NEW YORK – In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress approved a magazine designed to win over Arab hearts and minds. In an excerpt from his new book,
The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane, Randall Lane describes how Bush officials forbade using photographs of a donkey,
in order to avoid any positive reflection of Democrats.
Those of us who were in New York on 9/11—in fact, everyone who was in America—can attest to the overwhelming feeling of needing to do something,
anything, to pitch in. In the days and weeks following that awful day, I spent all night, volunteered to give blood that wasn’t needed, and wrote.
It didn’t seem enough. So I put forward the sharpest skill set I had, starting magazines, which put me smack in the middle of the one of the uglier,
untold stories of the Bush administration.
As part of a public diplomacy program similar to Radio Free Europe or Voice of America, the State Department had allocated more than $4 million a year
to launch a magazine about American culture, which would be translated into Arabic and sold across the Arab world. (A TV station, Al Hurra, and Radio
Sawa were launched around the same time.) Other than a corny name, Hi!, the one English word everyone on the planet knows, it was an empty
vessel.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.Source:
link
Why stop at just starting a propagandist media outlet, when you can further propagandize the media being spewed out of it? It's crazy enough that we
even allowed our tax-dollars to be used to propagate fictitious aspects of America but then to further that propaganda to support the
neo-conservatives is even longer stretch.
I don't think people realize just how evil Bush was. Isn't that illegal, to use tax-payer money to promote one party over another? I know that this
is hardly the most illegal thing that the Bush admin was involved in but why are we not prosecuting the crimes of the Bush admin? Oh yeah, it's
because of Obama. The Obama admin refuses to seek justice or even let others seek justice.
What makes me madder than hell, is the excuse used by TPTB and bought by the public. "We need to look forward, not backwards". Since when has this
excuse ever worked? What if the next bank robber or child molester used this same excuse, would it fly then? I just can't understand for the life of
me, how on Earth the public lets this excuse fly, especially when they wouldn't let it fly for anyone other than the elite class. It's important to
look backwards because if we don't, then it sends a message to others who WILL follow in the same foot-prints. Not only that, but it's important to
seek justice for the victims. It's the same reason why we prosecute child molesters.
I understand that there isn't much difference between the two leading political parties here in America but this is kind of disgusting, just like
almost everything else done by both the Obama and Bush admins. This generation of Americans is the most ignorant and gullible generation in the
history of the world, yet we are the generation with the most accessible means to over-come that ignorance. There is simply no excuse for the mind-set
of our generation.
--airspoon
Mod edit: fixed link
[edit on 6 Jul 2010 by Hellmutt]