WASHINGTON (AP) — Al-Qaida operatives who have been detained for years in Iran have been making their way quietly in and out of the country, raising the prospect that Iran is loosening its grip on the terror group so it can replenish its ranks, former and current U.S. intelligence officials say.

This movement could indicate that Iran is re-examining its murky relationship with al-Qaida at a time when the U.S. is stepping up drone attacks in Pakistan and weakening the group’s leadership. Any influx of manpower could hand al-Qaida a boost in morale and expertise and threaten to disrupt stability in the region.

U.S. officials say intelligence points to a worrisome increase in movement lately.

Details about al-Qaida’s movements and U.S. efforts to monitor them were outlined to The Associated Press in more than a dozen interviews with current and former intelligence and counterterrorism officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

The relationship between Iran and al-Qaida has been shrouded in mystery since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when many al-Qaida leaders fled into Iran and were arrested. The Shiite regime there is generally hostile to the Sunni terrorist group, but they have an occasional relationship of convenience based on their shared enemy, the U.S.

U.S. intelligence officials have tried wiretapping and satellite imagery to watch the men. The CIA even established a highly classified program – code-named RIGOR – to study whether it could track and kill terrorists such as al-Qaida in Iran. Results have been mixed. Monitoring and understanding al-Qaida in Iran remains one of the most difficult jobs in U.S. intelligence.

“This has been a dark, a black zone for us,” former CIA officer Bruce Riedel said. “What exactly is the level of al-Qaida activity in Iran has always been a mystery.”

That activity has waxed and waned, officials said. Sometimes the men could travel or communicate with other operatives. Other times, they were under tight constraints and the U.S. considered them to be out of commission. There was no obvious pattern to the movement.

The departures began in late 2008 as the U.S. stepped up international efforts to sanction Iran for its nuclear program. Saad bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden’s sons, was allowed to leave the country around that time with about four other al-Qaida figures.

Since then, U.S. intelligence officials say, others have followed. One former CIA official familiar with the travel identified the men as moneymen and planners, the kind of manpower al-Qaida needs after a series of successful U.S. drone attacks on al-Qaida’s ranks. But a senior counterterrorism official said the U.S. believes anyone who has left Iran recently is likely to be lower-level.

A major concern among U.S. officials is that this movement foreshadows the release of al-Qaida’s “management council,” including some of al-Qaida’s most dangerous figures.

Most recently, the concern focused on Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian-born confidant of Osama bin Laden who is on the FBI’s most wanted list in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In the past year or so, intelligence officials circulated a bulletin saying al-Adel, one of al-Qaida’s founding fathers, was traveling to Damascus, Syria. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for his capture.

The Damascus connection ultimately was disproved but, underscoring the difficulty of monitoring the men, U.S. intelligence officials are divided on whether Saif has been allowed to travel in the region. The senior counterterrorism official said there’s no clear evidence Saif has left Iran.

“Regardless of where he is, we haven’t forgotten about him or stopped looking for him,” said Don Borelli, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s terrorism task force in New York. “He’s a most-wanted terrorist and we intend to find him.”

The roster of al-Qaida figures in Iran is something of a who’s who for the terror group. One is Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, a bin Laden adviser who helped form the modern al-Qaida by merging bin Laden’s operation with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad. Al-Qaida’s longtime chief financial officer, Abu Saeed al-Masri, has been held there. So have bin Laden’s spokesman, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, and Mustafa Hamid, an al-Qaida trainer with a terrorism pedigree that spans decades.

Several members of bin Laden’s family also have been under house arrest.

All fled into Iran after al-Qaida’s core split up after the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden led some confidants toward the mountainous border with Pakistan. Al-Adel led others into Iran, which has historically allowed al-Qaida members safe passage through the country.

Iran arrested the men in 2003 and has held them as both a bargaining chip with the U.S. and as a buffer against an al-Qaida attack.

Using spy satellites, the U.S. has monitored vehicles in and out of the compound where the al-Qaida operatives have been held. U.S. officials have gleaned some information about the men through intercepted Iranian phone conversations and e-mails. But generally, the U.S. has only limited information about them.

If Iran were to release any of the major al-Qaida figures, it would be a violation of a United Nations resolution. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official said Iran is well aware of U.S. concerns that they not be released.

Late in President George W. Bush’s administration, the CIA began developing a broad and lethal counterterrorism program, RIGOR, that targeted an array of terrorists in different countries. Part of the program examined the possibility of finding and eliminating al-Qaida inside Iran, former intelligence officials said.

They described the program as a feasibility study. One aspect was to figure out whether the CIA could slip spies into Iran to locate and possibly kill al-Qaida figures. RIGOR was separate from an earlier program involving contractors from Blackwater Worldwide.

RIGOR existed on the books for about two years but never progressed any further. CIA Director Leon Panetta canceled RIGOR last year. A U.S. official familiar with the program said a list of specific targets had not yet been identified when the program was nixed.

U.S. officials realized that things in Iran were changing in the waning days of Bush’s administration when Saad bin Laden crossed into Pakistan. The administration took the unusual step of announcing bin Laden’s move and freezing his assets. As many as four others were believed to have been with him.

“This served in large part as a symbolic act to remind both Iran and al-Qaida that we are watching this relationship,” said Juan Zarate, Bush’s former deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism. “We were concerned operationally about his movements, which was another reason for the designation.”

In July, intelligence officials revealed that Saad bin Laden was probably killed in a drone airstrike. Intelligence officials suspected he was traveling with Abu Khayr al-Masry, an Egyptian who had also been held in Iran. Officials believe al-Masry – an al-Zawahiri deputy – is alive and in Iran.

At the time, officials didn’t believe bin Laden’s departure was an isolated event.

Indeed, it wasn’t.

Since Saad bin Laden left Iran, other al-Qaida figures have followed, current and former officials say. They are suspected to be taking smuggling routes heading toward Saudi Arabia or the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. Last fall, top CIA officers received intelligence reports suggesting the release of several al-Qaida members from Iran, according to a former CIA official.

One of the men placed a phone call to a relative in Saudi Arabia. The call was made from Baluchistan, a western Pakistan province bordering both Iran and Afghanistan. It is known as a transit point for al-Qaida operatives.

But even when they have known that al-Qaida had traveled, U.S. officials say they have rarely understood the purpose.

The activity comes as Iran allowed Osama bin Laden’s daughter Iman to leave the country in March and settle in Syria. Details are murky.

“Clearly, there’s something going on on the Iranian front,” said Riedel, the former CIA officer who is now a Brookings Institution scholar.

Some experts believe that anyone from al-Qaida freed to leave Iran must be returning to the battlefield. Others believe that, with al-Qaida families left behind, terrorists may actually be working for Iran, gathering intelligence or passing messages before returning to Iran.

Either way, it’s being noticed. Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer and a senior fellow at Center for Security Policy, says it’s not a good sign.

“Movement like this doesn’t augur well,” she said.

Watch in High-Definition!

Part I of VI: Beck’s Countless Lies about America & the Founding Fathers

By Marcus Winter, Farabundo Morazán and Ismail LaLanne

On January 22nd 2010, another hardened reactionary tried to attack the history of leftism and Marxism and (surprise) managed to bring nothing new to the table at all. Shock jock Glenn Beck, an admitted alcoholic and former cocaine addict, has made a career out of appealing to the most lunatic fringe of the right-wing. Even so, this week he finally managed to outdo himself, even after the time he said Obama was “a racist” and had a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free or Die begins oddly—with white X-Files font letters against a crackling static background. What this has to do with or why this is the least bit appropriate for the subject matter Beck tackles is anyone’s guess. As we shall see though, this is symbolic for the entire presentation, which, while clever, is the same hodgepodge of anti-communist views that we have all seen and heard a thousand times before.

A good question for Glenn Beck: why is such radical anti-communism necessary today if communism is discredited, dead, and buried? If communism is supposedly dead in the water, a footnote of history, and so on, and if capitalism is truly the greatest system, then why is it that we are facing a wave of anti-communist hysteria not seen since the Cold War? Mr. Beck, it might do you well to remember that hysteria and desperation are signs of weakness…and liars.

No matter how hard he tries, Glenn Beck cannot sell his line about how “this story has never been told.” Horror stories about communism have been told since before communists ever came to power in the first place. The opening of the secret Soviet archives actually reveals that these claims were in fact ridiculously exaggerated, not worse, than previously claimed.

So, what are his intentions here? Many things all at once—among them licking the boots of the bourgeoisie and re-packaging old and debunked lies. We shall tackle them one by one using our own sources and information. The complete transcript of Beck’s program is available here until further notice: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583732,00.html.

Because of the length of his program, we have decided to break this presentation up into several parts. For right now, we will content ourselves with refuting the introduction to his program.
We invite you to stay tuned for a little series of our own.

Beck’s Thesis
Glenn Beck’s allegedly “groundbreaking” exposé of “progressives,” whom he conveniently lumps together, is by no means new or groundbreaking at all. Revolutionary Holocaust seeks to establish a link between Joseph Stalin and communism on one side, and Adolf Hitler and Nazism on the other. While doing this it also seeks to talk about the reign of Mao Zedong in China, along with a segment about liberal icon Che Guevara.
This same “thesis” of fascism and communism being almost exactly the same or at least sharing fundamental similarities, has been repeated for us endlessly since we were kids. For Beck to champion this as a “new and groundbreaking” idea is either foolish or stunningly arrogant. It has been the dominant narrative shoved down our throats since the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951 by Hannah Arendt. For a closer look at this laughable “theory,” look here: http://theredphoenix.wordpress.com/2009/09…otalitarianism/

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, & Slave-Owning Freedom
The video begins with Glenn Beck praising the United States of America and its associated American Dream. “The story of America,” he pines, staring into the camera with his intellectual glasses on, “is really one of self-reliance and optimism, and profound faith.” He continues to milk this image for all its worth, bringing up the merits of the US Constitution and the Founding Fathers.

Glenn Beck has willfully ignored the history of the American Revolution. The spirit of the American Founding Fathers is only a myth and not a reality.

First, the Constitution of the United States was not set up by “the” people or any sort of popular democracy, but by financial autocrats. White males with property were the only ones allowed to vote under the system that men such as George Washington (the richest man in America), James Madison (owned enormous slave plantations), John Hancock (a rich merchant), Benjamin Franklin (a wealthy printer) and others aimed to set up. Of the 55 men who gathered to write the Constitution in 1787, most were lawyers and men of enormous wealth, making their fortunes in landowning, slave trading, manufacturing or shipping. Half loaned money out for interest, 40 held government bonds.
Regarding the writing of the Constitution:
“The manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slaveowners needed federals security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds” (1).

