freedom at home' in an illegal, unjust, immoral, and unethical war of choice based on lies in Iraq. (The US, under Bush's orders, attacked an innocent country that now has to defend itself from us, so our military is not defending anything anywhere - except maybe defending and protecting oil wells in Iraq that have been illegally seized by the US government.) If the soldiers followed the judgment at Nuremberg, they would not have to follow any orders that are illegal or immoral, because 'following orders' is not a just defense for committing war crimes. This stupid war in Iraq could stop if (1) Congress refused to fund the war in Iraq (and repealed the war powers they may have illegally given Bush for attacking in Afghanistan - he illegally ordered the attack on Iraq but was never given the authority to do so; under the Constitution only Congress can authorize war); and (2) soldiers refused to follow illegal and immoral orders; and (3) the House started impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney - remember, there's precedent for impeachment based on lies; Bush and Cheney (and their administration) have committed high crimes and misdemeanors by breaking all kinds of international and national laws and treaties as well as war crimes. (Nobody died when Clinton lied about a blow job!)
Cheney did a study about the cost of private military for Halliburton ca. 1992, and was hired to work for Halliburton shortly thereafter. Halliburton and/or their subsidiaries now get no-bid government contracts regularly, and I still do not know WHO guards the detainees at Gitmo where Halliburton is building an addition to the facilities, but I've never heard of any regular military personnel in Gitmo. I suspect Halliburton (DynCorp and/or KBR) mercenaries are in charge of the prison camps in Gitmo. Or, possibly Blackwater mercenaries (they are not part of Halliburton, but Blackwater was mentioned in PBS' Frontline piece on "Private Warriors" as one of the American companies that hires mercenaries). That might be something else for you to check out...?
http://wcco.com/realitycheck
Look at the top right of the screen on this link where it has superimposed "Partly True" - You can click on 'Play' for the Reality Check segment that I saw on the 10 p.m. news that they aired about that revolting war propaganda commercial. If you have dial-up, it may be as jerky on the playback as I got the first time through. Once you get through that jerky stuff, hit play again and it runs smoothly, just as it was aired when I saw it on TV. Pat Kessler is the one who does the Reality Check segments for WCCO-TV (CBS affiliate) in the Twin Cities. He didn't get as detailed in debunking the myths found in that stupid commercial as I would like to have seen, but for a Lamestream Media TV station, it was a good start toward telling at least one or two truths.
I got too wordy, as usual, but I had my say-so anyway... and I'm sharing the letter with you. It's more of a regional issue (at the moment, unless the national part of the organization that financed the stupid ad runs it in other states), so I don't think it's appropriate for the blog, or I'd post it there. I think I should probably send this to my rep or one of my senators, too....
IF - only IF - WCCO listens, even if I did get too wordy (and hopefully others who may have written in), they will take that damned pack of lies off the air.....
I've been up all night with this, it feels like someone is sticking a sharp pointed knife into the small of my back where it was fused because I've been sitting too long, so I gotta go lay down for a while....
Hope you have a great day!
Bev
NonnyO
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pat Kessler:
I was pleasantly astonished to see Reality Check debunking the war ad that has so horrified me since I first saw it a few days ago. I already checked out the web site for the sponsors of the ad after the second time I saw the commercial, checked out the name of the people who paid for the ad, Googled the organization, and I checked out the Wikipedia web site about their connections to Bush - and, incidentally, their lawyer is the same person who is the lawyer for the Swift-Boaters, FYI. And, no. PFA is NOT "similar to" MoveOn.org. MoveOn.org at least attempts to tell people the truth. I would have selected the phrase "war facts and war propaganda" and not "war politics." The commercial is pure war propaganda based on lies, and you know it.
