Now – in the home of ‘free speech’ – it seems that the oil spill is not to be covered … except by government spun doco’s; the following story tells in in more detail.

First Amendment suspended in the Gulf of Mexico as spill cover-up goes Orwellian

Saturday, July 03, 2010 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger; Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) As CNN is now reporting, the U.S. government has issued a new rule that would make it a felony crime for any journalist, reporter, blogger or photographer to approach any oil cleanup operation, equipment or vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Anyone caught is subject to arrest, a $40,000 fine and prosecution for a federal felony crime.

CNN reporter Anderson Cooper says, “A new law passed today, and back by the force of law and the threat of fines and felony charges, … will prevent reporters and photographers from getting anywhere close to booms and oil-soaked wildlife just about any place we need to be. By now you’re probably familiar with cleanup crews stiff-arming the media, private security blocking cameras, ordinary workers clamming up, some not even saying who they’re working for because they’re afraid of losing their jobs.” Watch the video clip yourself at NaturalNews.TV: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=203

The rule, of course, is designed to restrict the media’s access to cleanup operations in order to keep images of oil-covered seabirds off the nation’s televisions. With this, the Gulf Coast cleanup operation has now entered a weird Orwellian reality where the news is shaped, censored and controlled by the government in order to prevent the public from learning the truth about what’s really happening in the Gulf.

The war is on to control your mind

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because the U.S. government uses this same tactic during every war. The first casualty of war, as they say, is the truth. There are lots of war images the government doesn’t want you to see (like military helicopter pilots shooting up Reuters photographers while screaming “Yee-Haw!” over the comm radios), and there are other images they do want you to see (“surgical strike” explosions from “smart” bombs, which makes it seem like the military is doing something useful).

So war reporting is carefully monopolized by the government to deliver precisely the images they want you to see while censoring everything else. Now the same Big Brother approach is being used in the Gulf of Mexico: Criminalize journalists, censor the story and try to keep the American people ignorant of what’s really happening. It’s just the latest tactic from a government that no longer even recognizes the U.S. Constitution or its Bill of Rights. Because the very first right is Freedom of Speech, which absolutely includes the right to walk onto a public beach and take photographs of something happening out in the open, on public waters. It is one of the most basic rights of our citizens and our press.

But now the Obama administration has stripped away those rights, transforming journalists into criminals. Now, we might expect something like this from Chavez, or Castro or even the communist leaders of China, but here in the United States, we’ve all been promised we lived in “the land of the free.” Obama apparently does not subscribe to that philosophy anymore (if he ever did).

So how does criminalizing journalists equate to “land of the free?” It doesn’t, obviously. Forget freedom. (Your government already has.) This is about controlling your mind to make sure you don’t visually see the truth of what the oil industry has done to your oceans, your shorelines and your beaches. This is all about keeping you ignorant with a total media blackout of the real story of what’s happening in the Gulf.

The real story, you see, is just too ugly. And the government has fracked up the cleanup effort to such a ridiculous extent that instead of the “transparency” they once promised, they’re now resorting to the threat of arrest for all journalists who try to get close enough to cover the story. Yes, this is happening right now in America. This isn’t a hoax. I know, it sounds more like something you might hear about in Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela or some other nation run by dictators. But now it’s happening right here in the USA.

As Anderson Cooper reported on CNN: “Now the government is getting in on the act. Despite what Admiral Thad Allen promised about transparency just nearly a month ago. Thad Allen: “The media will have uninhibited access anywhere we’re doing operations…” Anderson Cooper: The Coast Guard today announced new rules keeping photographers, reporters and anyone else from coming with 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches. What this means is that oil-soaked birds on an island surrounded by a boom, you can’t get close enough to take that picture. Shot of oil on beaches with booms? Stay 65 feet away. Pictures of oil-soaked booms uselessly laying in the water because they haven’t been collected like they should? You can’t get close enough to see that. Believe me, that is out there. But you only know that if you get close to it, and now you can’t without permission. Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges.”

