Category Archives: America

UPDATED: More Reasons to Secede From The Pundit Pantheons of Fox, MSNBC and CNN

America, Israel, Journalism, Media, Pseudo-intellectualism, Russia

Guests who’ve been invited onto the typical American vanity-TV news show must invariably kiss the ring of the ego in the anchor’s chair. The grateful guest will typically offer up platitudes such as, “Only you do so and so,” “Your shows is the only show that, blah, blah,” and, “If not for you, blah, blah.” It seems to be expected—and is a good practice if a commentator seeks membership in the pundit pantheons of Fox, MSNBC and CNN.

Today, in furtherance of freedom (NOT), Freedom Watch featured the “liberventionists” Neal Boortz, who is a “a statist, not a libertarian.” Anything Boortz supports is usually an indication to the contrary. Boortz is also Sean Hannity’s favorite libertarian, a credibility that seems to stand him in good stead with Fox News’ libertarian producers.

So does Stephen Moore of the “War Street Journal” carry the Hannity stamp of approval. He too appeared in furtherance of freedom on Freedom Watch today. No wonder Moore, like Boortz, is Hannity’s in-house freedom fighter. One of Moore’s books was “Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer.” But that’s no indictment among America’s incestuous teletwits. (“Bush’s bailout society” was an instantiation of the principles upon which “Bush’s ownership society” was founded: credit for those who are not creditworthy.)

To continue the theme of “Closing The Door On Closed, Cloistered American Media,” contra American media, RT draws on a large sample of opinion for its commentary; Left, Right, libertarian; orthodox and unorthodox. It seems to achieve this by avoiding the anointing that goes on in American TV studios, where pundits are picked from among powerful, well-funded, mainstream think tanks, editorial newsrooms, Internet sites, or presidential, congressional and other government staff. The TV tarts who flock to DC or New York to hang around the major studios, and in the fullness of time inflict their insufferable stupidity on us—they have agents, no less (or Fortune 500 fathers, or both).

By embracing Skype, RT also reaches out to different, interesting individuals whose mission is not to make their home close to a major TV studio with the hope of being “discovered” by the dumbos on Fox, MSNBC or CNN.

UPDATE (Feb. 8): Sure, Myron; RT has plenty blind spots. The American moron media, by contrast, is one big, banal, unquestioning blind spot, chockablock with unrealistic rah-rah for America.

When last did you hear an interesting, original thought on MSM America? And American journalism has become mostly bad. Take, for example, the segment on Fox Business about the H1-B tiff with Obama. Not a word did the ego in the anchor’s chair devote to the debate (pro and con) surrounding the Visa. All he wanted to extract from his guest was that the Obama exchange on Google Plus was staged. That’s not journalism. It’s a partisan perversion thereof. Repulsive.

And, Myron, do follow some of the links provided, and you’ll see that RT gives voice to some fascinatingly bright Israelis (some generals) with whom you and I would not always agree. But, wow, are they brilliant, original and well-informed in their approach to the disputes and wars in which they have fought so valiantly. Click around RT’s Israel coverage, Myron, and you’ll see that, while it is much like CNN in its pro-Palestinian bent, RT showcases some magnificent Israelis who do Jews proud.

RT journos are intellectually curious—as you naturally are—as opposed their dim counterparts (can you say Dana Perrino?) in the American media.

UPDATE III: Closing The Door On Closed, Cloistered American Media

America, Intellectualism, Journalism, libertarianism, Media, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Reason, Russia

For news coverage, I’ve now converted almost exclusively to RT (on whose website my Paleolibertarian Column features). I recommend that thinking readers do the same. A few days with RT and you will begin to understand just how impoverished American media are (and how valid this writer’s media critique has been over the years); the degree to which broadcasters and journalists have degraded journalism and contributed immeasurably to the deep stupidity, gargantuan arrogance, and short attention spans of their viewers.

Americans are “a silly people in serious times” (Pat Buchanan’s words). Reason, intellectual honesty and curiosity, and standards of decency have been expunged from the national dialogue.

There isn’t a news story that isn’t biased, contaminated with every conceivable error in thinking, from pop psychology, to addiction and self-esteem fallacies, to obsessive, interminable negrophilia.

If you can no longer stomach the bombast in American broadcast media, the vanity panels, the egos in the anchor’s chair who’ve tailored debate and chosen interlocutors to fit their own limitations; if you’ve had it with Anderson Cooper-type journo-activism, the ubiquitous dog and cat stories, the constant stream of feel-good, feminized, soft news vignettes that festoon news and commentary; if you can stand not a moment more of the America über alles, navel-gazing, chauvinistic, delusions of grandeur and of empire promulgated by the self-important American media—I recommend RT.

