The Greanville Journal

Disbelieving Michael Moore interviews British physician.

BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
COMMENT AND OPINION BY THE EDITOR

Well, judging from what we are beginning to see, it didn’t take too long for the mainstream media to regain its footing, atone for its earlier honest hoorays for Moore’s film, and figure an angle from which it might preserve the remnants of its tattered honor while still fulfilling the dirty job its corporate masters demanded it to do, which was to badmouth Michael Moore’s brave documentary, SiCKO, into complete ineffectiveness. The spectacle makes me sick.

Just a few days ago CNN’s Anderson Cooper offered on his program 360 a glimpse of the subtle and not so subtle maneuvers being frantically worked out by the elites as they scramble to repair the huge breach on their disinformation wall created by Moore’s near irrefutable expose of the American healthcare system, an industry whose cynicism and callousness should have been exposed by the “professional media” in the same manner eons ago. [Read more →]

Tags: CJO'S OpEds, The Contemptible Media, Establishment Whores, Mediocrats by Greanville
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NOTICE TO OUR READERS: THE EDITORS WILL BE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO A SPECIAL MESSAGE AT THE END OF THIS FEATURE. THANK YOU. WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY SiCKO by clicking here. Broadband required.

We know what the diagnosis is and what needs to be done. Now the question is whether the American public has what it takes to drive the con men and other crooks from the corridors of power.

Three reviews of this important film published in The Nation magazine.

SiCKO Is Boffo
by David Corn
Dateline: 6.21.07

In 1971, Edgar Kaiser, the son of the founder of Kaiser Permanente, one of the first big HMOs, went to see John Ehrlichman, a top aide to President Nixon, to lobby the Nixon White House to pass legislation that would expand the market for health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Ehrlichman reported this conversation to Nixon on February 17, 1971. The discussion, which was taped, went like this:

Ehrlichman: I had Edgar Kaiser come in…talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make.

President Nixon: Fine.

The next day, Nixon publicly announced he would be pushing legislation that would provide Americans “the finest health care in the world.” [Read more →]

Tags: Toxic Culture, The Contemptible Media, Corporadoes, Establishment Whores, The Left & Pseudo Left by Greanville
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While America obsessed about Brittany’s shaved head, Bush offered a budget that offers $32.7 billion in tax cuts to the Wal-Mart family alone, while cutting $28 billion from Medicaid.

BY MATT TAIBI || RollingStone.com
Posted on February 20, 2007 | Posted at http://www.alternet.org/story/48278/

“Now, after she shaved her head in a bizarre episode that culminates a months-long saga of controversial behavior, it’s the question being asked by her fans, her foes and the general public: What was she thinking?”– Bald and Broken: Inside Britney’s Shaved Head, Sheila Marikar, ABC.com, Feb. 19.

What was she thinking? How about nothing? How about who gives a shit? How’s that for an answer, Sheila Marikar of ABC news, you pinhead?

I’m not one of those curmudgeons who freaks out every time that Bradgelina moves the war off the front page of the Post, or Katie Couric decides to usher in a whole new era of network news with photos of the imbecile demon-spawn of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. I understand that we live in a demand-based economy and that there is far more demand for brainless celebrity bullshit than there is, say, for the fine print of the Health and Human Services budget. [Read more →]

Tags: Toxic Culture, CJO'S OpEds, The Contemptible Media by Greanville
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The remains of an Iraq War victim (make that of an unnecessary Iraq War).

By KURT NIMMO | Dateline: January 21, 2005
REPOSTED AS AN ENTRY IN CLASSIC ESSAYS

On January 15th, at Kane Hall, on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, former L.A. cop and self-described 9/11 investigator Mike Ruppert told a standing-room only crowd the obvious:

“[Ruppert] believes that no sanctions, indictments or criminal prosecution [against the Bush warmongers] will ever be handed down. Rubicon [Ruppert’s book], he says, remains a base map of the decades before and the years since 9/11. But now he says we must look at the herd of elephants charging at us, instead of the one elephant that just ran us over,” Ken Levine summarizes on Ruppert’s From the Wilderness website. [Read more →]

Tags: CJO'S OpEds, The Contemptible Media, Corporadoes, Obstinate History, Imperial Policy by Greanville
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Richard Perle, Israeli agent by any standard, deeply embedded in the US foreign policy/media/political establishment, and bald-faced pusher for imperialist designs across the map, principally the Middle East. A Nuremberg-class war criminal to keep in mind.