Governments are not neutral. They reflect the economic interests of the dominant class, expressed in America as men such as the Founding Fathers. The Constitution protects “life, liberty, or property” and little else in reality. Women, Blacks, Indians and poor whites were not mentioned, but the defense of private property was.
The clause about the “freedom of speech” was soon enough violated, as it is today, by clauses such as the Sedition Act of 1789, which was a response to the French and Irish Revolutions. It forbid under law the practice of writing or saying anything “false, scandalous and malicious” against the United States government, the Congress or the President. It is not immediately apparent that anyone’s “liberty” should be left to a government run by the rich and powerful.

Despite this, Beck says that “[…] those seeking a different path than the ones the founders settled on realized the only way to really defeat the Constitution was for the people to stop reading it.” He then insists that the Constitution, through its supposed system of check and balances, “kept dogs at bay” for 200 years. Despite this Utopian dream, the Founding Fathers were not men seeking a “balance” in society, and certainly didn’t believe that all men were created equal. If they wanted any sort of balance, it was between the wealthy, and not between such groups as Indians and whites, blacks and whites, men and women, boss and worker, or rich and poor, slave and slaveowner, and certainly not property owner and the propertyless.

Next Article
In the next part of the series, we shall see how Glenn Beck uses the story of Nazi Germany and WWII to further his own ends, and ends up whitewashing Nazi crimes in order to attack the USSR.

Sources:
1) Zinn, Howard. Peoples’ History of the United States, page 91.

Bow your little head,

Think for five minutes

On Stalin.

J.V. Stalin is the brilliant leader and teacher of the Party,

The great strategist of the socialist revolution.

He is implacable in facing the enemies of socialism,

Absolutely true to principle.

He is the union of clear revolutionary perspective,

And clarity of goal in all His activities,

Combining them with extraordinary firmness and persistence.

The name Stalin is the symbol of the moral and political unity of the working class.

Description (IMDB.com):

Based on the preachings of Reverend Estus W. Pirkle, this film warns what will happen to America if the citizens do not give up their depraved ways and turn to God and Jesus for salvation. Communist infiltrators, the “footmen”, will pave the way for an all out invasion by weakening our will through TV, dance, rock music and alcohol. Once the invasion begins, the new Communist government will proceed to round up all Christians, and either execute them or force them to undergo re-education. Only by putting their faith in the bible where it belongs, says Rev. Pirkle, can America resist the coming Red Menace.

From the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)

Pyongyang, January 1 (KCNA) — Rodong Sinmun, Josoninmingun and Chongnyonjonwi Friday published a joint editorial titled “Bring about a radical turn in the people’s standard of living by accelerating the development of light industry and agriculture once again this year that marks the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea” on the occasion of the New Year.

The following is the excerpt from it:

Today our service personnel and people greet the New Year Juche 99 (2010) with the pride of being victors, who wrote a new history of great revolutionary upsurge.

A heyday unprecedented in the history of the nation lies ahead of them, who are courageously rushing towards the world by tapping the inexhaustible potentials of Songun Korea.

Kim Jong Il is leading the campaign for the building of a great, prosperous and powerful nation to a brilliant victory as he steers the efforts to effect a great revolutionary upsurge on the strength of single-minded unity.

Now all the service personnel of the Korean People’s Army and all the people are offering their heartfelt thanks and the greatest glory to him who is shaping the brilliant future of the country and the revolution with unflagging energy and untiring leadership, and are filled with a firm determination to support the Party’s cause to the last with intense loyalty and heroic feats.

Last year Juche 98 (2009) was a year of dramatic change, when a phenomenal age of realizing all the ideals of the people has come.

Kim Jong Il worked out a grand plan for making a decisive turn in the Korean revolution and the building of a thriving nation by effecting a new revolutionary upsurge and wisely led the efforts of the service personnel and people.

After kindling the torch of a great upsurge in Kangson, home to the Chollima movement, he proposed launching the 150-day and 100-day campaigns successively, and took revolutionary measures to bring them to a victorious conclusion. His outstanding leadership ability was the source of impetus for the unprecedentedly great innovations and leap.

The matchless fighting spirit of the leader, who continued the forced march of high intensity to vibrant hard-fought fields for an upsurge throughout the year, burning his heart with noble love of his country and fellow people, gave free rein to the mental strength of all the service personnel and people and worked world-startling miracles across the country.

Last year’s struggle etched in their hearts the truth that his decision is precisely practice and they will always emerge victorious when they follow him.

Last year witnessed one remarkable event of knocking on the gate to a thriving nation after another.

The successful launch of man-made satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 and the successful second underground nuclear test by our own efforts and technology were a landmark event signaling the first victory in the building of a thriving nation.

The perfection of the Juche-based steel-making system in the Songjin Steel Complex and the attainment of the cutting edge of the CNC technology constitute a great victory of the great Juche idea and an auspicious event for the whole country and all the people that demonstrated our inexhaustible economic and technological potentials.

The firework displays on the Day of the Sun–birthday of President Kim Il Sung–, May Day and the WPK anniversary in October were a striking manifestation of the lofty ideals and ambition of the Korean people who are building a thriving nation and the rosy future of Songun Korea that is advancing under the leadership of the great Party.

The economy of the country entered the stage of full-scale upturn as all the people staged a life-and-death struggle under the leadership of the Party.

The 150-day and 100-day campaigns were an unforgettable struggle that wrote the most brilliant chapter in the history of our great upsurge.

The whole course of the heroic campaigns conducted by all the people, including the workers, clearly showed what kinds of miracles would be performed and what kinds of changes would be effected when we give free rein to the might of the harmonious whole of our leader, our Party and our people, in which the Party trusts the people and the people defend the Party and the leader at the risk of their lives.

Production sharply increased in the sectors of basic industries, vanguards of the national economy, and the industry as a whole achieved revitalization.

Structures of lasting value in the Songun era, like the Nyongwon Power Station, the Wonsan Youth Power Station, Waterway on the Miru Plain and Mansudae Street, were built across the country.

The gasification project in the Namhung Youth Chemical Complex was completed, and dynamic efforts were made to upgrade major factories and other enterprises.

Last year remarkable achievements were brought about in agricultural production and rural construction, many cooperative farms transformed into ideal villages appropriate to a prosperous country and the production foundations and potentials of the light-industry sectors, including the textile and food-processing industries, strengthened markedly.

Remarkable successes were achieved in the development of socialist culture.

In the heat of the revolution in literature and the arts in the Songun era conducted under the energetic guidance of Kim Jong Il, masterpieces were produced and re-presented one after another in the fields of the cinema, opera, drama and music.

Examples of mass-based culture and the arts in the era of a great upsurge were set to inspire the whole country with revolutionary enthusiasm and militant spirit.

Kim Il Sung University, Wonsan University of Agriculture and other institutions of learning were refurnished splendidly, and sportspersons registered good results bringing great pleasure to the people.

The victorious great upsurge of last year confirms that the DPRK is developing in leaps and bounds, and the day when the successful building of a thriving nation will be proclaimed is just approaching.

New Year Juche 99 (2010) is a year of general offensive, when all-Party and nationwide efforts should be concentrated on improving the people’s standard of living on the basis of the laudable victory and achievements of the great revolutionary upsurge.

Kim Jong Il said:

“Our building of the country into an economic giant is aimed, to all intents and purposes, at radically improving the people’s standard of living. When the people’s living standards are decisively improved, hooray for socialism and singing of Arirang of prosperity can ring out louder across the country and the gate to a prosperous nation be opened.”

This year marks the 65th anniversaries of the founding of the glorious Workers’ Party of Korea and the country’s liberation.

The anniversary of the founding of the WPK will be an important occasion for demonstrating the mounting national spirit and mettle of the Korean army and people, who are adding brilliance to the undying exploits performed by President Kim Il Sung in building the Party and carrying out the revolutionary cause of Juche and the human cause of independence, and are speeding up the building of a thriving socialist nation on the strength of the single-minded unity around the leadership of the revolution.

We should celebrate the anniversary as a great revolutionary event to be written down in the history of Kim Il Sung’s nation by giving the fullest play to our ardent loyalty to the Party, great guide, that has opened up a bright future for the country and people.

The great upsurge we are bringing about as we make unheard-of creation and leap forward under the leadership of the Party has entered a new phase.

The might of the country’s economy, including the heavy industry, was strengthened in the flames of the gigantic great upsurge, setting up a springboard for the country, already a politico-ideological and military power, to justifiably reach the status of an economic giant.

Now, based on the brilliant achievements of the great revolutionary upsurge, the Party is unfolding unprecedentedly grand plans and operations to bring about a decisive turn in the people’s standard of living.

It is the firm determination and will of the Party to enable the people, who have braved severe hardships together with the Party, to enjoy the blessing of socialism to their hearts’ content by getting them relish the substantial fruits of the present great upsurge and realize without fail the noble intention and desire of President Kim Il Sung who devoted his heart and soul to the people all his life.

True to the intention of the Party, which regards it as the supreme principle in its activities to steadily improve the people’s standard of living and spares nothing for them, we should channel all our efforts to improving the people’s standard of living.

To launch a sweeping campaign to bring about a drastic turn in improving the people’s standard of living in the flames of the great revolutionary upsurge–this is the general orientation of this year’s efforts.

We should conduct an all-Party and nationwide drive for improving the people’s standard of living to ensure that the achievements of the great upsurge are followed by greater ones and this year becomes a prosperous year filled with the people’s happiness.

“Bring about a radical turn in the people’s standard of living by accelerating the development of light industry and agriculture once again this year that marks the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea!” is a slogan we should uphold.

Light industry and agriculture are the major fronts in the efforts for improving the people’s standard of living.

Great are the foundations of light industry and agriculture, which our Party has laid out with an eye on today against all odds.

An all-Party, nationwide effort should be directed to mass-producing consumer goods.

The light-industry sector should carry forward the upgrading of its factories and enterprises on a high level, and strive to improve the quality of the consumer goods.

Local-industry factories should be operated at full capacity, and units, as many as possible, should launch a campaign to turn out more daily necessities favoured by the public.

The agricultural sector should sharply increase the grain production by thoroughly applying the Party’s policy of agricultural revolution, like improving the seeds, doing double cropping and improving potato and soya bean farming.

It should strictly observe the requirements of the Juche farming method and introduce organic and other new farming methods and technologies.

We should ensure that the updated stockbreeding, fish farming and fruit production bases that have established a Juche-oriented breeding system and embodied the principle of profitability demonstrate their great effect in reality.

We should radically increase the state investment in the fields related to the people’s living, and all the sectors and units should supply fully and in time the raw and other materials needed for the production of light-industry goods.

We should gain access to more foreign markets, and undertake foreign trade in a brisk way to contribute to economic construction and the improvement of the people’s standard of living.

The four vanguard sectors are the engine of the national economy and a key to solving the problem of the people’s living.