See the video yourself at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=203

This site is part of the Natural News Network © 2009 All Rights Reserved.

This is not possible in a world already over-populated and under the increasing weight of physical environmental and financial limits to growth.

Also, the idea that government can ride to the rescue and keep policy in place over numerous election cycles or that mainstream media will do anything which might upset the interests of their major advertisers or their owners, doesn’t apprecaie the full picture.

Climate loses political game

John Hewson

One of the most important and urgent challenges in government today is how to make significant longer-term policy change in a political world run essentially as a game over the 24-hour media cycle. Ironically, even though elections are easily won on the promise of “change”, the electorate inevitably resists it in its detail. There is no better current example than Obama!

I am particularly disturbed by the way our current “debate” on the challenge of climate change is unfolding. The magnitude and urgency of the challenge is being lost in short-term political point scoring. And most of the media has been lost in the “colour and movement” of that political contest. In terms of the policy imperatives, both sides have squibbed the challenge. A fight as to whose tax is the lesser, to achieve a mere five per cent reduction in emissions, against a policy imperative calling for reductions of more like 25-40 per cent by 2020, is today’s equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, in a world where there are many more icebergs as the polar icecap melts.

Beyond that, a combination of Rudd’s low base target, together with his failure to develop the need for, and then to adequately explain, an ETS, let alone admit to some of the inadequacies of his proposal, and the perceived failure of Copenhagen, has left the door wide open for Abbott’s political onslaught. To be clear, Abbott’ response is mostly political. While there is merit in soil carbon, tree planting, solar, etc, if they were to be well developed policies, as part of a more broad-based overall response, his strategy is the belief that you can frighten and fool most of the people, all of the time.

Forgive me for recalling the GST debate in the early 1990s. I understand just how well Abbott’s strategy can work, having been “done slowly” by the Master, Keating. But then the shoe was on the other foot. I was attempting to advocate major change from Opposition. Keating had all the resources and authority of Government to frighten people that I was “too big a risk”. And the substance of policy positions didn’t matter then. Keating was able to easily disown his painful past on tax reform in general, and the GST in particular. Nobody bothered to recall his commitment to the Parliament, back in 1985, that he would fight for both until his dying breath, having been rolled by the motel room, back-down, deal between Hawke and then ACTU President Kelty.

The media fascination back in 1993 was in the colour and movement of my slow death. There was virtually no focus on the undeliverability of Keating’s LAW tax-cuts without a GST. It was his final admission of that, later in ’93, with an added dash of his arrogance, that cost him Government in 1996. Rudd has the resources of Government. He has the capacity to reach the people. Public meetings, a paid and sustained media blitz, and/or whatever, he should explain and defend his case. He should be able to expose a political fear campaign for what it is !  Unfortunately, while the economics of an emissions trading scheme are pretty straight forward, the politics are admittedly tough.

The policy is to cap emissions, by putting a price on carbon, to force/encourage all levels of our society to change their behaviour, from big polluters to households.  In these economic terms, it is the “price” that principally drives the change, although a complete response to climate change, may have other incentives/mandation as a complement, such as banning incandescent lightbulbs, mandating bio-fuels and other alternative technologies, etc.  [Here he is very wrong, mandating biofuels is a backward step, as more resources and energy is consumed than the resultant energy edrived from the biofuels]

In these terms there must inevitably be “losers”, at least in the short-term, as relative prices move. While Governments will always, understandably, want to offset or cushion the impact on some consumers/ businesses etc., or assist in the necessary adjustments, the policy doesn’t allow you to push this too far, as you actually want the “price” to bite and force the desired change in behaviour.  Enter the politics! It is so easy to frighten and confuse. Potential “losers” can be screamed about and interviewed and, in the end, it’s all too easy to argue that “if you don’t understand it don’t vote for it !”

