Now This

This blog is now read by more machines than humans: RSS robots, spam-laying insectopoids, echoes of blog-gathering .edu projects. This essentially is the state of affairs that all human activities w

Cleaning Up the Nation

Austin Bay:

If Air America were a conservative radio network its corrupt funding trail and cynical abuse of a poverty program would be front page news at the NY Times and full-time mega-scandal at

Rank Materialism

Freedom. I am now the proud new owner of a Gateway 6020GZ laptop, perfect for students and others with limited means. I can now go into a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble and look like I'm doing some

Fallujah Fonda

Uh-oh. From the Telegraph comes this exciting news:

Jane Fonda is returning to anti-war activism and embarking on a cross-country tour to call for an end to US military operations in Iraq.

Acros

John Pilger: Partner in Terrorism

In an outrageous piece of terrorist propaganda appearing on the cover of today's New Statesman, John Pilger puts the blame for the 7/7 London attacks not on the terrorists, but rather on Tony Blair:

Lying Liars and the Liars Who Pay Them

To me, the worst part of the CBS scandal is not the original story, as problematic as that obviously was. The worst part was the "aftermath", as the Thornburgh/Boccardi report calls it.

60 Minutes is a TV show produced by CBS News, and The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather is another TV show produced by CBS News. I don't know whether many people had the impression that these two programs were separate entities before, but afterwards it was clear that the CBS Evening News was acting as the mouthpiece for 60 Minutes' lies.

On those broadcasts during the storm, CBS's nightly news show became the CBS News public relations firm. The news show didn't take a fresh or anywhere near independent view of the controversy- their only aim was to bolster their sister broadcast's story.

Dan Rather, wearing several hats interchangably, was able to tell lies on the CBS news magazine show, and propped up those lies on the CBS news show with yet more lies (what the official report charmingly calls "inaccuracies"). No one stopped Rather from abusing his position as nightly news anchor to cover his own ass. What a low role for a network's nightly news show to fill.

Andrew Heyward should be fired not because of the fabrications he allowed to be broadcast as truth during 60 Minutes (though of course there's a good case for that), but because he allowed his news division's nightly broadcast to become the war room for the defense of the lying 60 Minutes story. The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather became an advocacy program: an automatic advocate of CBS lies originally reported elsewhere.

And it's the fact that one CBS show, without independent investigation, backed up the dubious claims of another CBS show that makes these lies CBS lies, rather than mere Mary Mapes lies or Dan Rather lies or 60 Minutes lies. And this is why the head of CBS news is responsible and should be fired. Where was he during those twelve days when CBS News stopped reporting facts and instead defended lies?

As to this business of the Thornburgh/Boccardi panel claiming to be unable to determine whether the documents are forgeries, this too is a lie. The panel could determine that the docs are forgeries. They chose not to, for reasons that aren't completely clear. All the evidence they require to pronounce the documents fabrications is included in the appendices of the report itself, not to mention freely available on LGF and at Joseph M. Newcomer's site.

Unless the panel is using some definition of "not able" that I am unfamiliar with, or which is unduly influenced by their lawyers' fears of lawsuits, or by contract with CBS, then the panel lied when they wrote that they are not able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic documents or forgeries.

The panel's report lies, just as the CBS nightly news show lied. Since CBS paid for the report, no one should be surprised.

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