In December last year, Kim Jong Il kindled the flame for the new year’s drive while inspecting the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex and placed the workers of the Songjin Steel Complex, who had perfected the Juche-based steel-making system, in the van of the great revolutionary upsurge in the Songun era.

The vanguard sectors, with a firm view that the development of light industry and agriculture depends on that of heavy industry, should push ahead with today’s general offensive for improving the people’s standard of living by means of increased production.

Steel production leads to the production of grain and machinery.

The sector of metal industry should increase the capacity of Juche iron production that relies on the domestic raw materials and fuel and scale without fail the targets of pig iron, steel and rolled steel production set by the Party.

The sector of electric power industry should channel effort to run thermal power stations at full capacity and push ahead with the construction of large-scale hydroelectric power stations, including the Huichon Power Station.

The sector of coal industry should produce coal without condition for the thermal power stations, chemical factories and other important units, and step up modernization projects to steadily enhance its production capacities.

The sector of rail transport should set an order and discipline as strict as in the army, produce new-type locomotives and freight cars in a larger number and make railway service modernized and railways heavy-duty.

The sector of machine-building industry should extend the scope of introduction of the CNC technology on a high standard as required by the IT age, and effect a revolution in the production of tools, so as to produce high-performance, state-of-the-art machinery in a larger number.

We should implement the people-oriented policies of the Party and the state to enable all the people to substantially enjoy the benefits of socialism.

The true nature of our socialism lies in putting the people’s well-being above anything else and providing them with all the benefits.

We should ensure that the advantages of the people-oriented policies, like giving free medical care and free education, formulated by President Kim Il Sung and applied by the Party and state throughout their history are given fuller play in the people’s living.

We should speed up the construction of 100 000 flats in Pyongyang with those in Mansudae Street as a model, and build beautiful socialist streets and villages in a greater number in other urban and rural areas.

Socialist principles should be maintained in commodity circulation, and the quality of welfare service improved decisively.

The fundamental secret of making a new leap in this year’s general offensive lies in launching a campaign to push back the frontiers of science and technology in all sectors.

We must turn out as one under the slogan, “Let us push back the frontiers of science and technology in all the sectors of the building of a great, prosperous and powerful country and leap higher and faster!”

The sector of defence industry, a major front in pushing back the frontiers of science and technology, should continue to lead the efforts to open the gate to a great, prosperous and powerful country, and all other sectors and units of the national economy should launch a drive to push back the frontiers of science and technology.

They should bring science and technology close to production and put themselves on a modern and scientific basis in a far-sighted manner, focusing on enhancing their abilities to develop new technologies and products.

We should map out a correct strategy for the development of science and technology as required by the 21st century, and rapidly develop core technologies, technical engineering of major sectors and basic science.

Scientists and technicians should fulfil their role as the pioneers in pushing back the frontiers of science and technology and standard-bearers in making their country a scientific and technological giant, with a determination to glorify their country by means of their intelligence, their technology.

All the sectors should conduct a vigorous mass technological innovation movement to push back the frontiers of science and technology and create new norms and records.

Today’s vibrant reality requires a revolutionary change in organizing economic work.

The leading economic officials should map out aggressive and realistic business and management strategies, and actively push ahead with the advance of the current great upsurge.

A strict discipline should be established in planning, financial management and labour administration, so as to give full play to the superiority of the highly-organized, socialist planned economy.

In order to maximize the speed of this year’s general offensive, it is necessary to give steady play to the unconquerable mental strength of the service personnel and people.

Our Party remains unchanged in its stand to persistently hold fast to the ideological strength, mental strength, no matter how the situation may change.

The mental strength of our people is based on the strong will and fighting spirit of General
Kim Jong Il.

All the Party members and other people should become staunch revolutionaries and vanguard fighters, who, defending their leader unto death, translate into reality the idea of great upsurge and the far-reaching plans of the General, who continues his unremitting forced march for the benefit of his country and fellow people.

The slogan “When the Party is determined, we can do anything!” must become the eternal motto of our people in their life and struggle.

For us, who have to make a higher and faster leap towards the world, national dignity is as precious as life itself.

We should thoroughly embody the Korean-nation-first spirit in all fields of social life as befits the people of a dignified power, who opened up an era of frontier science in which our satellite is circling the orbit.

The sector of art and literature should produce many masterpieces so as to give the fullest play to the mental strength of the service personnel and people.

In order to achieve the goals set by the Party this year, we should strengthen in every way the might of our revolutionary ranks, whose core is the Korean People’s Army.

The KPA should plan and conduct all forms of its military and political work on the highest level this year that marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Songun-based revolutionary leadership of Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il, thus giving fuller play to the inexhaustible might of the revolutionary army of Mt. Paektu.

The KPA is an elite force that has formed a harmonious whole with the Supreme Commander in idea and will, in disposition and pluck, and in feeling and emotion.

It should train all its men and officers into the vanguard fighters of the Songun revolution, holding aloft the slogan “Let us defend with our very lives the leadership of revolution headed by the great Comrade Kim Jong Il!”

It should ensure that it overflows with the soldiers’ spirit of implementing without condition the orders and directives of the Supreme Commander by holding the work of establishing the revolutionary command system and military discipline as a priority task of the Party political work and developing the work without letup.

It should always remain highly alert without a moment of relaxation or indolence while keeping itself fully ready for combat action so that it can resolutely frustrate any surprise attacks of the enemy.

The men and officers of the People’s Army should continue to perform feats that would go down in history in the grand construction sites, including the Huichon Power Station, by displaying the revolutionary soldier spirit.

Under the slogan “Let us help the people!” they should strengthen the unity between the army and the people, a foundation of Songun Korea, and become the role models for civilians in the ideological spirit, morality, sports and physical culture, the arts and all other aspects.

The working class, youth and all other people, who are taking part in the effort for the building of a great, prosperous and powerful country, should launch determined offensives, regarding their work places as battle fields.

Our workers should create a new speed of advance in the spirit of having performed labour feats during the 150-day and 100-day campaigns.

The youth, who are a shock brigade in the great revolutionary upsurge, should make breakthroughs in the construction site of the Paektusan Songun Youth Power Station and other most difficult and labour-intensive posts and build more monumental edifices representing the Songun era, burning their hearts with the determination to move even the mountain if the Party calls them to do so.

They should become heroes, who add lustre to the era of great upsurge with undying labour feats, and talented persons, who highly demonstrate the dignity of the country by pushing back the frontiers of science and technology.

We should strengthen the Party and remarkably enhance the role of Party organizations to achieve a brilliant victory in this year’s general offensive.

This year, when we will be celebrating the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Party, Party organizations should give free rein to our Party’s militant might, which was built in the tempest of the Songun revolution, by bringing about a fresh turn in the Party work.

They should further intensify the Three-Revolution Red Flag Movement, so as to ensure that the revolution in ideology, technology and culture is waged briskly at all units.

We should defend the interests of the masses in a thoroughgoing way and solve all problems by relying on their strength as required by the revolutionary mass line of the Party.

Officials should become true servants of the people, who understand their sentiments and unfold their work as suited to these sentiments, and commanding personnel who, enjoy reputation and love among them, as they are possessed of free and easy character and ennobling humane traits.

All Party members, with a high political consciousness that they are the members of the glorious Workers’ Party of Korea, should become skillful political activists and courageous fighters, who always hold the flag in the van in all fronts of making a great upsurge.

The working people’s organizations should strengthen ideological education and briskly conduct various kinds of mass movements, like the socialist emulation movement among their members so as to give free rein to their patriotic enthusiasm in today’s effort for building a great, prosperous and powerful nation.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of the historic June 15 North-South Joint Declaration.

The North-South Summit and the publication of the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration in 2000 were a historic event that is of great significance in accomplishing the cause of national reunification.

Under the banner of the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration, a new era of independent reunification has been opened, and great, unprecedented successes were achieved in the development of inter-Korean relations and the national reunification movement.

The previous ten years since the publication of the June 15 joint declaration followed by the publication of the October 4 declaration for its implementation, during which the Korean nation has advanced along the road for independent reunification and peace and prosperity, has clearly confirmed that these declarations are the most reasonable reunification programmes and the ideal of “By our nation itself” is the very national spirit and the one and only ideal in the June 15 reunification era.

Last year, we took active and bold measures and made sincere efforts in order to improve the aggravated inter-Korean relations and bring a radical phase in national reunification.

Our measures evoked great support and sympathy at home and abroad and created an atmosphere of dialogue and cooperation between the north and the south.

The schemes of the separatist forces to thwart the advance of the era of June 15 reunification are vicious, but they cannot break the desire and will of the fellow countrymen to achieve independent reunification and national prosperity by implementing the north-south joint declarations, and it is inevitable that the pro-reunification, patriotic forces will prevail over the separatist forces and emerge victorious.

This year we should hold high the slogan “Let the entire nation unite under the banner of north-south joint declarations and achieve national reunification at the earliest date!”

The way for improving the north-south relations should be opened.

Unshakable is our stand that we will improve the north-south relations and open the way for national reunification on the basis of the historic June 15 joint declaration and October 4 declaration.

If the south Korean authorities continue to negate the June 15 joint declaration and cling to the policy of confrontation in collusion with the foreign forces, the relations between the north and the south will never be improved.

They should refrain from committing acts that may aggravate the confrontation and tension, and take the road of respecting the inter-Korean declarations, promoting north-south dialogue and improving the relations between both sides.

National reconciliation and cooperation should be promoted actively.

Reconciliation should be promoted with the common national interests given precedence, and cooperation should be encouraged through travel and contacts between the people from all walks of life.

All sorts of legal and institutional mechanisms that hinder the projects for common interests and prosperity of the nation should be abolished and free discussion and activities of the broad sections of the people for reunification should be fully ensured.

The unity of the entire nation constitutes a decisive guarantee for the country’s reunification.

All the fellow countrymen in the north and the south and abroad should strengthen solidarity and collaboration to develop the national reunification movement.

They should build up the atmosphere of independent national reunification, reconciliation, cooperation and unity on a nationwide scale to greet the 10th anniversary of the publication of the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration and the 30th anniversary of the proposal for the founding of the Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo.

The entire Korean nation should crown the year 2010 as a year of opening a new phase of independent reunification by frustrating all challenges of the anti-reunification forces with their concerted efforts and stepping up the grand nationwide march toward reunification.

The fundamental task for ensuring peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the rest of Asia is to put an end to the hostile relationship between the DPRK and the USA.

It is the consistent stand of the DPRK to establish a lasting peace system on the Korean Peninsula and make it nuclear-free through dialogue and negotiations.

Our Party and the government of our Republic will strive to develop relations of good-neighbourliness and friendship with other countries and achieve global independence under the unfurled banner of independence, peace and friendship.

Our Party is a great guide which steers our motherland and people to sure victory, and ours are heroic army and people who perform everything without fail once the Party has planned and decided to do it.

