Afghanistan: The War the Media Forgot

The Senlis Council, an independent think-tank with a permanent presence in Afghanistan, wrote in a study entitled "Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the brink, and concluded in over 100 pages , the Reuters recently reported.

The conflict in Afghanistan has reached "crisis proportions," with the resurgent Taliban present in more than half the country and closing in on Kabul, a report said on Wednesday.

Read the full report on Afghanistan from Senlis here. This report is astonishing. According to their conclusions the Taliban control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory" and 54% of the countries landmass!!! In essence, we are losing the war in Afghanistan. Let's be honest here. Most astonishing is how our conglomerate monopoly-hungry media is not explaining this to the American people. Remember Bush's bold campaign statements in 2004? "We have destroyed the Taliban", "we won the war on terror in Afghanistan"??????? All lies...... but the media has to play out their story line mainly: "Afghanistan is a popular war and one which we are winning". If you only watch the t.v for your news you may still think Afghanistan is a huge success!! The Washington Post ran a story about the Taliban gaining ground and the US not meeting their goals in Afghanistan, but overall the coverage is tiny. The Wa'Post reported that White House officials are pessimistic about Afghanistan and the military is not seeing much progress, yet on the television the official word of "success" by the administration tends to be the gospel!

Leave it to neo-conservative "profits-over-people"," contracts-over-troops", "business-over-families".... scumbag, incompetent, degenerate, power tripping, freaks of nature to fuck up 2 major international military operations( they call them wars, I call them occupations) at one time!!

We will be live tonight!!!!11-26-2007

The ELPN returns live tonight at 10PM (EST) after a short break. Be sure to tune in, from the link on the right, or goto indieairplay.com or tune in indieairplay on your cell phone (however that works) or on i-tunes radio tuner (just search for indie air play radio, under alternative)


Catch you tonight live!!! and be sure to bug Ralph about the podcasts, and the lack of updating!


Jared

Fast hackery bits:

Robert Novak: Warren Buffet is a hypocrite and "should be ashamed of himself by putting out that phony message" - the one that said he thinks repealing the estate tax is wrong and only benefits the super-rich.

Bush hack Michael O'Hanlon was last seen shilling for the continuing occupation of Iraq in the New York Times. Now, in that same newspaper, he is calling for a pre-emptive strike... on Pakistan!

Outgoing Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend: Al-Qaeda will attack our 2008 elections!

Disgraced former Rep. Tom DeLay thinks that the GOP needs to grow a backbone. How would he contribute? By "bitch-slap[ping] Paul Krugman." Apparently, violence shows courage...

Ari Fleischer's group Freedom's Watch is planning on actively selling Americans on the necessity of a war with Iran.

FOX News hack John Gibson: "[W]hoever outed Valerie Plame should get a medal, and, if it was Karl Rove, I'd pin it on him myself!"

Speaking of Lucifer, Karl Rove has claimed that the White House "opposed" the politicization of the initial Iraq war vote - prior to the 2002 mid-term elections. Unfortunately for Rove, the Dems were against holding the vote prior to the mid-terms also, and begged the White House to wait. The White House reply? "We just have to do this now."

A Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll shows that 62% of Americans feel that Bush ignored the pre-9/11 warnings of an imminent terrorist attack. Bush's friends over at the New York Post equated these beliefs with other "conspiracy theories" regarding the Kennedy assassination, UFO's, and the oil companies' manipulation of gas prices, declaring a majority of Americans "idiots" for believing something that the Post themselves reported!!! Michelle Malkin, professional GOP media whore, declares America "Tinfoil Hat Nation" in response to this poll.

Family Security Matters - whose "Top Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America" list we highlighted a few weeks back - now claims that it is "multiculturalism" that exposes us to terrorism. Because we let Muslims in, we're going to get attacked... sometime... eventually... they'll get us... you'll see. Who are the moonbats, anyway?

Dick Cheney, a.k.a. Satan, says the government should not curb predatory lending practices because the impending recession we are heading towards shows that "the markets... are working."

Finally, Bush defends brutal rule in Saudi Arabia (he doesn't condemn the sentence of prison and lashing for a woman who was gang-raped by seven men; the sentence was handed down due to the victim's being "an adulteress who invited the attack because at the time she was partially dressed in a parked car with her lover") and Pakistan (current military dictator Musharraf has not "crossed the line," even though he has instituted a brutal shutdown of democracy and freedom in the country).

The Republican recession... from Bush!

In the past week...

Internationally: Elections in Poland and Australia this week ousted the sitting prime ministers in favor of opposition party candidates. Poland and Australia... two countries whose sitting leaders were still supporting the Coalition of the "Willing". Hmm... Poland's new leader has already pledged to withdraw the contingent of 900 Polish troops by the end of 2008.