It is also easy to scaremonger on the possible consequences for economic growth and jobs, although the counter argument that a full and adequate response to climate change should see a technological revolution, spawning new industries and considerably new employment, is certainly worth the fight.  So, while managing this detail, Rudd must also sell the “big picture”, the “big challenge”, the imperative, the economic, social and moral imperative, to move to a low-carbon society as a matter of genuine urgency.  The real challenge is for leadership on such a fundamentally important issue. Our political leaders have a responsibility to provide it, and the media has a responsibility to call for it, and to reward it, rather than to just wallow in the “colour and movement” of grossly irresponsible politicking.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2812572.htm

Sales are broken up into 4 steps, 1) introduction 2) create a need 3) have a product that addresses that need and 4) take the order.

Sales down in full body imaging at airports … how about a few – well publicised – apprehended plane bombers, like the ‘Underwear Bomber’ plot, the ‘Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber’ plot and the ‘Shoe Bomber’ plot?

All seemingly ‘not the sharpest tool in the shed’ tyes seemingly getting past the ‘fool-proof’ inspections, but definite reasons that countries buy American made full body imagers.

As time passes, we discover things were not as they were presented to us. Is this a sign of a complacent or compliant media?

If you are to believe the USA government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (alleged al-Qaida mastermind behind 9/11), outwitted the CIA and the NSA, in fcat 16 USA intelligence agencies as well as those of all American allies including Mossad (who should be right on top of Muslim hardliners) their National Security Council and Airport Security four times on just one morning; that largely untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and how state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.

As one report said, ‘after such amazing success, al-Qaida sould have attracted the best minds in the business, but, instead, it has been reduced to amateur stunts’, but is al-Qaida really real or is it a ‘create a need to buy some product’ ?

Look up integrity in an American dictonary and its been crossed out, they’s sell their own mother for better-than-the-Jones’s- look. President Obama has commited to an ‘undeclared war’ on Yemen, that neither the American public or Congress were informed of or consulted with. The ‘Underwear Bomber’ provides a convenient excuse for Washington’s new war.

We’re all a bit jaded these days and ask outselves whose agenda are these, who benefits or is best served by these events and the spin-doctoring. According to the news report, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told the Saba news agency that a terrorist cell was arrested and that the case was referred to judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services. So is the ‘Underwear Bomber’ an Israeli terrorist recruit?

Israel may have an interest in keeping the US fully engaged militarily against all potential foes of Israel’s territorial expansion. There was a rumour back in the 80′s that USA and USSR generals had a pact of some sort to keep government spending high to fight the threats of the other country; how many times can collusion be factored into any business dealing?

In Russia, the Tsar’s secret police set off bombs so that they could blame those whom they wanted to arrest; Cossiga (president of Italy from 1985-1992), revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, a false flag operation under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The bombings were blamed on communists and were used to discredit communist parties in elections.

An Italian parliamentary investigation unearthed the fact that the attacks were overseen by the CIA. Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated in sworn testimony that the attacks targeted innocent civilians, including women and children, in order ‘to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security’.

Is local politics so different, to self-mutilation of election signs being damaged and the ‘under-dog’ status to garner sympathetic voters; on a larger scale, why not 9/11 ?  After all our good intentions and well-meaning can be also described as gullible; John Howard used it prolifically. Tony Abbott has nothing for global warming so he just pushes the greed / fear tax button.

Are we really that gullible that ppolitical parties who purport to represents the public’s interest in truth represents private interests, that office holders and lobby groups finance their political campaigns. We know the Russians pretty much went bankrupt in Afghanistan, yet we spend hundreds of millions of dollars over there.

The newest diversion (yes I believe these are distractions to keep our eye off the ball over here, the mis-management and misappropriations of public funds) is the Iranian nuclear bomb capacity, despite the unanimous conclusion of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to the contrary.

So it comes back to the media and why they would be supportive and subservience to government and it all comes back to profitability. When I was growing up, the Aboriginals were the bad guys; but as we know, when a referendum for the rights of Aboriginals to vote was taken, it was the highest affirmative of any referendum anywhere, so the government had to find a new enemy and co-incidentally, the Americans had one ready to go Vietnam. Now days its the Muslims; and how would you react if someone started picking on you … cop it sweet ?