The majestic firework display to be held on the auspicious October holiday will resound all over the world as a reflection of the determination of all the service personnel and people to follow the Party to the last along the road of Songun and the delight of all the people in enjoying the blessings of socialism.

Copyright (C) KOREA NEWS SERVICE(KNS) All Rights Reserved.

By BRUNIDE LA MOTTE
Guardian newspaper
UK Nov/ 8/09

On November 9, 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down I realized that German unification would soon follow, which it did a year later. That meant the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the country in which I was born, grew up, gave birth to my two children, gained my Doctorate and enjoyed a fulfilling job as a lecturer at Potsdam University. The union brought wealth for some, but it also brought social breakdown, widespread unemployment, blacklisting, a crass materialism and an “elbow society” as well as demonisation of the country I lived in and helped shape it. Despite some advantages, for most it was more a disaster than a celebratory event.

Here are just two. My best friend, a foreign languages teacher, lost her job and was then blacklisted because, at the time the wall fell, she was teaching at the GDR Law College. She wasn’t a member of the Party or a political activist. After much searching she managed to find a job helping students who were excluded from school, because their parents were working in the GDR Government.

My brother who has a PhD in Philosophy of Science, lost his research job at the GDR Academy of Sciences, and ever since has only been able to find odd low-paying temporary jobs.

After the Wall was torn down more than 85% of industrial enterprises were sold to private firms in West Germany. More than 1.7 million of hectares of agricultural and forest lands were sold off and 80% of agricultural workers lost their jobs.

In 1990 the GDR economy plunged into bankruptcy when the hasty “currency union” was imposed by the West. The results were that the GDR export products rose in price by 450% overnight and were no longer competitive and thus the West gained more markets at the expense of GDR and the working people who became unemployed on a massive scale.

In the GDR everyone had a home, a guaranteed job, health care and all benefits that the socialist GDR gave to the people. After the unification close to 3,000,000 claims by non-GDR citizens were made on the GDR citizens’ homes! Most of the GDR citizens lost their homes to West Germans that were abetted by the West. Scores of GDR citizens committed suicide when they were evicted from their homes that they and their children grew up in.

That’s the price of the forced reunification and the sell off by traitors like Gorbachev and others!

By  Kuo Mo Jo

(Chairman of All
Chine Association of writers and Artists)

Great Stalin, beloved
steel, eternal sun!

Because humanity has
you,

Marxism Leninism can
exert its might today;

Because humanity has
you,

The proletarians can
display its strength today;

Because humanity has
you,

The work of
liberation can extend its glory today,

It is you who lead us
to the open sea of world Communism;

It is you who
instruct the west to not forget the East;

It is you who unite
us into a force unparalleled in history.

The peace fortress of
Soviet Union stands firm,

The unity and
progress of the New Democracies of Europe and Asia advance;

And the brilliance of
the People´s Republic of China shines forth.

The history of
mankind has started new chapter;

The order of native
to will follow the path of revolution;

The name of Stalin
will forever be the sun of humanity.

Long Live great
Stalin!

Long Live beloved
Steel

Reference: People´s China Vol 1, No 1,  Jan 1 1950; Pg 4

Free Media Productions would like to take this opportunity to wish a very Happy 130th Birthday to the late General Secretary, Josef Stalin!

Let us commemorate this day as a tribute to him! Long Live the Great Leader and Teacher of the Socialist Motherland!

]]> http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/2009/12/21/happy-132nd-birthday-comrade-stalin/feed/ 0 http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/2009/12/18/song-for-ahmadinejad/ http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/2009/12/18/song-for-ahmadinejad/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:12:47 +0000 Besoshvili http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/?p=2155

Pyongyang, December 13 (KCNA) — Voices calling for withdrawal of nuclear weapons is now ringing out more loudly than ever before in the Western European countries where lots of U.S. nukes have been deployed, says Minju Joson Sunday in a signed commentary.

Nuclear disarmament is one of the requirements of the times and an international trend, it notes, and goes on:

Nevertheless, the U.S. has made desperate efforts to keep the deployed nuclear weapons at any cost, claiming that the existence of about 200 B61 thermal nuclear bombs deployed by it in such Western European countries as Italy, Belgium, Germany and Netherlands, is important for the security of NATO and they would deter its member nations from developing their own nuclear weapons.

This goes to prove that though the U.S. pays lip-service to “nuclear disarmament”, it is nothing but hypocrisy and the U.S. is an arch criminal of nuclear threat and proliferation.

It is the U.S. invariable policy and strategic goal to contain other big powers and threaten, blackmail and put under its control the anti-imperialist independent countries with an unchallenged nuclear edge and thus realize its ambition for world supremacy.

The U.S. is keen on threatening and blackmailing other countries with nukes and many other weapons of mass destruction it deployed in different parts of the world. It is giving spurs to modernization of nuclear weapons while squandering a huge amount of money under the pretext of coping with “nuclear threat” from someone given that it is left with no justification to increase nuclear armed forces after the end of the Cold War.

The world is beset with danger of a new nuclear arms race and nuclear confrontation, its peace and security being exposed to grave threat, owing to the U.S. frantic arms expansion and nuclear war moves.

Peace can never settle in this land as long as the U.S. nuclear weapons are left intact. This is the unanimous assertion of the peaceloving people of the world including those countries in the European region and the demand of the times.

The U.S. would be well advised to stop at once the anachronistic and anti-peace nuclear war moves as required by the international community calling for the nuclear disarmament and the dismantlement of nuclear weapons.

Copyright (C) KOREA NEWS SERVICE(KNS) All Rights Reserved.

But coinciding with this basic characteristic of parasitic capitalism, is the active efforts by the bourgeoisie to increase the amount of profit extracted from workers – by lowering wages – even $1 per hour.

The following example was recently published in the November 2009 edition of the North Star Compass:

If a capitalist pays his workers just $1 less per hour – let’s say $10 instead of $11 – which doesn’t seem to be such a great difference – but, based on one year amounting to 2,000 hours, the employer takes $2,000 from the pocket of each employee and puts it into his own pocket.

If he employs 100 workers, his profit amounts to $200,000. If his company employs 1,000 workers, his handsome profit amounts to $2,000,000. per year – and so forth and so on.

Using all sorts of tax deductions allowed by the Government, he would pay less than $300,000 in taxes, which will leave him with a handsome profit of over $4,800,000.

It is very simple to understand! The ONLY way the rich get richer is by the poor getting poorer!

Pagad – The Gangster’s Enemy (on YouTube)

From Pagad (online):

In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Mindful of our duty to the Creator as a Community, and in conformity with:

“You are the best of people evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right,

forbidding what is wrong and believing in the Creator…”

~ Al Quran: Surah 3 Verse 110

Therefore, all those persons who surrender themselves to the will of God are welded into a Community and the Society comes into being. Thus, this is an ideological Society; a Society radically different from those, which arise from accidents or races, colour or country. This Society is the result of a deliberate choice, commitment, effort and sacrifice.

Accordingly, it is the outcome of a contract, which takes place between human beings and their Creator.  Those who enter into this contract undertake to recognise and accept God as their Sovereign; His Guidance as Supreme; and His Injunctions as absolute Law. They further undertake to accept, without question, reservation or doubt, His classification of good and bad, right and wrong, the permissible and the prohibited.

In recognition and acceptance hereof, we hereby pledge to honour our Contract with Our Creator…

Gangsterism and Drugs are menaces and should be eradicated!

We all CAN & MUST do something about it!

Let’s organise ourselves and protect our children from the dangers they face every day!

Join other neighbours and establish a PAGAD Branch in your area.

Background Information (from www.sahistory.org):

People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) came into being in 1996 when communities on the Cape Flats, Cape Town decided to form an anti-crime organisation. The aim was to fight the drugs and violence plaguing their area. PAGAD began as a multi-religious organisation, but because its dominant membership was of Muslim people, it became an Islamic front. Later, PAGAD developed anti-government and Western sentiments, as

the organisation believes that the South African government poses a threat to Islamic values. It also aims to create better political representation for South African Muslims.

Due to its controversial vigilante tactics, the organisation has several front names like Muslims Against Global Oppression (MAGO) and Muslims Against Illegitimate Leaders (MAIL) under which it launches anti-

Western campaigns. PAGAD’s military wing is called G-Force, for Gun Force, and functions as small groups or cells. It is believed that G-Force has been responsible for acts of sabotage and violence akin to terrorism.

PAGAD has been implicated in episodes of urban terrorism in Cape Town since 1998, especially 9 different explosions in 2000. The groups attacks synagogues, gay nightclubs, moderate Muslims, tourist attractions and restaurants with Western associations, like the Planet Hollywood bombing in Cape Town on 25 August 1998. PAGAD denied any involvement in the event after subsequent raids on several members’ homes within 20 minutes of the explosion.

The organisation first came into the spotlight in 1996 when members shot and set alight Rashad Staggie, a notorious Cape Flats drug dealer. PAGAD felt that the police were not doing enough to stop drug related crimes in their communities and decided to take matters into their own hands.

Shots were fired at a group of Muslim men who converged on the Staggie residence and some of the vigilantes were wounded. Staggie tried to escape by car, but was prevented from doing so. He was shot and someone threw a firebomb at him and he burst into flames. Police officers doused the fire, but several masked men fired further shots and finally killed Staggie in a widely televised drama. Benny Gool, a photographer at the scene, captured the killing on film and had to go into hiding for fear of attacks from PAGAD. He was also not prepared to turn his footage over to the police. Rashied Staggie, the brother of the executed drug dealer, fled to a safer location, but swore revenge at his brother’s funeral.

It is estimated that PAGAD has several hundred members with G-Force probably consisting of less than 50 people. There are allegations that it has relationships with Middle Eastern fundamentalist groups, as well as with Osama bin Laden.

In 1998 the South African Police launched Operation Saladin, a campaign to curb the rampant vigilantism PAGAD was practicing. Two policemen laid charges of intimidation after they allegedly received death threats as a result of the operation.

The latest crisis to befall worldwide capitalism has left its mark all over the globe; however, the most notable examples of outright resistance to the capitalist wage-labor system, and all its innate failures, has been most prominent among the agitated working classes of Eastern Europe.

Following the 1989 counter-revolution by the revisionist General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Mikhail Gorbachev, which brought about the political dissolution of the Soviet Union and later the reversion of socialism to capitalism throughout Eastern Europe, systematic privatization of the means of production almost immediately resulted in the chaotic social transformation that have yet to be resolved, even 20 years thereafter.

Though some degree of stability was achieved in a few select states, the socio-economic consequences of the worldwide capitalist crisis that began in 2007 have revitalized Eastern Europe’s revolutionary proletariat – the most advanced social class in history – into taking direct, collective action against the ruling classes marked with a characteristic increase in sentiments favorable towards the re-socialization of the means of productions.