Yes, there is leftist, even statist, programing at RT, but it doesn’t permeate every news segment like at CNN, where today, White House correspondent Jessica Yelling delivered a how-to for Obama on countering bad press about alternative energy. On RT you’ll find interesting segments complied by critical thinkers who pursue the kind of unorthodox angles I’ve pursued in my columns over the years, but which are absent from the American channels. “Exporting Revolution,” for example, with BAB A List writer Nebojsa Malic. (Related topic: “LaHood Is Still In The Egyptian Hood”)

This morning, as the Idiocracy at MSNBC, FoxNews and CNN counted down to the endorsement of Mitt Romney by the unthinking, crass, and Synophobic Donald Trump, RT’s Capital Account was tracking Ben Bernanke’s defense of “the Federal Reserve’s financial repression of savers on Capitol Hill.” Their words. Jim Rogers was on fire.

Sadly, I no longer watch the loud bluster on Freedom Watch, unless Lew Rockwell, always calms and Rothbardian, graces the show. The volume level, the Paul worship (such aggressive allegiance to any politician creeps me out), and the dueling perspectives political panels (featuring horrible, boring truth deniers like Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne) are pure torture.

Besides, when an anchor introduces his regulars (and boy are they day-in, and day-out fixtures) as “my good friend (Kirstin Powers),” or as “friend of the show,” it smacks of buddy-buddy influence peddling, not of an honest pursuit of ideas. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate the work done on Freedom Watch to popularize constitutional principles among the masses, but it has become more like the other cable personality centered ego-driven shoutfests. And, of course, the regular robots from Reason Magazine, representing “Libertarianism Lite,” are tiresome.

Off to catch up on world events …

UPDATE I: Need I say more? Right now, as mainstream American media pretend jobs have materialized out of thin air, you can hear Jeffrey Tucker on RT’s Capital Account, talking about ending the Fed.

UPDATE II: Ann Coulter to Mitt Romeny at a fundraiser, “You owe me and you better be as right-wing a president as I’m telling everybody you’re going to be.’” Schmooze.

But another example of the narrow coterie that makes up the American media elite. Mind you, if the Judge welcomed “My buddy Ann Coulter, good friend of the show,” we’d at least have a few laughs. She’s always sharp and adds information, unlike the banal, boring, never-said-an-original-thing-in-their-lives Colmes and Powers.

UPDATE III: (Feb. 4): Do not distort my words, John D (in Comments). The style issue is minor. In your adulation, you’ve chosen here to do me a disservice by ignoring the repeated substantive comments made over these pixelated pages about the bent of “Freedom Watch.” In particular: 1) The sinecured Left-libertarian bores who’ve take up residence on the show, covered in “Libertarianism Lite.” Reason does not represent American libertarianism (Old Right), nor does it resonate with most Americans. American libertarianism is rightist.

2) As in all the cloistered and closed American programing—and contrary to RT’s which really welcomes many voices, and not only those of pundits and presstitutes who huddle close to Power—the habit on Freedom Watch is to shut out and expunge from the debate the unkosher faction, which is also, again, the libertarianism that most resonates with the American Right at large: paleolibertarianism.

3) In “Fox News And Its Truth Deniers,” I offered a substantive argument against the positively postmodernist “dueling perspectives political panel” perfected on the show. You, John, chose to ignore my case against the “parallel universe” created and paraded as truth, represented by the odious regulars listed: Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne, Alan Colmes, Juan Williams, Kirstin Powers, etc. “The above Fox News fixtures,” I argued, “no more represent truth or promote it than does your average Holocaust denier.”

“By presenting the public with two competing perspectives—you mislead viewers into believing that indeed there are two realities, and that it is up to them to decide which one is more compelling.” This Freedom Watch achieves handily.

Alas, in your blind adulation, John, you have chosen to cast substantive critique as a complaint about style (the latter—the delivery—being bloody horrible). What a shame.

CONTINUED IN THE POST, “More Reasons to Secede from the Pundit Pantheons of CNN, Fox and MSNBC.”

UPDATE II: BHO: Uncle Sam’s Assassin (Killer Drones)

America, Barack Obama, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Democracy, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Just War, Law

The following is excerpted form “BHO: Uncle Sam’s Assassin,” , which you can catch on WND and on RT.

“Villagers in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen already know it, although the people on the ground near American drone bases in Somalia and Ethiopia are still blissfully unaware of it—Barack Obama is the uncrowned king of the killer drone.

In Iraq, ordinary men and women scan the skies nervously for the telltale metallic shimmer, wondering whether they are being simply surveilled from above, as promised, or targeted by Hellfire missiles. Ditto the Iranians, who recently downed, and promptly displayed to the world, an RQ-170 Sentinel, launched into Iranian airspace by Uncle Sam.