BY BRYN LLOYD-BOLLARD

In an age in which the democratic mask is essential to legitimate plutocratic power with the benighted masses of the Anglo-American empire, the manner in which imperial designs are carried out today may be less obvious than in ancient times, but the results are practically the same.

It is common to hear talk of the Roman Empire, the British Empire, or the Soviet Empire, yet comparatively little is said about an American Empire. The reason is that it is often taken for granted that the era of imperialism ended with the collapse of communism, and that the near-universal extension of economic and political liberalism precludes any chance that Empire will again rear its ugly head. Empire is considered an outdated concept of little use for explaining the dynamics of a world increasingly integrated and globalized. Thus, Francis Fukuyama argues that we are witnessing the “end of history,” “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” (Fukuyama, 39). The age of ideology is over, capitalism’s victory is absolute. Implicit in his view is the assumption that the free market is antithetical to Empire, and that imperialism cannot exist when liberal values are widely acknowledged as sacrosanct. Considerably less attention is therefore paid to the ways in which contemporary American power, as exercised on a global level, mirrors that of history’s greatest imperialist states. [Read more →]

Tags: Academic Battlefields, The Contemptible Media, Obstinate History, Imperial Policy by Greanville
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Jose Maria Aznar, the smiling fascist. All the cosmeticization of such “elegant reactionaries” by the media whores cannot hide their despicable impact on modern politics.

BY VICENTE NAVARRO || Dateline: August 21, 2003

Can you imagine the response of the U.S. media if the president of the governing party of Poland were to say that Stalin was the former Soviet Union’s greatest leader? Or if the president of the German government had never condemned the Hitler regime, or if a founder of the governing party in Germany was a person who had written a prologue to a book denying the existence of the Holocaust? Surely the media would hit the ceiling immediately and call for these person’s resignations.

Well, the U.S. government and the U.S. media have been welcoming a man who has done something similar, a man they have referred to as “a great friend of the U.S.” and “a representative of the New Europe” (in Rumsfeld’s narrative), and a man that leading Democrats (not to be perceived as less welcoming) have referred to in equally laudatory terms. Even the Democratic-controlled California Assembly gave him a standing ovation. His man’s is Mr. Jose Maria Aznar; he is the president of the Spanish government and leader of the governing party, the Popular Party (PP). More critical media would have made some inquiries about the PP and about Mr. Aznar. Let’s start with the Party. [Read more →]

Tags: The Contemptible Media, Obstinate History, Imperial Policy by Greanville
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WORN DOWN BY SAD REALIZATIONS, BUT PERHAPS STRONGER BECAUSE THE WISER
BY CAROLYN BAKER

Corporate media—and even some alternative websites, are blaring with headlines about Cindy Sheehan “quitting” the anti-war movement. It is true that Sheehan has stepped down as the consummate symbol of the ordinary, salt-of-the-earth American mother crusading against the empire for the end of the war that brought about her son’s meaningless death. But it is not true that Cindy is “quitting.” After years of sacrifice, incomprehensible losses, and several hundred stages of burnout, she has walked away from a role and the symbolism inherent within it, but even more significantly in my opinion, and reverberating through her article “Letter To The Democratic Congress,” she has rejected the Democratic Party and its pretense of offering an alternative to the politics of empire.

Last night I watched Keith Olbermann begin his “Countdown” show with the story of Sheehan’s “quitting” the anti-war movement, even including some quotes from her, but mentioning nothing about her leaving the Democratic Party. How could he do otherwise when he devoted the next twenty minutes of the program to interviewing Al Gore and communicating unmistakably to the viewers that the former Vice-President is unequivocally our “savior”? What else could we expect from corporate media? [Read more →]

Tags: The Contemptible Media, Imperial Policy by Greanville
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PRESIDENT CHAVEZ EXPLAINING THE PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE REASONS FOR THE REFUSAL TO RENEW RCTV’S LICENSE.