The most “hailed” private economies of the former Soviet and socialist bloc, including Poland, Latvia and the Ukraine, have now become plagued with economic instability and that have made them profoundly unattractive to foreign capital. Latvia, for instance, is on the brink of seeing a 20 per cent reduction in its gross national product. The former Ukrainian SSR, which was once hailed as a bastion of Western capital investment, has now seen its economic growth curbed back to pre-2003 levels. And Poland, whose regime is the most virulently reactionary of all the former socialist states, is now considered a major risk for defaulting on national debts.

The revolutionary transformation of the oppressed working peoples of Eastern Europe has not gone unnoticed by the ruling class regime, where in many cases unfathomable laws banning the public display of symbols associated with the labor and communist movement (such as the sickle and hammer, or the five-pointed red star). Such policies demonstrate the ruling classes’ growing anxiety over the rising threat of open insurrection against the self-destructive policies of the capitalist wage-labor system and all its insufferable calamities.

War President Obama: 30,000 More Troops to Afghanistan

Obama: “We Did Not Ask for This Fight”
Bush: “We Did Not Seek This Conflict”
Obama: “New Attacks are Being Plotted as I Speak”
Bush: “At This Moment … Terrorists are Planning New Attacks”
Obama: “Our Cause is Just, Our Resolve Unwavering”
Bush: “Our Cause is Just, Our Coalition [is] Determined”
Obama: “This Is No Idle Danger, No Hypothetical Threat”
Bush: “The Enemies of Freedom Are Not Idle”
Obama: “We Have No Interest in Occupying Your Country”
Bush: “I Wouldn’t Be Happy if I Were Occupied Either”

The war in Afghanistan turned 8 years old on October 7^th, 2009. The War in Afghanistan has carried on longer than the Second World War…
Longer than the First World War…
Longer than the American Civil War …

When you talk to a person in the United States or Canada about the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, many are unaware that the conflict persists to this day (in fact, it is escalating). Despite the recent escalations in Afghanistan, most pay the conflict absolutely no mind in their day-to-day affairs. Why would they? But the Afghan resistance continues, in the face of a foe that is better armed, funded and supplied than the insurgency. In the face of this resistance, successive administrations of NATO commanders continue to give the same message on Afghanistan: “We cannot win”.

So, how is it that the some of the poorest people on the planet earth are holding their own, and continuing to give NATO forces in Afghanistan an ongoing fight and mounting casualties? More importantly why do the people of Afghanistan continue to resist?

Afghanistan: A Brief History
Afghanistan is, if nothing else, a historical example of iron resistance to invasion.
Alexander the Great, the Mongol Khans, the Persians, the British Empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics…no great power has been able to conclusively conquer Afghanistan or hold it indefinitely, no matter what the brutality towards the Afghan peoples inhabiting the region or the cost in human life. Every empire that has ever invaded Afghanistan has subsequently collapsed.

The following account could have just as easily been written after the American conquest of Afghanistan in 2001, but it is an analysis of the British conquest of Afghanistan in 1839 (my emphasis added):
“The conquest of Afghanistan seemed accomplished, and a considerable portion of the troops was sent back. But the Afghans were noways content to be ruled by the Feringhee Kaffirs (European infidels), and during the whole of 1840 and ’41, insurrection followed on insurrection in every part of the country. The Anglo-Indian troops had to be constantly on the move. Yet, McNaghten declared this to be the normal state of Afghan society, and wrote home that every thing went on well, and Shah Soojah’s power was taking root. In vain were the warnings of the military officers and the other political agents….every insurrection during the summer of ’41 was successfully repressed, and toward October, McNaghten, nominated governor of Bombay, intended leaving with another body of troops for India. But then the storm broke out. The occupation of Afghanistan cost the Indian treasury £1,250,000 per annum: 16,000 troops, Anglo-Indian, and Shah Soojah’s, had to be paid in Afghanistan; 3,000 more lay in Sinde, and the Bolan Pass; Shah Soojah’s regal splendours, the salaries of his functionaries, and all expenses of his court and government, were paid by the Indian treasury, and finally, the Afghan chiefs were subsidized, or rather bribed, from the same source, in order to keep them out of mischief. McNaghten was informed of the impossibility of going on at this rate of spending money. He attempted retrenchment, but the only possible way to enforce it was to cut down the allowances of the chiefs. The very day he attempted this, the chiefs formed a conspiracy for the extermination of the British, and thus McNaghten himself was the means of bringing about the concentration of those insurrectionary forces, which hitherto had struggled against the invaders singly, and without unity or concert; though it is certain, too, that by this time the hatred of British dominion among the Afghans had reached the highest point.”
-Friederich Engels, Afghanistan, 1857

While the British occupiers grew complacent in their conquest of Afghanistan, resistance erupted. Engels continues:

“ Nov. 2, 1841, the insurrection broke out. The house of Alexander Burnes, in the city, was attacked and he himself murdered. The British general did nothing, and the insurrection grew strong by impunity…. A few companies were sent against the thousands of insurgents, and of course were beaten. This still more emboldened the Afghans. Nov. 3, the forts close to the camp were occupied. On the 9th, the commissariat fort (garrisoned by only 80 men) was taken by the Afghans, and the British were thus reduced to starvation…In fact, by the middle of November, his irresolution and incapacity had so demoralised the troops that neither Europeans nor Sepoys were any longer fit to meet the Afghans in the open field. Then the negotiations began. During these, McNaghten was murdered in a conference with Afghan chiefs. Snow began to cover the ground, provisions were scarce. At last, Jan. 1, a capitulation was concluded. All the money, £190,000, was to be handed over to the Afghans, and bills signed for £140,000 more. All the artillery and ammunition, except 6 six-pounders and 3 mountain guns, were to remain. All Afghanistan was to be evacuated. The chiefs, on the other hand, promised a safe conduct, provisions, and baggage cattle.”
-Friederich Engels, Afghanistan, 1857

The British adventure in Afghanistan ended with the withdrawal of British troops and thousands of British soldiers dead with a disproportionately larger amount of the people of Afghanistan killed in the process. The later Soviet adventure in Afghanistan ended under similar terms. The mass resistance to occupation was enough to drive out even the most technologically superior foe. After the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, the period of Taliban rule began, which leads us to the current occupation which began in 2001.

“Cartoon” Muslims and Chauvinistic Orientalism

“These are detestable murderers and scumbags, I’ll tell you that right up front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties.”
- Canadian Chief of Defense staff, General Rick Hillier.

The ongoing resistance in Afghanistan is written off by Western audiences as savage and the ongoing resistance to occupation is seen as a malevolent force that would just as surely wage a military strike on the United States itself, as well as allied countries, if ever given the chance.
The fighters in Afghanistan are seen literally by many Western observers as being in league with the infamous 9/11 hijackers. Of course, none of the 19 alleged hijackers were from Afghanistan (15 from Saudi Arabia, 2 from the United Arab emirates, 1 from Egypt, 1 from Lebanon), but nonetheless the parallel is drawn.
For this reason, as with resistance/national liberation fighters all over the Middle East, the Afghan resistance fighters are portrayed as two-dimensional cartoon villains, motivated purely by irrational religious fundamentalism. Of course, it is true to an extent that all political movements in contemporary Afghanistan (including the Karzai puppet regime) claim allegiance to Islam, as the majority of the population does.

The dehumanizing portrayal of all Afghan resistance fighters as bloodthirsty religious zealots—note that in most narratives, it is the occupied people of Afghanistan who are portrayed as the aggressors—coupled with “War on Terror” pop-Islamic theology, where the smug premise is given that the unwashed Muslim peoples of the world want nothing more than to end their own life and others in order to receive a celestial gift of paradise and virgins in the afterlife, has given rise to massive national-chauvinism and racism.

While Islam does perhaps have cases of condoning martyrdom, one must also remember that so do Christianity and Judaism, the other major Abrahamic faiths. The allegations of Islamic scriptural basis for the war in Afghanistan are flimsy, as it contrasts sharply with not only the long history of coexistence (including intermarriage) among Muslims and non-Muslim neighboring peoples around the world, but also contrasts with some of the teachings of Islam itself.
From the Quran:
“Be good to . . . the neighbor belonging to your people and the alien neighbor.” (4:36)
“Allah does not forbid you concerning those people who do not fight you because of your religion, nor expel you from your homes, that you show them kindness and deal with them justly.. . . Allah forbids you only concerning those people who fight you for your religion, and drive you from your homes and help others to expel you, that you make friends of them.” (60: 8,9)
“And you will always find treachery in them, except a few of them. So pardon them and forgive. Surely Allah loves those who do good to others.” (5:13)

These are words of peace and coexistence, taken from the same scriptures as those alleged to incite suicide bombings. It becomes clear at this war being waged in Afghanistan, and other wars waged in other parts of the Middle East against occupation, while they may assume Islam as their vehicle just as most Western conflicts acquired a basis in Christianity, it is not the Islamic faith that is the driving force behind their armed defiance. The actual reasons for their armed resistance are very worldly, very material and tangible—the continuation of capitalism and imperialism.

Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) — It is inevitability of history and a law governing the development of history that humankind advances toward socialism, says Rodong Sinmun Sunday in a signed article.

The socialist society develops thanks to the inexhaustible creative power of the popular masses who are armed with high ideological consciousness and united as one, the article notes, and goes on:

The drive for remolding people and their thought so as to strengthen the driving force of the revolution and steadily boost their role was pushed forward ahead of other work under the wise leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea. As a result, socialism in the DPRK has been fortified as an invincible fortress standing whatever storm and stress, demonstrating its might all over the world.

The Songun era is the era of great change in which the driving force of the revolution has unprecedentedly grown stronger and the cause of socialism developed onto a new higher stage.

The DPRK has put forward the People’s Army stronger than any other social group in terms of revolutionary character, the sense of organization and combat capacity as the core unit of the Juche revolutionary force. Herein lies the source of the invincibility and might of Korean-style socialism.

Socialist society is the most advantageous and advanced one embodying the popular masses’ intrinsic nature and desire for independence. It is also genuine society for the people as their political and economic life as well as ideological and cultural one are in full bloom as required by man’s intrinsic desire to live and develop independently.

The advantages and vitality of socialism have been clearly proved by the reality in the DPRK which has brought about in a short span of historical time great socio-economic changes. It is impossible for capitalism to do so even though they would have taken it hundreds of years.

Socialism in the DPRK is the most advantageous one centered on the popular masses.

The essential character and advantages of Korean-style socialism lie in that it successfully embodies the immortal Juche idea in order to ensure that the popular masses are put forward as the master of everything in the society and everything of the society serves the people and independence of the people is most firmly defended and realized.

