Greenwald: US, British media are servants of security apparatus

reply to post by Asktheanimals


Oil/Energy--yes, I think so and for two primary reasons.

1. What I think may have occurred was in response to OPEC's oil embargo in the 70's when oil pretty much became a matter of national security. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was established in 1975 as a part of a kind of energy defense. If we consider the wars that have taken place since the 70's, well, I can't think of a single one that did not involve a country with oil. While we can sit here and pretend that the Persian Gulf was about protecting or "liberating" the people of Kuwait, that doesn't really hold up upon close examination as one of the first things that the coalition forces did was to seize control over the Kuwaiti oil fields. Many of those fields were torched by invading Iraqi forces. Operation Desert Storm began in January 1991 at the same time that these oil fires were ignited. I think that most of us have a pretty good measure of the Iraq War and what that was all about so nuff said there. Just about every country that we have rattled our sabers at have been oil affluent countries that are unfriendly with us.

2. The majority of our oil supplies are in the hands of US/UK based megacorporations. One of the curious things that has occurred there has been the complete failure of the FTC to control the size and power of these entities. Sen. Ron Wyden, some 10 years ago, attempted to take the FTC to task on the subject of anti-trust issues and more and failed. As someone who once had an inside view of these companies, I can honestly say that most of the conglomeration of these entities took place in the late 90's in both countries through mergers and long standing joint ventures. There isn't a single one that isn't connected to the other. Period. I know that, locally in my area, the representative gas stations in my area are all linked by merger. That is called a monopoly and yet, the FTC does nothing. That's an enormous amount of latitude being given.

One of the things that Obama discussed doing preceding the 2008 election was to basically create a windfall tax upon the oil companies as they were making incredible and record breaking profits through what the FTC had declared as redlining practices that were simply just "competition". What happened there? He dropped it entirely. Isn't that interesting? Again, enormous latitude.

Finally, the BP oil spill actually was a huge indicator for the control of discourse within the media as well as on an academic front. This was one of the worst oil spills in history (the worst still being, ttbomk, the Gulf War Oil Spill) and yet, the media was actually pretty lax on reporting a great deal of what was occurring while very notably running BP ads about how "green" they were. The media clearly knew the old adage, "You don't bite the hand that feeds you". What was occurring within the media during this time period should have been a huge red flag for information control.

I disagree, with the banks being the next ones up on that totem pole. I actually think that would be the Department of Defense, itself. While we generally tend to perceive the DoD as being a federal entity, that would be a mistake. In May of 1997, the Department of Defense initiated the Defense Reform Task Force whose responsibility was to identify areas of inefficiencies and more. What primarily happened was the injection of "competition" within the DoD through its privatization. Many portions of the Department of Defense became privatized/outsourced, including their information operations (propaganda vehicles) and well, much of the Pentagon itself. www.defense.gov...

What kind of links can we find between the two behemoths of media control? Halliburton would be the first one that comes to mind as it is involved in both 1. oil/energy and 2. is a private military contractor. And well, Dick Cheney. Pretty stark there. However, to be fair, much of this occurred during Clinton's administration but that has an interesting US/UK tie as well as both Blair and Clinton were pushing the same political ideologies at the same time and that's called the Third Way. I've mentioned that before in the past in other posts. It's pretty damn important.

reply to post by Rosinitiate


This is a little off topic but I want to make a small recommendation to you if you are unaware of it. Michael Tellinger has started a movement in South Africa called Ubuntu. It's based on contributionism which might just interest you...it certainly interests me.

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reply to post by pandersway


It is definitely true. The recent ruling that the N.S.A. roving wiretaps are legal was based on lack of evidence that they were being used for anything other than terrorism.

However - someone on trial using a public defender is NOT going to have the resources to prove corruption in the police department. I can't even do that with a top defense attorney.

So who, then, is responsible for the lack of evidence that allowed the N.S.A. roving wiretaps to be declared legal by a Federal Judge?

The media is definitely responsible in part because they didn't do their job and investigate for the evidence, that does exist, by the way - I have personal contacts who admit as much, but what good does that do? I'm not a reporter.

Are these reporters getting paid off to not do their jobs? Or is there a culture in the Press that frowns upon people doing their jobs??

For one thing, if you are a reporter, you are going to have to put getting the Truth at higher priority than being sensitive to people's feelings, and that hasn't been done - one side is just saying what people want to hear (MSNBC), and the other side is making things up (Fox).

Look, it's easy - it's really easy to screw up. But it's nearly impossible to fix a mess created by screwing up.

Screwing up even feels good - but living with the mess later doesn't -

And a lot of times, it takes so much effort to fix something resulting from lack of competence that it doesn't even seem possible to do. And then all you can do is look back and say "I wish I hadn't screwed that up." And move forward from there.

reply to post by darkbake

Are these reporters getting paid off to not do their jobs? Or is there a culture in the Press that frowns upon people doing their jobs??

I would lean towards the latter of the two and there is certainly a 'dumbing down' culture within the MSM without question. Is this for our benefit?

"Oh thanks for treating me like a retard, I feel so much better now"

I remember watching a local TV news station out of Seattle in the AM and I liked the personalities until they talked to their audience as if they were idiots. I couldn't believe it. I had been out of N. Amer for over 20 yrs and came back to this...or maybe I just never really noticed it before.