BY ROB SEWELL |
DATELINE: Monday, 11 June 2007

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State last week launched another frontal attack against the Venezuelan Revolution at the start of the general assembly of the Organization of American States in Panama City.

Hypocritically, Ms Rice hit out at the closure of Radio Caracas Television, whose demise drew opposition protests, calling it Hugo Chávez’s “sharpest and most acute” move against democracy.

Together with the rest of the howling pack, she pounced upon the Venezuelan government’s decision not to renew the broadcast license of RCTV, a television channel that was involved up to its neck in the Washington-backed coup against President Chavez in April 2002.

“Freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of conscience are not a thorn in the side of government”, she declared. “Disagreeing with your government is not unpatriotic and most certainly should not be a crime in any country, especially a democracy.”

After this lecture in “democracy”, the Secretary of State then called upon the OAS to send Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza to Venezuela to investigate the station’s closure.

This attack was followed up by the Big Boss himself, President George W. Bush. While in Prague, Bush declared: “In Venezuela, elected leaders have resorted to shallow populism to dismantle democratic institutions and tighten their grip on power.”

Furthermore, Rice also warned Russia against selling arms to Venezuela, but Moscow immediately rebuffed her criticism, saying a $120 million deal it has signed with Caracas violates no laws or treaties.

This concerted hue and cry by the arch representatives of imperialism against Venezuela was joined by America’s Senate, which passed a motion in support of RCTV. This motion drew the support from the two Democratic presidential front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, keen to prove their “democratic” credentials. [Read more →]

Tags: The Contemptible Media, Obstinate History, Imperial Policy by Greanville
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Chris Matthews, inside or outside the Beltway, one of the most accomplished asskissers in recent memory.

ANNALS OF MEDIA WHOREDOM
BY JAMISON FOSER
Dateline: June 1, 2007 - Media Matters
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The media whores are ganging up on Edwards because they don’t like his stirring up the pot of “class warfare” in America…

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Imagine how the media would react if a multimillionaire, East Coast, big-city, thrice-married presidential candidate who was a progressive Democrat said his most recent music purchase was opera, his favorite fitness activity, golf, and added that he doesn’t drive — he navigates.

Or if a progressive Democratic candidate who had launched his political career by marrying into a wealthy and politically connected family, then promptly running for Congress, revealed that he has pet turtles named “Cuff” and “Link.”

Or if a progressive Democratic candidate who was the son of a governor, who has a net worth of around $200 million, whose own campaign staff was concerned he is seen as not tough enough and that his hair looks too perfect … imagine if such a candidate said that if he weren’t running for office, he’d probably be chief executive of an auto company and whose staff boasted that the difference between him and the president is “intelligence.” [Read more →]

Tags: The Contemptible Media, Establishment Whores, Mediocrats by Greanville
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BY JEFF COHEN
Dateline: Friday 01 June 2007
CYRANO’S JOURNAL OpEds

Give me a break about John Edwards’s pricey haircut, mansion, lecture fees, and the rest. The focus on these topics tells us two things about corporate media: One, we’ve long known - that they elevate personal stuff above issues; the other is now becoming clear - that they have a special animosity towards Edwards. Is it hypocritical for the former senator to base a presidential campaign on alleviating poverty while building himself a sprawling mansion? Perhaps. But isn’t that preferable to all the millionaire candidates who neither talk about nor care about the poor?

Elite media seem more comfortable with millionaire politicians who identify with their class - and half of all US senators are millionaires.

Trust me when I say I don’t know many millionaires. Of course, I don’t know many presidential candidates either (except my friend Dennis Kucinich, whose net worth in 2004 was reported to be below $32,000). But I’m growing quite suspicious about the media barrage against Edwards, who got his wealth as a trial lawyer suing hospitals and corporations. Among “top-tier” presidential candidates, Edwards is alone in convincingly criticizing corporate-drafted trade treaties, and talking about workers’ rights and the poor and higher taxes on the rich. He’s the candidate who set up a university research center on poverty. Of the front-runners in presidential polls, he’s pushing the hardest to withdraw from Iraq, and pushing the hardest on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to follow suit. [Read more →]

Tags: CJO'S OpEds, The Contemptible Media by Greanville
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