The reality in which Korean-style socialism centred on the popular masses is firmly defended and wins victory after victory goes to prove the validity and the tremendous vitality of the Songun leadership, the Songun politics of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The cause of socialism is sure to emerge victorious as there is the Songun politics, example of the independent politics, politics under socialism in the present times and the most powerful weapon.

Copyright (C) KOREA NEWS SERVICE(KNS) All Rights Reserved.

On Sunday, BART police officers arrived on the scene at the West Oakland BART station in response to reports of a disturbance. The video below shows officers wrangling with an intoxicated suspect – before smashing 37-year old Michael Joseph Gibson into a solid glass wall.

[ Message From.... ]

Hakimullah Mehsud -

Emir Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan

and

Maulana Wali-ur-Rahman -

Emir Mehsud’s Tribe’s Mujahideen

[ May Allah Protect Them ]

^ A huge selection of some great anti-US/Israel music videos made by Hezbollah’s propaganda unit.

Some favorites:

http://www.wa3ad.org/video/anasheed/amr … lirhab.wmv
http://www.wa3ad.org/video/anasheed/5al … _esma3.wmv
http://www.wa3ad.org/video/anasheed/na9 … eldini.wmv ]]> http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/2009/11/21/hezbollah-resistance-videos/feed/ 0 http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/2009/11/21/military-coup-against-barack-obama/ http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/2009/11/21/military-coup-against-barack-obama/#comments Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:55:00 +0000 Hekkenschroeder http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/?p=2024 Source: Talking Points Memo

Full Text Of Newsmax Column Suggesting Military Coup Against Obama

Today’s major media journalism is biased, irresponsible, sensationalist reporting that distorts, exaggerates or misstates the truth. It’s misinformation or agitprop disinformation masquerading as fact to boost circulation, readership, viewers, or listeners, and on vital issues lies about or suppresses uncomfortable truths to provide unqualified support for state and/or corporate interests – to the detriment of the greater good that’s always sacrificed for profits and imperial aims.

As a result, major media sources produce a daily propaganda diet and what Project Censored calls “junk food news,” and get most people to believe it. In their landmark book, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained the “propaganda model” that controls the public message by “filter(ing)” disturbing truths, “leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print” or air.

Today the media is in crisis and a free and open society at risk at a time fiction substitutes for fact, news is carefully controlled, dissent marginalized, and on-air and print journalists support powerful interests as paid liars, or what famed journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) called “prostitutes of the press.”

As a result, imperial wars are called liberating ones. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good. Major topics go unaddressed or are misrepresented. Government and business interests are endorsed wholeheartedly. America is always called “beautiful.” Beneficial social change is considered heresy. The market works best, we’re told, so let it, and patriotism means supporting lawlessness and corporate outlaws by shopping till we drop.

For many decades, The Times has been the closest thing in America to an official ministry of information and propaganda masquerading as real news, commentary and analysis.

Its unmatched clout once got media critic Norman Solomon to call its front page “the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA;” most everywhere, in fact, because its reports are widely circulated and followed globally.

The Paper of Record has a long history of:

• supporting the powerful;
• backing corporate interests;
• endorsing imperial wars;
• supporting CIA efforts to topple elected governments, assassinate independent leaders, prop up friendly dictators, secretly fund and train paramilitary death squads, practice sophisticated forms of torture, and menace democratic freedoms at home and abroad. For decades, in fact, some Times’ foreign correspondents were covert Agency assets. Others today likely are as well as other prominent fourth estate members.

The Times management is also comfortable with:

• Washington and corporate lawlessness;
• an unprecedented and growing wealth gap;
• Wall Street banksters looting the federal treasury;
• a private banking cartel controlling the nation’s money;
• unmet human needs and increasing poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair for growing millions in a nation run by rogue politicians who don’t give a damn as long as they’re re-elected;
• a de facto one-party state;
• deep corruption at the highest government and corporate levels;
• democracy for the select few alone;
• sham elections; and
• a deepening social decay symptomatic of a declining state, yet The Times management won’t use its clout to expose and help reverse it.

Of course, the same applies throughout the corporate media, the only variance being audience size, the ability to influence it, and the special impact of TV news and talk radio to arouse their faithful. Plus their power of round-the-clock persuasive repetition.

Examples of Journalism, New York Times Style

After a Washington staged February 29, 2004 middle-of-the-night coup ousted democratically elected Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, The Times March 1 editorial lied by:

• stating he resigned;
• saying sending in Marines to abduct him “was the right thing to do;”
• claiming they only came after “Mr. Aristide yielded power;”
• blaming him for “contribut(ing) significantly to his own downfall (because of his) increasingly autocratic and lawless rule….;” and
• accusing him of manipulating the 2000 legislative elections and not “deliver(ing) the democracy he promised.”

In fact, he’s a beloved democrat first elected in 1990 with 67% of the vote, ousted by a US-supported coup months later, returned to Haiti in 1994, then, because he couldn’t succeed himself in 1996, ran in 2000 and was overwhelmingly re-elected with 92% of the vote. Today in exile, the great majority of Haitians want him back but paramilitary occupiers, under orders from Washington, won’t let him.

Following Hugo Chavez’s December 1998 election, The Times Latin American reporter, Larry Roher, wrote:

Regional “presidents and party leaders are looking over their shoulders (concerned about the) specter (they) thought they had safely interred: that of the populist demagogue, the authoritarian man on horseback known as the caudillo (strongman)” taking power.

Ever since, Times writers consistently:

• turned a blind eye to Venezuelan democracy;
• bashed Chavez as “divisive, a ruinous demagogue, provocative (and) the next Fidel Castro;”
• said he “militarized the government, emasculated the country’s courts, intimidated the media, eroded confidence in the economy, and hollowed out Venezuela’s once-democratic institutions:” common conditions during decades of pre-Chavez rule that columnist Roger Lowenstein falsely said exist now in:
  • calling him anti-capitalist for sharing his nation’s oil wealth with the people by providing essential social services, and for lifting the most needy out of poverty; and
  • denouncing his making foreign investors pay their fair share.

Lowenstein backed the aborted April 2002 coup by calling Chavez’s ouster a “resignation,” then saying Venezuela “no longer (would be) threatened by a would-be dictator.”

Post-/911, the Times played the lead role in taking the nation to war by highlighting the “day of terror” and saying the “President Vows to Exact Punishment for ‘Evil.’ ”

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Judith Miller was a weapon of mass deception with her daily front page Pentagon press release columns masquerading as real news, later exposed as manipulative lies, but they worked.

Following the September 15, 2009 Goldstone Commission report, a same day Neil MacFarquhar column suggested that Israel’s “disproportionate attack” followed Hamas provocations, so perhaps it was justified. While The Times gave Judge Goldstone op-ed space, it:

published scathing letters denouncing his “one-sidedness” and a September 18 piece saying “the Obama administration said (today) that a United Nations report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza was unfair to Israel and did not take adequate account of ‘deplorable’ actions by the militant group Hamas in the conflict last winter.”

The paper then imposed a near-blackout on its news and editorial pages to bury the story and kill it through silence – never mind its importance in documenting clear evidence of Israeli war crimes against a civilian population.

Founded in 1970 as an independent, private, non-profit member organization of US public radio stations, NPR promised to be an alternative to commercial broadcasters by “promot(ing) personal growth rather than corporate gain (and) speak with many voices, many dialects.”

Having long ago abandoned its promise, and given its substantial corporate and government funding, NPR is indistinguishable from the rest of the corporate media, just as corrupted, and consider its former head, Kevin Klose.

He was president from December 1998 – September 2008 and CEO from 1998 – January 2009. Earlier he was US propaganda director as head of the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television, and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti, so he fit easily into his new role.

On January 5, 2009, Vivian Schiller succeeded him as president and CEO. Her official bio says she was previously with “The New York Times Company where she served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of NYTimes.com.”

She’ll oversee “all NPR operations and initiatives, including the organization’s critical partnerships with our 800+ member stations, and their service to the more than 26 million people who listen to NPR programming every week.” Most don’t know they’re getting the same corporate propaganda and “junk food news” or that
NPR calls itself “public” to conceal its real agenda, and why critics call it “National Pentagon or Petroleum Radio” with good reason.

Created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) calls itself “a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress…and is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,100 locally-owned and-operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.”

Like NPR, it’s heavily corporate and government funded and provides similar services for them. Under George Bush, former Voice of America director Kenneth Tomlinson was chairman of CPB’s Board of Governors until an internal 2005 investigation forced him out for repeatedly braking the law.

On September 16, 2009, a CPB press release announced that “The board of directors (of the CPB) today elected Dr. Ernest Wilson III (as) chairman and re-elected….CEO Beth Courtney (as) vice-chair.”

Wilson previously held senior policy positions as Director of International Programs and Resources on the National Security Council. He was also Policy and Planning Unit Director for the US Information Agency and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Beth Courtney is a George Bush appointee, a past chairman of the board of America’s Public Television Stations and present CPB vice chairman. Currently she also serves on the boards of Satellite Educational Resources Consortium, the Organization of State Broadcasting Executives, the National Forum for Public Television Executives, and the National Educational Telecommunications Association along with other appropriate credentials for her re-appointment.

In its May/June 2004 “Extra” report, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) asked “How Public Is Public Radio? Writers Steve Rendall and Daniel Butterworth quoted past head Kevin Klose saying:

“All of us believe our goal is to serve the entire democracy, the entire country.”

Not according to FAIR on “every on-air source quoted in June 2003 on four of (NPR’s) news shows: All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday.” Each guest was classified “by occupation, gender, nationality, and partisan affiliation.” Combined, 2,334 sources from 804 stories were quoted.

FAIR found that NPR relies on the same dominant sources as the major media that include government officials, professional experts, and corporate representatives nearly two-thirds of the time.

Spokespeople for public interest groups accounted for 7% of total sources, and ordinary people appeared mostly in “one-sentence soundbites.”

Male guests outnumbered women about 4:1, and those quoted most often came from the same elite categories as men.

Overall, NPR represents the same dominant interests as the major commercial media – conservative, pro-business, pro-war, pro-Israel, and very much against the public interest while pretending to support it.

FAIR analyzed PBS’s flagship NewsHour guest list and drew similar conclusions. Like NPR, it’s ideologically right and usually censors progressive content and public interest programming. In a 1990 NewsHour evaluation, FAIR compared its content to ABC’s Nightline and found that it presented “an even narrower segment of the political spectrum.” It then conducted an October 2005 – March 2006 analysis of all of its programs, got similar results, and determined that NewHour is even more ideologically right than NPR that tilts far in that direction itself.

FAIR concluded that NPR and NewsHour content “overwhelmingly represent those in power rather than the public” they’re obliged to serve. While masquerading as public programming, they betray their listeners and viewers by offering the same propaganda and “junk food news” as the dominant corporate media. Considering their funding sources, what else would they do.