Remember, the media’s focus is on one thing primarily, profit and as the media saying goes ‘never let the truth get in the way of a good story‘.

Today, the American media is on about KFC’s ad showing a (white) Aussie handing out fried chicken to some (black) Jamaicans and drawing a reference to the Afro-Americans and how it is not politically correct.

Whether they are able to distract their already over brain-washed and economically punch-drunk public is questionable, but it does show that the spin machine never stops and the finger pointing is all part of smoke and mirrors of distraction.

When you think about it, the media has pretty much been a propaganda vehicle since time began, be it the bible or other ‘historical’ documents citing the victories of various leaders or systems of government.

The system of communicating messages to the general populace, the informative nature of content to either incite, amuse, entertain and inform the masses; or where governments of the day ‘leak’ budget details or policy to condition or receive feed-back, the manipulation of individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that integrate them into predetermined institutional structures of the larger society as driven by what I call ‘corporate government’.

To maintain a community rage or justification requires systematic propaganda; it doesn’t matter whether its a wealthy – corporate government – or state bureaucracy, there remains a monopolistic control over the media, supplemented by official censorship (only a certain % of over-seas / foreign ownership allowed), makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite.

It’s difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent, especially where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident and is largely never discussed in the media is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.

Lazy journalism or ‘borrowing’ stories or printing corporate media releases as journalistic work abound (as Media Watch on the ABC program shows) and reading a local paper and trying to find a story between all the adverts proves that the media is driven more by profit and any other ethic. Many newspaper articles are paper-trails to money and power, which are able to filter stories; they allow government, corporations and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public.

The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print; the guidelines and criteria fix discourse and interpretation and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns; even movies are made profitable by product placement, so when you consider the domination of the media and its marginalization powers by making some people dissidents and others, heros.

As a child I saw a program on TV depicting Aboriginals as poor stewards of the land (avoiding the degradation by whites in less than 200 years) and now we see a uniform land management system using burn-backs to control fires; but for many years I had a condescending view of Aboriginals who ‘didn’t know any better’.

Therefore is is important that we factor in the corporate government and or private ‘filters’ of content that media news people frequently use that cast doubt on the integrity of any given story. If a story appears about a person losing a home and all possessions to fire and coincidentally there is an insurance company ad placed near the story. We probably feel we are able to interpret news objectively but the filters often put constraints on our objectivity.

Come ANZAC Day and we think about the wasted lives lost, wounded and war trauma victims of Gallipoli, but are largely unaware that Churchill was in fact the catalyst for Turkey siding with the Germans after he requisitioned (stole) two ships already paid for by the Turks and built by ship builders in England.

We know now that George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard lied about Iraq and we need to understand that Afghanistan is not about the people there, its about Americans wanting to keep an open access to the oil States.

We had a saying in the Navy, believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see.

The reason being that CNN and other media outlets were told to just focus on Al Qaeda and so began the biggest spin of all time, resulting in war.

There have been stories circulating about Iran sending soldiers into Iraq and taking over an oil well; how they transport the oil is not possible or relevant; however it is the intent to destabilise.

Spin-doctoring through PR (public relations) Advertsing companies and corporate owned media is how corporate government controls the people, by feeding them information, misinformation and misleading information to formulate a population.

This story provides yet another example of how the powers to be are seemingly unaware that we can see the puppeters pulling the strings, we know the trick and less likely to take the bait.

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

December 18, 2009 “Huffington Post” — For the past several days, the spin behind the headlines surrounding Iran’s activities have been enough to send any one looking for cover — or declare war. After all, nuclear bombs, missiles, and the stealing of a neighbor’s oil fields is what prompted the “international community” to declare war on Iraq – twice. Why not Iran? As Bill O’Reilly said: ” What spin is, is taking a set of circumstances, all right, and taking that circumstance and making it not what it is.”

