How The U.S. Murdered a City - Independent Media TV

How The U.S. Murdered a City - Independent Media TV: "How The U.S. Murdered a City
February 17, 2005
By: Dr Salam Ismael
Information Clearing House

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Dr Salam Ismael

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Fallujah: The Truth at Last
Doctor Salam Ismael took aid to Fallujah last month. This is a report of his visit.
02/17/05 - - IT WAS the smell that first hit me, a smell that is difficult to describe, and one that will never leave me. It was the smell of death. Hundreds of corpses were decomposing in the houses, gardens and streets of Fallujah. Bodies were rotting where they had fallen-bodies of men, women and children, many half-eaten by wild dogs. "

Sex, Lies, and Jeff Gannon

A gay prostitute, a phony media organization that managed to sneak its "reporter" into White House press briefings, and the lies that were fed to the media and the American people in the run-up to war with Iraq – what possible connection could these items have to one another?
The answer: a man called "Jeff Gannon."

Amid the media frenzy over Gannon's journalistic bona fides, or lack of them – and the lurid speculation going on in the left lane of the blogosphere about how a purported male hooker got admitted to White House press briefings before his "Talon News Agency" (a front group created by "GOPUSA") was even created – one has to ask: who cares?

Answer: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for one, the chief prosecutor in an investigation that could rope in several high-ranking administration officials and even lead to the White House itself. And those of us who have been awaiting the come-uppance of this White House, for two, and are ready to get out the popcorn and the chips-and-dip and settle down for a nice long juicy scandal.

by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar


Photo: Americablog.blogspot.com

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Infoshop News - The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

Infoshop News - The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show': THE prayers of those hoping that real television news might take its cues from Jon Stewart were finally answered on Feb. 9, 2005. A real newsman borrowed a technique from fake news to deliver real news about fake news in prime time.

Let me explain.

On 'Countdown,' a nightly news hour on MSNBC, the anchor, Keith Olbermann, led off with a classic 'Daily Show'-style bit: a rapid-fire montage of sharply edited video bites illustrating the apparent idiocy of those in Washington. In this case, the eight clips stretched over a year in the White House briefing room - from February 2004 to late last month - and all featured a reporter named 'Jeff.' In most of them, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, says 'Go ahead, Jeff,' and 'Jeff' responds with a softball question intended not to elicit information but to boost President Bush and smear his political opponents. In the last clip, 'Jeff' is quizzing the president himself, in his first post-inaugural press conference of Jan. 26. Referring to Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, 'Jeff' asks, 'How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?'

If we did not live in a time when the news culture itself is divorced from reality, the story might end there: "Jeff," you'd assume, was a lapdog reporter from a legitimate, if right-wing, news organization like Fox, and you'd get some predictable yuks from watching a compressed video anthology of his kissing up to power. But as Mr. Olbermann explained, "Jeff Gannon," the star of the montage, was a newsman no more real than a "Senior White House Correspondent" like Stephen Colbert on "The Daily Show" and he worked for a news organization no more real than The Onion. Yet the video broadcast by Mr. Olbermann was not fake. "Jeff" was in the real White House, and he did have those exchanges with the real Mr. McClellan and the real Mr. Bush.

"Jeff Gannon's" real name is James D. Guckert. His employer was a Web site called Talon News, staffed mostly by volunteer Republican activists. Media Matters for America, the liberal press monitor that has done the most exhaustive research into the case, discovered that Talon's "news" often consists of recycled Republican National Committee and White House press releases, and its content frequently overlaps with another partisan site, GOPUSA, with which it shares its owner, a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican convention. Nonetheless, for nearly two years the White House press office had credentialed Mr. Guckert, even though, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post explained on Mr. Olbermann's show, he "was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership."

FRANK RICH
New York Times

Lawmaker presses White House on 'Jeff Gannon'

Lawmaker presses White House on 'Jeff Gannon': "WASHINGTON -- With the mystery of 'Jeff Gannon' deepening, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., yesterday renewed her call for the White House to explain its relationship with a conservative ex-reporter linked to an online gay escort service.

Slaughter said the relationship between the White House press office and 'Gannon,' whose real name is James Dale Guckert, was 'anything but typical.' The White House should 'stop the stonewalling and come clean,' she added, following up on her initial request a week ago.
Slaughter's comments came in response to evidence that the White House allowed Gannon into presidential news briefings weeks before his Internet-based news organization was registered and online.

Presidential press secretary Scott McClellan insisted last week that Gannon, in order to get daily passes to the White House news briefing, was treated 'like anyone else' and 'showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly.'