9/11 could have been prevented if Bush had read his Aug. 2001 PDB and acted on it. He CHOSE to ignore adequate intelligence and LET 9/11 happen; intelligence legally gathered BEFORE the Patriot Act, I might add. Bush's monumental stupidity is the only reason 9/11 happened; he could have prevented it. We were NOT 'attacked' on 9/11. The individuals who carried out the plane hijackings were criminals who committed terrorist acts, yes, but they were not representing any government, so 9/11 was NOT an 'act of war' committed by any country. That's a delusion fostered on us by Bu$hCo and Pentagon war propagandists - a delusion repeated or implied by Bush and/or his administration at least weekly to keep some kind of false support for their illegal war in Iraq and to now sound the drumbeat for another illegal war in Iran. I suspect Bu$hCo thought people would run out and enlist after 9/11 like they did after Pearl Harbor, so he and his administration may have assumed they would have a ready military. That didn't happen. Instead, our military is over-extended, our Guard and Reserve troops are not here to protect us on our own soil where they belong, but overseas fighting an illegal war of choice, and we just do not have the military personnel to attack another country. China and other countries hold the loans that are financing our government (gee, ya think the tax breaks for corporations and rich people were so wise now?), and all they have to do is call in their loans and this whole nation is bankrupt, not merely in so much debt that our great-grandchildren will have to pay it off. (And, I might add, a bankrupt nation is in no position to finance a defensive war if any nations who hold our loans that finance our treasury call them in and demand that we either pay up or become their territory....)
You indicated Minnesota is the "test audience" for the ad. I beg to differ. WCCO is heard/seen not only in MN, but WI, IA, and if you have repeaters around Alexandria (as KSTP does), the ad would also be heard/seen in SD and ND (and the middle and some northern sections of MN). PFA is killing five birds with one stone, so to speak, by running a commercial like their war propaganda ad in all Twin Cities TV stations. The "test audience" is technically MN, WI, IA, SD, and ND. I think I saw this same war commercial air when 'Boston Legal' was on ABC Sun. night, too. If PFA is running the same commercials on all Twin Cities TV stations, they're saturating the market to target voters in five states, and they already know that, even if you don't seem to realize it. The Rovian slime machine knows exactly what it is doing, and they know how to use media as a brainwashing tool with constantly repeating lies and false innuendo. They're running a war propaganda ad full of lies in the bluest area of the north central states to attempt to gain voters in this fall's election, as well as convert people to believe their war propaganda and support them! Additionally, in an effort to get support for attacking Iran (before the Iranian Oil Bourse is set to open ca. March 20, and there is information on the internet about a March attack of Iran, just as the US attacked Iraq when they opened their oil bourse), the neoCons need to get any kind of war support they can, lies or not.... D-u-h!
After your Reality Check segment ran, Don Shelby's comment made it sound like WCCO runs war propaganda commercials as public service announcements. That's patently false, since you (Kessler) said the ad was paid for by Progress for America. Shelby also said WCCO "won't air them if they are deemed outside the bounds of responsible content." In my humble opinion, running propaganda commercials containing lies and advocating a war of choice based on lies is WAY out of the bounds of "responsible content." If you want to take the moral high ground, you won't air such lies, even if you lose money in the process. I personally believe the war commercial is a neoCon way of getting their propaganda (and repeated lies) out to the American people (in five states, not just one state as a 'test audience')... a 'psy-ops war' against the American people to keep the sheeple in line, terrified of their own shadows and ready and willing to give up their rights to gain some false sense of security, and to gain voters and war supporters for this fall's election. If you're a student of history, this is all deja vu.
With torture going on in Gitmo, more photos released about the torture at Abu Ghraib, a "detention" facility being built in California by Halliburton, renditions, our civil rights being taken away from us under the Patriot Act, illegal surveillance, and an illegal, unjust, immoral, and unethical war of choice based on LIES, corporations writing laws that are enacted by Congress so those same corporations can make a profit from taxpayers, rigged elections because of voting machines that can be hacked into (those are just the highlights of the ills afflicting this country, thanks to Bu$hCo and our Clueless Congress!), America is now no different than Germany under Hitler, nor are we free of the paranoia being projected onto us like what happened during the McCarthy era. If you haven't checked out 'unitary executive' and found that a man named Schmitt used the 'unitary executive theory' to get Hitler into power with questionable 'legal' maneuvers as Hitler was picking and choosing which laws he did or did not want to follow (yes, just like Bush!), you really need to check it out (the background is on the Wikipedia web site - just Google "unitary executive"). The parallels between getting Hitler into power and Bush playing a wannabe dictator will make the hair on the back of your neck stand out; we are already a corporate fascist nation in all but name only. Check out the web site for the Project for the New American Century, while you're at it.... Jeb Bush and a few other familiar political names are on it, and their aim is world domination. If that doesn't make your blood run cold, you don't have any blood....