The latest rumor comes from the Saudi owned al-Arabiya (partially owned by Kuwait and Persian Gulf States) which announced that 11 Iranian soldiers had taken over an Iraqi oil field. Although this report was denied by Iraq’s Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji, and “A US military spokesman told AFP at Contingency Operating Base Adder”, other media sources have run off with it. What was the intention of releasing such ‘news’?

Clearly, what is not new is that Saudis (and Kuwaitis) are becoming an old hand at assisting Americans in their adventures in the region. In 1991, Nayirah, the 15-year old daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S., used her ties with the PR firm Hill & Knowlton and came up with the audacious lie that the Iraqis were throwing babies out of the incubators in Kuwait. Hill & Knowlton’s marketing helped build domestic support for the war. $40billion of the $60 billion US costs was paid by Saudi Arabia.

Thanks to their relentless efforts, Bush Junior dared to go where his father had not – Baghdad. Of course, once again, a PR firm, The Rendon Group, was paid millions of dollars to demonize Saddam in order to persuade the American public of the necessity of an illegal invasion. Bob Woodard (State of Denial) explains the Saudi role during his interview on ’60 minutes’. “[Price]Bandar, who’s skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn’t get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney – who has said nothing – says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.’” “Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: “They’re [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That’s the Saudi pledge”.

It would seem that the Saudis are at it again. They have attempted to buy the Chinese by offering them cheap oil in exchange for sanctions against Iran; but China knows better than to auction its future and national security for a bloody adventure. Saudi Arabia, in a change of tactic, spun a story about Iran invading an Iraqi oilfield which led to an immediate hike in oil prices. Could this have been intended as a punishment aimed at the Chinese for not cooperating while projecting Iran as an extreme threat?

Given their media ownership, this was easily accomplished. In 2005, while in Dubai, Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal boasted that he could change the news content that viewers around the world see on television thanks to his voting shares in News Corp. All other media jumped on the bandwagon. The only way to give authenticity and life to rumor is by ensuring that it comes from several sources.

The deep recession in America and the painful layoffs has been the result of two wars and a third silent war — Pakistan. One in eight Americans and one in four children has turned to food stamps. Perhaps for those with a talent and willingness to be spin-masters, there is a bright future ahead in the public relations sector should we head for another war with Iran. For the rest who would rather live with a conscience, perhaps a little memory exercise would salvage our future.

That marks the highest level of scepticism recorded since 1985, when this study of public perceptions of the media was first done. The survey found that 63 per cent of the respondents thought the information they get from the media was often off base and doubted the accuracy.

As we seem to follow American ‘values’, it’s probably similiar here.

The ABC’s Media Watch (Monday nights) never seems to run out of stories where plagiarism runs rife, so called reporters just print media releases by company’s (that no doubt have paid for advertising) or report unsubstantiated stories.

No retractions, no apologies and no remorse it seems; however, as the print media is suffering greatly reduced profit, perhaps they should be doing their respective jobs.

The public’s trust in the news media began to deteriorate long before the industry’s finances began to drop and although the Internet has made inroads, many people had enjoyed being able to read the newspaper rather than sit in front of a computer monitor. The most recent poll found just 29% believed news reports had the facts straight and only 26% of the respondents said the press is careful to avoid bias.

Although television remains the most popular news source (with 71% of people depending on TV for national and international news), about 42% said they relied on the Internet, 33% turned to newspapers and 21% tuned into the radio. (The figures don’t = 100% as some people cited more than one medium).

However, in NSW (home of all manner of corruption in Australia), the Sydney Morning Herald has revealed to readers that cabinet last week approved legislation to be introduced in Parliament, possibly as early as next week to ‘create a backdoor method of transferring a rail line to a department that can then onsell the land to developers’.

The minister’s spokesman said in an email – ‘the NSW Government has agreed to this and I intend to introduce legislation that will allow this to happen’. This would allow ministers or public servants to remove lines by administrative order.

The Sydney Morning Herald has launched an Independent Transport Public Inquiry at www.transportpublicinquiry.com.au.