But yesterday, the online magazine Salon cited C-SPAN television clips showing Gannon attending White House news briefings as early as Feb. 28, 2003, a month before his Internet news site, Talon News, was registered and online."

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Talon News: Statement concerning former Washington, DC correspondent Jeff Gannon

Talon News Washington, DC reporter and White House Correspondent Jeff Gannon submitted his resignation from our organization effective February 8, 2005.

I understand and support Jeff's decision, and have accepted the resignation.

We are currently evaluating candidates to fill this critical assignment, and anticipate minimal interruption of Talon's coverage of our nation's capitol and the White House in the meantime.

-- Robert R. Eberle, Ph.D.
Editor in Chief, Talon News
Bringing the conservative message to America



Bobby Eberle (photo) is President and CEO of GOPUSA , a news, information, and commentary company based in Houston, TX. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Rice University.

Don't Ask the Media Who's Winning the War
by Robert R. Eberle, Ph.D.
Intellectual Conservatism
31 March 2003

Resources:

GOPUSA Forum - Robert R. Eberle, Ph.D. Weblog (?)
Robert R. Eberle, Ph.D. Welcome To GOPUSA - March 2004
Bruce Eberle to MillionsOfAmericans.com Activists

84-year-old Octogenarian receives Army recruiting letters inviting him to re-enlist

Yahoo! News - Octogenarian receives Army recruiting letters inviting him to re-enlist: "WASHINGTON - The last time Dr. Floyd Baker served in the U.S. Army, Harry S. Truman was president, Dinah Shore's 'Buttons and Bows' topped the music charts, 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre' won an Oscar and the bikini made its debut on American beaches.

So the 84-year-old semi-retired dentist from Philadelphia was a little surprised last August when he got a letter from a local Army recruiting station inviting him to re-enlist.

"I was honorably discharged in 1948," said Baker, who was drafted in 1946 and left the Army with captain's bars on his shoulders. "I thought the letter belonged to somebody else, knowing when I got in the Army and when I got out. I thought it was a mistake."

He started believing that maybe it wasn't when he got a similar letter two months later offering him a $30,000 signing bonus, a $58,646 loan-repayment option and a "generous retirement plan" to re-up.

Help the soldiers "on the front line fighting the war on terrorism," it said. "Among the difficulties facing them are receiving adequate dental care prior to being sent to areas of danger and conflict. Our soldiers are sacrificing so much for us and we would greatly appreciate the services of fine professionals like you."

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Iraq Conflict Feeds International Terror Threat -CIA

US News Article | Reuters.com: "Islamic militants waging a deadly insurgency against U.S.-led forces in Iraq pose an emerging international terrorism threat, CIA Director Porter Goss said on Wednesday.

In his first public appearance as U.S. spymaster, Goss described Iraqi insurgents, including al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as part of a Sunni militant movement inspired by Osama bin Laden and intent on attacking Americans.

'The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists,' Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

'Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries,' he said.
President Bush, who portrays U.S.-led actions in Iraq as the leading edge of democratic reform in the Middle East, cited Iraqi backing for international terrorism as a reason for the 2003 invasion.

But a top level U.S. inquiry found last year that there had in fact been no collaboration between al Qaeda and Iraq under President Saddam Hussein.

Bush critics say the invasion was a distraction from the global war against terrorism declared after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by al Qaeda on the United States and has stirred up a violent response in Iraq that inflamed further terrorism. "

Peace Now - Music Video

Le Tigre movie "New Kicks" (QT)

Peace-Not-War

Democracy Now! | Noam Chomsky: U.S. Might Face "Ultimate Nightmare" in Middle East Where Shiites Control Most of World's Oil

Democracy Now! | Noam Chomsky: U.S. Might Face "Ultimate Nightmare" in Middle East Where Shiites Control Most of World's Oil: "Noam Chomsky: U.S. Might Face 'Ultimate Nightmare' in Middle East Where Shiites Control Most of World's Oil

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One of the country's leading dissidents, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, gives a major new address on the Iraq war, the re-election of President "

Greenpeace Multimedia - Jacobs Ladder Music Video

Greenpeace Multimedia

Jacobs Ladder Music Video (WMV)

War on WMD backfires

War on WMD backfires: "George Bush's war on weapons of mass destruction has just had its first concrete result: the world now has 8 countries with declared nuclear weapons instead of 7. North Korea has officially announced that they have manufactured 'enough nuclear weapons to deter a US attack.' Nice going, George.

North Korea made the first public admission that it has nuclear weapons on February 10th.

They simultaneously announced they are leaving the Six Party talks, which began in 2003 to address concerns about a possible North Korean nuclear weapons programme. Those talks have been stalled since last September.

The talks have been marred by hypocrisy and fault on all sides."