An October 6 NPR story is typical of most others. It charged Hugo Chavez with “Targeting Opponents For Arrest.” Reporter Juan Forero claimed “dozens of university students” went on hunger strike outside OAS headquarters in Caracas on September 28 along with others “across the country….in support of Julio Cesar Rivas, a student who was arrested during an anti-government demonstration in August….”

Rivas is the coordinator and founder of Juventud Activa de Venezuela Unida (United Active Youth of Venezuela – JAVU). Earlier, he was part of a staged, violent street protest against Venezuela’s new Education Law. The government says JAVU acts as “shock troops” in opposition protests and is liberally funded by the National Endowment of Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and US Agency or International Development (USAID) to disrupt internal Venezuelan affairs. It’s a familiar scheme, repeated numerous times in the past, to discredit and disrupt the Chavez government in hopes of eventually ousting it.

JAVU has about 80,000 members in most Venezuelan states, and its blog site calls for bringing down the government and supporting the Honduran military coup.

Rivas was released on September 29, but must appear for trial. He’s a Washington-funded provocateur, charged with resisting arrest, instigating crime, conspiracy, inciting rebellion, damaging public property, and using “generic” weapons.

While in custody, Venezuela Public Defender Gabriela Ramirez assured him in person that his full constitutional rights will be protected. Street protests still continue and have been countered by pro-Chavez ones calling for “peace and tolerance.” According to the Federation of Bolivarian students’ Carlos Sierra:

Opposition “students are being used and manipulated by the top leadership of the irrational opposition, which, via the (dominant) media, send them to generate violence and terrorism in the country” much like on previous occasions.

But according to NPR’s Forero, Rivas was “sent to one of Venezuela’s most infamous prisons” where other government opponents are held as political prisoners. Chavez “has been jailing dozens of key opponents – some of them students, some of them veteran politicians” in citing unnamed “human rights groups and constitutional experts (claiming) Venezuela is increasingly singling out and imprisoning its foes in politically motivated witch hunts.”

Forero didn’t mention that Rivas fomented violence. Others arrested also broke the law. No one is a political prisoner, and all Venezuelans get fair and equitable trials, unlike in America where real political arrests, prosecutions and convictions happen regularly against innocent targeted victims – a topic NPR and PBS won’t touch except to vilify them publicly on-air.

Nor do they report truthfully on Occupied Palestine. On October 12, 2009, on NPR’s Morning Edition, reporter Renee Montagne practically extolled Israeli racism in stating:

“There is a new enemy for some Israelis: romance between Jewish women and Arab men, (so) vigilantes have banded together to fight it.” She means from “Jewish settlements” that “have sprung up (in) traditionally Arab” East Jerusalem, but won’t admit they’re on stolen Palestinian land.

NPR’s Sheera Frankel joined a patrol, implied Arabs are inferior to Jews, and suggested they pose a danger to Jewish women and girls. She described vigilantes on the lookout for “Arab-Jewish couples (to) break up their dates,” suggesting it’s the right thing to do, but never questioning the legitimacy of settlements, vigilante violence in East Jerusalem, its lawless disregard for the law, or great harm to innocent people. Instead she called “mixed couples a growing epidemic” of miscegenation – typical of NPR’s racism and one-sided support for Israel.

The WSJ is Dow Jones & Company’s flagship publication, now a News Corp. one since Rupert Murdoch bought it in August 2007. Stating its ideology up front, it says it supports “free markets and free people” as well as “free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases (edicts) of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.”

In October 2007, FAIR bemoaned the Murdock takeover because of his “penchant for using his holdings as vehicles for his personal (views) and business interests.” Earlier FAIR and the Columbia Journalism Review criticized its editorial page for inaccuracy, extreme bias, and dishonesty.

The Journal is unapologetic in saying its philosophy “make(s) no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view….We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether (from) private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government.(We’re) not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical.”

Radical can be revolutionary and beneficial when it backs fundamental progressive change and reform. Webster defines it as:

“marked by a considerable departure from the usual and traditional: extreme; tending or disposed to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions; of, relating to, or constituting a political (or perhaps business) group associated with views, practices, and policies of extreme change; (or) advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs” such the radical right represented by the WSJ’s management and editorial writers.

Critics agree that they’re on the far right extremist fringe, a supporter of voodoo economics, tax cuts for the rich, a staunch defender of executive privilege, and disdainful of anything to the left of their views as witnessed daily by some of the most outlandish, one-sided, pro-business commentaries countenancing no alternatives, with the rarest of rare exceptions showing up to make the paper look fair, which it’s not.

Consider editorial board member Mary O’Grady in her weekly Americas column on “politics, economics and business in Latin America and Canada.” Her extremism is unmatched. Her style is agitprop; her space a truth-free zone; her language hateful and vindictive; her tone malicious and slanderous; her style bare-knuckled thuggishness; and her material calculating, mendacious, and shameless. Yet she’s a WSJ regular and an award-winning op-ed writer, but surely no journalist according to Webster’s definition:

“writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.”

O’Grady fails on both counts. She’s a kind of print version of Fox News’ Glenn Beck, who promotes himself on glennbeck.com looking arrogant in a uniform reminiscent of the Nazi SS.

Consider O’Grady’s support for the Washington-backed June 28 Honduran coup ousting a democratically elected president. It was followed by months of mass arrests, disappearances, killings, targeting the independent media, suspending the Constitution, declaring martial law, and threatening the Brazilian embassy’s sovereignty where President Manuel Zelaya took refuge after returning.

In one of her many pro-coup articles, O’Grady (on July 13) headlined “Why Honduras Sent Zelaya Away.” In a “perfect world,” according to her, he “would be in jail in his own country right now, awaiting trial. The Honduran attorney general (part of the coup regime) has charged him with deliberately violating Honduran law and the Supreme Court (stacked with pro-coup justices) ordered his arrest in Tegucigalpa on June 28,” the day of the coup.

“But the Honduran military whisked him out of the country, to Costa Rica,” to save itself the embarrassment of jailing a democratically elected leader whose lawful actions were endorsed by the majority of Hondurans wanting progressive constitutional change and a president willing to give it to them.

Yet according to O’Grady, “Mr. Zelaya’s detention was legal, as was his official removal from office by Congress….Besides eagerly trampling the constitution, Mr. Zelaya had demonstrated that he was ready to employ the violent tactics of ‘chavismo’ to hang onto power. The decision to pack him off immediately was taken in the interest of protecting both constitutional order and human life.”

In fact, Zelaya neither espoused or practiced violence, and his call for a public June 28 vote on whether to hold a referendum for a new Constitutional Convention at the same time as the November elections lawfully asked for a “yes” or “no” on one question:

“Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box (the other three were for candidates) in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?”

According to Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran “Civil Participation Act,” government officials may hold non-binding inquiries (referenda) to determine popular support for proposed measures. Gauging sentiment for a National Constituent Assembly for a new Constitution is legal.

Yet in her June 28 article titled, “Honduras Defends Its Democracy,” O’Grady falsely claimed Zelaya planned “a constitutional rewrite (following) a national referendum” only the Congress can approve. In fact, Zelaya called for a vote to assess public sentiment, pro or con, on whether Hondurans want a Constitutional Convention, an act no different from a public opinion poll that’s perfectly legal or should be anywhere. But according to O’Grady, Zelaya “decided he would run the referendum himself.” It’s typical O’Grady truth reversal that earns her weekly space on the WSJ’s op-ed page.

State-owned and funded, it’s tradition is long, unbroken, and disturbing as the world’s largest and most influential broadcaster reaching global audiences in 32 languages. From inception in 1925, it’s been reliably pro-government and pro-business, or as its founder Lord Reith wrote the establishment: “They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.” Neither he or his successors disappointed on topics mattering most, including war and peace, corporate crimes, US-UK duplicity, labor rights, democratic freedoms, human and civil rights, social justice, and Western imperialism.

They’re consistently distorted, suppressed, marginalized or ignored throughout decades of misreporting despite claiming “honesty (and) integrity (is) what the BBC stands for (because it’s) free from political influence and commercial pressure.”

As a propaganda service, its record is uncompromisingly anti-union, pro-business, and dependably safe for Whitehall and its allies. It moralizes Western aggression, bashes independent democratic leaders, and cheerleads for the powerful at the expense of providing real news and information for millions believing BBC is credible. For over eight decades, it’s record is solid and predictable – betraying the public trust to reliably serve the powerful. The tradition continues.

Among the many, consider a select few. For example, CNN’s Lou Dobbs, “Mr. Independent” he calls himself. Critics use more descriptive terms, yet according to his loudobbs.tv.cnn.com bio:

He’s “anchor and managing editor of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight (and also anchor of) a nationally syndicated financial news radio report, The Lou Dobbs Financial Report….” In addition, he writes a weekly CNN.com commentary, is an author and award-winning “journalist,” most recently in 2005 when “the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded (him) the Emmy for Lifetime Achievement” for serving the usual special interests nightly on prime time TV.

In June 2004, he also won “the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies for his ongoing series ‘Broken Borders,’ which examines US policy towards illegal immigration.” Little wonder in an August 2006 article, this writer called him CNN’s Vice President of Racism. He’s also a paid liar and in America wins awards.

In May 2008, a Media Matters Action Network report titled, “Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News” highlighted undocumented Latino hatemongering by Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck, each claiming:

• an alleged connection between undocumented Latinos and crime; in fact, clear evidence shows they’re no more likely to break laws than American citizens;
• how they exploit social services and don’t pay taxes; in fact, undocumented immigrants are ineligible, without proof of legal status, for Medicaid, food stamps, State Children’s Health Insurance (SCHIP) and welfare; they do pay income, payroll, property, sales and other taxes and are entitled to public education; according to the National Academy of Sciences, immigrants provide a net annual gain of up to $10 billion to US GDP; according to Rand Corp. economist James P. Smith, the “net present value of the gains from those immigrants who arrived since 1980 would be $333 billion.”
• the “reconquista” myth about a supposed Mexican plot to take over the US Southwest; and
• an epidemic of Latino voter fraud that, according to Dobbs’ incessant drumbeat, puts America’s “democracy absolutely in jeopardy.”

He also propagates the myth that undocumented Latinos caused an increase in US leprosy (or Hansen’s disease). In an on-air April 2005 report (among others), correspondent Christine Romans quoted “medical lawyer” Dr. Madeleine Cosman saying:

“We have some enormous problems with horrendous diseases that are being brought into America by illegal aliens (including) leprosy….” Romans added that, according to Cosman, “there were about 900 (US) cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years.”

According to a May 2007 “60 Minutes” report, the National Hansen’s Disease Program (NHDP) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported that “7,000 is the number of leprosy cases over the last 30 years, not the past three, and nobody knows how many of those cases involve illegal immigrants.” NHDP added that from 2002 – 2005 (the timeline of Cosman’s claim), only 398 cases occurred. To that, Dobbs responded: “If we reported it, it’s a fact.”