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
Personally, I am deeply ashamed to be an American right now. This America is NOT why my ancestors came here (some came to keep from having their government impose religion on them; and yes, some were Separatists who came on the Mayflower) or why other ancestors of mine fought in the Revolutionary War. (Seeing a propaganda war commercial didn't help my shame factor since I only read a couple of days ago that something like $7 million is being spent on propaganda in Iraq... or was it $7 billion? Now I'm wondering if some of that money was spent on the war propaganda commercial you have been running.)
And, please stop saying we were "mislead" into war, or that the al Qaida - Iraq connection is "misleading," as you labeled the connection in the war commercial. Politicians say "mislead," too, and it sounds so deceptively innocent. We were not merely "mislead." The TRUTH is, we were LIED to in the buildup for the Iraq war (among many other LIES), and the exact same thing is being done about Iran - and I don't for one second believe any of the things the administration is currently saying about Iran, either, just as I never believed any of the LIES we were told before the illegal, unjust, immoral, and unethical attack of Iraq! (On the other hand, I now rely on the internet for my primary news source, which gives me facts and opinions from overseas media as well as American, since I can no longer trust American media to give me FACTS without the 'interpretation' and spin of talking heads, most of whom seem to be neoCons who refuse to let anyone express any differing opinions than Bu$hCo warmongering party line.) War propaganda commercials only reinforce the LIES told to us by Bush and his Criminal Cabal.
Please be responsible about airing war propaganda commercials containing lies. If I were in the position of your general manager or station owner, I would have outright refused to run the war propaganda commercials just viewing them as a preview; the ad with it's lies would never have gotten to the air waves in the first place. It's not censorship to refuse to air lies and propaganda for an unpopular war of choice based on LIES. (Would you air a commercial for Nazi causes just for the money? Then why do it for an administration that is acting eerily like Hitler and his goons before WWII?) If you really want to become a TV station known for airing balanced and fair news, it would be morally responsible to stop airing commercials containing lies and war propaganda. It's the only ethical thing to do....
Thank you.
Sincerely,
P.S. You had a news blurb about an Andrew Kemple who died in Iraq, but didn't connect him with any branch of the military. Was he another mercenary with DynCorp or KBR, both Halliburton subsidiaries? I know of three other MN men killed in Iraq who were mercenaries in the employ of "private security" companies, and news broadcasts have listed two of them as DynCorp "private security" employees. A "private security" employee by any other name is still a mercenary, and still has the job because of the salary that is way above a military wage; patriotism has nothing to do with being a mercenary whose loyalty to a corporation or a man is bought and paid for - mercenaries do not take any oaths to 'protect and defend the Constitution' of any country, including the USA, and mercenaries are certainly NOT 'heroes'....
Neither are the US military 'heroes' - they're doing their job, but they are not responsible for stupid decisions made by politicians who start illegal wars, and they most certainly are NOT 'protecting and defending "our" freedom at home' in an illegal, unjust, immoral, and unethical war of choice based on lies in Iraq. (The US, under Bush's orders, attacked an innocent country that now has to defend itself from us, so our military is not defending anything anywhere - except maybe defending and protecting oil wells in Iraq that have been illegally seized by the US government.) If the soldiers followed the judgment at Nuremberg, they would not have to follow any orders that are illegal or immoral, because 'following orders' is not a just defense for committing war crimes. This stupid war in Iraq could stop if (1) Congress refused to fund the war in Iraq (and repealed the war powers they may have illegally given Bush for attacking in Afghanistan - he illegally ordered the attack on Iraq but was never given the authority to do so; under the Constitution only Congress can authorize war); and (2) soldiers refused to follow illegal and immoral orders; and (3) the House started impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney - remember, there's precedent for impeachment based on lies; Bush and Cheney (and their administration) have committed high crimes and misdemeanors by breaking all kinds of international and national laws and treaties as well as war crimes. (Nobody died when Clinton lied about a blow job!)
Cheney did a study about the cost of private military for Halliburton ca. 1992, and was hired to work for Halliburton shortly thereafter. Halliburton and/or their subsidiaries now get no-bid government contracts regularly, and I still do not know WHO guards the detainees at Gitmo where Halliburton is building an addition to the facilities, but I've never heard of any regular military personnel in Gitmo. I suspect Halliburton (DynCorp and/or KBR) mercenaries are in charge of the prison camps in Gitmo. Or, possibly Blackwater mercenaries (they are not part of Halliburton, but Blackwater was mentioned in PBS' Frontline piece on "Private Warriors" as one of the American companies that hires mercenaries). That might be something else for you to check out...?
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 11:10 AM
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