According to the Washington Post, ‘When Obama was sworn into office in 2009, the nation’s clandestine drone war was confined to a single country, Pakistan, where 44 strikes over five years had left about 400 people dead. The number of strikes has since soared to nearly 240, and the number of those killed, according to conservative estimates, has more than quadrupled.’

The New America Foundation tabled the findings to reflect the carnage in Pakistan by presidency.

Between 2004 and 2007, when Genghis Bush reigned supreme, America killed 112 Pakistanis. The total number of Pakistanis eliminated by drone between 2004 and 2011 was 2,680!

The POTUS’s growing fleet of armed Predators and Reapers is operated by both the CIA and the Military’s Joint Special Operations Command, each, evidently, with its own Kill List, and all under, ‘a complicated web of overlapping authorities.’ …

On Google, Obama was sticking to his guns. ‘Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,’ the president insisted. How many innocents has Obama been willing to write-off as acceptable collateral damage? For every one militant assassinated, 15 civilians are murdered. …

Little Shakira is the poster child for Uncle Sam’s outreach in the region…”

READ THE COMPLETE COLUMN, “BHO: Uncle Sam’s Assassin,” now on WND or on RT.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “tweet” and “Share” the weekly column.

UPDATED I: “Killer Drones” on RT. Please click to “Like,” “Share” and Tweet.

UPDATE II (Feb. 7): Not that I put much stock in “American Democracy” (we were founded as a republic), but the information in this Atlantic essay is useful: “Waging War in Secret vs. American Democracy.”

UPDATED: LaHood Is Still In The Egyptian Hood

America, Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Russia

Egypt’s road to majoritarian politics—which is what America demands for that country—is stalled at the military dictatorship stage. The latter is probably preferable to a people’s republic governed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafist al-Nour Party, which won the ballot in the newly installed democracy. [BBC]

It is a fact—and three of the Republican presidential candidates will applaud it—that America runs community agitators across the world. These Republican- and Democratic Party Saul Alinskys (neoconservatives and neoliberals) work to incite democracy and undermine order. This has obtained with respect to both Bush, Obama (who are, to all intent and purposes, non-identical, evil ideological twins), and before them.

Could Egypt’s leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, be hip to the ill-effects of American community organizing abroad? Egyptian authorities have stopped Sam LaHood from leaving Egypt.

In addition to being the son of Ray LaHood, the secretary of transportation and a former Republican congressman from Illinois, LaHood heads the International Republican Institute, an American-backed democracy-building group. (Neocon meddlers.)

He is “one of six Americans working for the Republican Institute or its sister organization, the National Democratic Institute.” Obama had a fit. Ditto the Republicans. LaHood’s their operative.

Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from Virginia who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, said the Egyptian government continued to flout American efforts and to undermine democratic rights. “This is out of control,” Mr. Wolf said on Thursday. “If the administration follows the law, there’s no way they can continue the aid.”

(NYT)

A tug of war between Washington and Cairo over American aid for Egyptian human rights and democracy-building groups goes back to the era of former President Hosni Mubarak. To maintain control over organizations that might pose potential challenges to his government, Mr. Mubarak required nonprofit groups to obtain licenses, which were almost never issued.
Instead, the generals have echoed the Mubarak government’s refrain that any unrest was the work of “foreign hands.” Often, the military-led government has pointed specifically at Washington, suggesting that the United States was financing Egyptian groups behind the frequent turmoil in the streets.

(NYT)

And the aforementioned Generals may have a point. Ask the Ukraine (“Orange” Revolution), Georgia (“Rose”), Lebanon (“Cedar”), Kyrgizstan (“Tulip”), etc. Attempts to foment revolution are probably underway in Belarus, Russia, Iran, Syria (pending).

UPDATE (Jan. 30): “The God that Failed,” via Nebojsa Malic:

Parallel to the open warfare, the Empire continues its cloak-and-dagger efforts to subvert target states through “color revolutions.” The latest target is Russia, where questionable claims of electoral fraud have been used as a pretext for the “White” revolution – planned, organized and financed by Washington.
The troubles with these faux-revolutions are many. One of the most pernicious, of course, is that they undermine the very concept of democracy as a system of government by consent. In the virtual world of the Empire (and its EU extension), only those that serve and obey are “democrats,” regardless of what they actually believe and how many votes they get at the polls. As Philip Cunliffe observed several years ago in Serbia, “what counts as democracy is what the EU decides is democratic, and the democrats are those who are anointed by the international community, regardless of who actually receives the votes.”
It is bad enough that the Empire made democracy a religion, and a false one at that. Now it is going around the world subverting that very religion, leaving millions of cheated, angry people in its wake. Worse yet, the tendrils of this approach are showing up at home, from street protests to party primaries.