Founded in 1971, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is internationally known for its activism against hate groups and scoring legal victories against white supremacists. It says Dobbs regularly features inaccurate racist reports and features anti-immigrant hatemongers like:

• Glenn Spencer, head of the anti-immigration American Patrol, whose web site highlights anti-Mexican vitriol and the idea that Mexico plans a secret takeover of the Southwest;
• Joe McCutchen, head of the anti-immigration Protect Arkansas Now group, that Dobbs calls “a terrific group of concerned, caring Americans;”
• Paul Streitz, co-founder of Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control, who once denounced Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. for “turning New Haven into a banana republic;”
• Barbara Coe, leader of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform who routinely calls Mexicans “savages;” and
• Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Project and a leading anti-immigration figure.

SPLC explains that Dobbs “doggedly explores and supports the anti-immigration movement (and) won’t report salient negative facts about anti-immigration leaders he approves of….”

Instead, he falsely claims that:

• “just about a third of the prison population in this country is estimated to be illegal aliens;”
• states have been “overwhelmed by criminal illegal aliens;” and
• US borders are “unprotected” allowing “criminal illegal aliens (to) murder police officers.”

In 2007 alone, the connection between illegal immigration and crime was discussed on 94 episodes of Lou Dobbs Tonight, and dozens more focused on an “army of invaders,” immigrants not paying taxes, draining social services, and threatening our white Anglo-Saxon culture.

CNN reporters Casey Wian, Bill Tucker, Kitty Pilgrim and others present a steady diet of subtle and overt racism to incite viewers to believe it. Through constant repetition, it propagates the myth, and according to the Media Matters Action Network report:

Dobbs “is hailed by the entire spectrum of immigration opponents, from the reasonable to the unreasonable. And the degree to which extremist elements see (him) as an ally indicates at the very least that they believe he is helping their cause” because they feel he’s a populist crusader.

Yet according to a July 30 New York Observer report, recent Nielsen data showed that after Dobbs began reporting (on July 15) that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fraudulent (an apparent stunt to increase ratings), his viewership dropped significantly – 15% overall and 27% in the valued 25-54 age category.

When it debuted in 1996, one of its on-air hosts said:

The “Channel was launched (because) something was wrong with news media….somewhere bias found its way into reporting….Fox….is committed to being fair and balanced (covering) stories everybody is reporting – and….stories….you will see only on Fox.”

Later the Columbia Journalism Review said several former Fox employees “complained of ‘management sticking their fingers’ in the writing and editing stories to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes.” But it hasn’t hurt ratings.

As of Q 1 2009, FNC was the second highest rated cable channel in prime time total viewers. CNN ranked 17th and MSNBC 24th. The O’Reilly Factor has been #1 rated on cable news for 100 consecutive months and gained 27% more viewers year-over-year. Glenn Beck increased 90% over the previous year. Overall, FNC topped CNN and MSNBC combined in prime time total audience.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said “Fox’s signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume (now with Bret Baier) was originally created as a daily one-hour update devoted to the 1998 Clinton sex scandal.” In the past year, it gained 39% more viewers.

As for accuracy and being “fair and balanced,” FAIR (in summer 2001) called FNC “The Most Biased Name in News,” yet according to Murdoch in March 2001:

“I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel.”

In FAIR’s Seth Ackerman article and later ones, FNC’s blatant manipulation of the news is exposed. For example, Bret Baier’s “Political Grapevine” is a right-wing “hot sheet” featuring a “series of gossipy items culled from other right-wing” sources. It and other reports are blatantly partisan propaganda against “liberal media bias,” progressives, environmentalists, anti-war activists, civil rights groups, and others to the left of their views.

According to FAIR, the commentary on political punditry programs like The O’Reilly Factor, the Sean Hannity Show, and The Beltway Boys is so slanted that it’s like watching “a Harlem Globetrotters game (knowing) which side is supposed to win.”

FNC’s Bill O’Reilly

His official bio calls The O’Reilly Factor “a unique blend of news analysis and hard hitting investigative reporting dropped each weeknight into ‘The No Spin Zone.” He also hosts a syndicated radio show, writes a weekly column carried in over 300 newspapers, and authored several books that according to New York Times writer Janet Maslin were “either (done) with a collaborator or (O’Reilly) was born with a ghostwriter’s gift for filling space with platitudes….” With good reason, Maslin called him “one of the most controversial human beings in the world….”

In an October 2008 report titled “Smearcasting,” FAIR called him an “Islamophobe” for spreading “fear, bigotry and misinformation” along with 11 other popular figures, including Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin (another FNC regular), David Horowitz, and Pat Robertson.

After 9/11, FAIR said O’Reilly proposed attacking a list of Muslim countries “if they did not submit to the US – starting with Afghanistan.”

On air he said:

“The US should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble – the airport, the power plants, their water facilities and the roads….If they don’t rise up against this primitive country, they starve, period.”

Iraq must also be destroyed he said, and “the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain.” As for Libya, “Nothing goes in, nothing goes out….Let them eat sand.”

FAIR called his penchant for attacking Muslim countries “an O’Reilly trademark”, and “his disregard for Muslim civilians is matched by the anti-Muslim sentiments he frequently expresses on both his nationally syndicated radio show, the Radio Factor,” reaching 3.5 million listeners, and his top-rated FNC show.

Some of his hateful comments include saying:

• areas of London are “just packed with just dense Muslim neighborhoods, which breed this kind of contempt for Western society. Why do they let them in;”
• “We’re at war with Muslim fanatics. So all young Muslims should be subject to (special) scrutiny, (saying it’s not racial, just) “criminal profiling;”
• “the most unattractive women in the world are probably in Muslim countries;” and
• in Iraq, he blamed killing on Islam: “They’re all Muslims, and they’re doing what they do. They’re killing each other. And they’re killing Americans.”

O’Reilly is equally racist about Latino immigrants with frequent comments like:

“The extreme elements in this country want open borders, blanket amnesty, and entitlement for foreign nationals who have come here illegally, and generally want to change the demographics in the USA so political power can be assumed by the left. That is the end game.” He also argues that “Low-skilled immigrant labor costs the taxpayers today $19,000 to (subsidize) people who are using the hospitals (and) the education system….These are rock-solid stats,” but O’Reilly won’t say from where.

They’re blatantly false and may be from a May 2007 Robert Rector/Christine Kim (right-wing think tank) Heritage Foundation paper titled, “The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to State and Local Taxpayers.”

O’Reilly spreads daily misinformation, innuendo, and hateful demagoguery to millions of his daily faithful. Like the others above, they’re paid liars delivering what passes for today’s major media journalism. It’s why so much of the public is misinformed and the reason more hate groups than ever proliferate.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), they numbered 926 in 2008, up from 602 in 2000 and are “animated by the national immigration debate.” Since Obama took office, they’re also driven by their hatred of a black president, exacerbated by a growing economic crisis that’s easy to blame on the undocumented and a non-white head of state.

These groups are ideologically vicious and extremely dangerous when motivated by racist right-wing media commentators reaching far larger audiences than more saner voices drowned out. It’s more evidence of social decay and the urgent need for change.

Founded in 1970, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) “is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low and moderate income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in about 75 cities across the country.”

As the nation’s preeminent community organizing group, it backs a living wage, opposes predatory lending and foreclosures, supports affordable housing, better public schools, welfare reform, voting rights, rebuilding New Orleans, and other social and economic justice issues.

For many months as a result, right-wing extremists have tried to discredit its successes online and through the media. Led by Fox News, Lou Dobbs, and others, it’s accused of financial corruption, massive voter fraud, and other indiscretions, mostly fabricated to destroy the group’s credibility, cut off its funding, and harm other community organizing efforts. However, compared to corporate fraud and abuse scandals, ACORN’s occasional missteps are minor, insignificant, and undeserving of inflammatory media headlines.

Nonetheless recent news stories featured false accusations that ACORN engages in prostitution nationwide. The supposed evidence came from two right-wing filmmakers (Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe) posing as prostitute and pimp, conveniently videotaped for airing. In prime time especially, Fox News, Lou Dobbs and others featured it nightly.

On September 14, Dobbs reported “another pimp and prostitute scandal at the left-wing activist organization ACORN. For the third time, ACORN workers for the left-wing advocacy group (got) caught on hidden camera breaking the law. Now calls from Congress to investigate and cut off public funding are growing.”

According to Fox News Bill O’Reilly, “With more than 30 criminal ‘convictions’ on its resume, the organization cannot be trusted.” Based on no credible evidence, other FNC reports accuse ACORN of “operat(ing) as a criminal enterprise,” including prostitution, running a prostitution ring, filing false documents with taxing and other government authorities, bank fraud, violating immigration laws, transporting women and children to America for immoral purposes, and impairing the welfare of minors.

More evidence of reprehensible innuendo, distortion, deceit, and misinformation from major media paid liars. It’s why web sites like this one gain followers.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

WE’LL KEEP OUR EYES PEELED

Black & White

Here’s a bit of information from the “Psychological Operations Field Manual No.33-1,” published by the Department of Army Headquarters in 1979:

Printed material, which includes leaflets, newspapers, posters, handbills, books, magazines, and such items as novelties, trinkets, and gifts with messages printed on them, is major means of conveying propaganda.

A propaganda message printed on substantial material is a relatively permanent document. Once printed and delivered, it can be retained and readily passed from person to person without distortion.

A properly developed and designed message (shape, color, format, texture, and other physical characteristics have been duly considered) can have a deep and lasting effect on the target audience.

ADVANTAGES

The printed word has a high degree of acceptance, credibility, and prestige. Printed matter is unique in that it can be passed from person to person without distortion. It allows for the reinforcing use of photographs and graphic illustrations which can be understood by illiterates. It is permanent and the message will not change unless it is physically altered. It can be disseminated and read or viewed by a larger, widespread target audience. It can be reread for reinforcement. Complex and lengthy material can be explained in detail. It can be hidden and read in private. Messages can be printed on almost any surface, including useful items. Printed material can gain prestige by acknowledging authoritative and expert authors. This is particularly important in those societies where the printed word is authoritative.

DISADVANTAGES

A high illiteracy rate reduces the effectiveness and usefulness of the printed message. Printing operations require special, extensive, continuing logistical support. Dissemination is time-consuming and costly, requiring the use of special facilities and complex coordination. As printed material must be physically delivered to the target audience, the enemy can prevent or interfere with its dissemination. It is less timely than other means of communication. It can be collected and destroyed by the enemy. It can be altered by overprinting. Where prohibited, it can readily be uncovered by search and stringent penalties imposed for possession. Development and design of effective printed material requires trained and knowledgeable personnel.

Source: Psywarrior.com