Tuesday: Scotty McBombshell! In Scott McClellan's upcoming book, "What Happened", he reveals that he was lied to about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby's roles in the Valerie Plame scandal by "Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself." Recall that earlier this year, McClellan claimed Rove and Libby lied to him about their involvement in the outing of a covert CIA agent working on nuclear counterproliferation in Iran.
Reuter's covers it here.
Here an a great article from buzzflash explaining how important the implications of what Mclellan furthur confirmed really are. High crimes!!!!!

Tuesday: Two more Republican members of the House - Reps. Shays (CT) and English (PA) joined the Democrats in voting FOR the proposal to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, joining Reps. Walsh (NY) and Jones (NC) as the lone GOP voices of sanity in the House. Could this have anything to do with 2008? Shays, English and Walsh all face rough re-election campaigns... Interestingly, Rep. Gilchrist (R-MD) flipped to Bush's side, as he faces a hard challenge from within his own party (presumably due to his prior anti-war views), and a handful of Democrats (most notably presidential contender Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH) ) voted against it for not being strong enough in calling for withdrawal.

Tuesday: After Karl Rove left his White House position, he sought employment as a political op-ed writer for TIME Magazine. He was rejected because TIME felt Rove was "essentially like an unindicted co-conspirator in a whole string of felonies."

Wednesday: Former Governor and now Republican Presidential contender Mike Huckabee on McClellan's revelations: "... [T]hese are serious allegations. They deserve to be thoroughly examined, investigated, and the truth brought to the American people."

Thursday: Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN): "George Bush is a very compassionate person. He’s a very good person. And a lot of people don’t see that in him, and there’s many people in this room who might disagree with that…. I just felt a little bit underwhelmed by our discussions, the complexity of them, the depth of them."

Friday: Richard Perle says he was right about Iraq... invading Iraq, that is. He states that the "occupation was a mistake."

Sunday: Recall that, over the past few election cycles, the Republicans pointed at all the Democratic "infighting"? Well, now... Fred Thompson takes FOX News to task for being, essentially, biased against his run for President.

Today: Trent Lott will resign from the Senate! Ding dong, another witch is dead! The more conspiratorial amongst us will note that Lott's departure occurs just before new rules would kick in that prevent members of Congress from taking lobbyist positions until they've been out of government for two years.

Today: Top Pentagon military leaders hope the next Iraq assessment does not rely so heavily on the views of Bush hack Gen. David Petraeus, a clear sign that they expect a realistic depiction of the situation on the ground. In Petraeus's Iraq, things are going fine, so we can keep the military there. In real Iraq, things are not really improving, just... shifting... again. I think the Pentagon military leaders realize it is wasteful to play Whack-A-Mole in the desert at all, never mind for FOUR YEARS, and it should be time to end this war.

Big Media: F.C.C getting ready to make it even BIGGER!

Fcc Chariman Kevin Martin is trying to rush a new media ownership law which would make it a lot easier for media groups to own local newspapers, radio stations and over-the-air local television outlets in one market. Wall Street Journal reports on some opposition to rushing this new law into effect by some senior House Democrats. Bill Moyers on PBS reported thoroughly exactly what is going on with this controversial ownership loosening, which Martin is going to pass with little public debate!! Some on the senate are forming bi-partisan opposition to this pro-monopoly loosening of ownership laws. Senators Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss, yep, that Trent Lott) are introducing legislation which would "put the people first ahead of big media".

Freepress.net and stopbigmedia.com set up a way for you to contact your senator to voice your support for the Dorgan-Lott legislation.

Keep in mind ( as I'm sure most our readers understand) media has been grately consolidated already, for example let us take a look at what General Electric/ NBC already owns (as tracked by stopbigmedia.com and freepress)

Television networks: NBC Networks, Telemundo

Cable: A&E, History Channel (part), NBC Entertainment, NBC News, NBC Sports, NBC Television, NBC Universal, CNBC, CNBC World (Arabia, India, Asia, Europe), MSNBC, Bravo, Sci Fi Channel, Sundance Channel (part), Trio, Telemundo, USA, and Weather Plus

38 Television stations in 23 markets, owned under the "NBC Universal" division. These include NBC affiliates, Univision affiliates, and a small number of independents.

and Motion Pictures: NBC Universal (80% ownership): Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Rogue Pictures. Universal has production agreements with Imagine Entertainment, Jersey Films, Tribeca Films, Shady Acres, the Kennedy/Marshall Company, Playtone Company, Strike Entertainment, Type A Films, Depth of Field, Stephen Sommers and Working Title Films (Europe)

You get the idea......... What is the next step for the big media giants (GE/NBC, Disney /ABC, New Corp /Fox, CBS, Viacom, Clear Channel), maybe merging with say AT&T or Verizon Or Comcast or Time Warner or Cablevision , the largest internet access providers in the country?? This is where issues such as net-neutrality come into play. Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination (as per savetheinternet.com) Imagine 5 or 6 huge conglomerates owning all the cable outlets, local radio, local television, newspapers and controlling the internet as well??

We are headed down that road.

The debate on passing this new de-regulatory law will come to an end soon. Sign the petition I mentioned before if you value a free press and do not wish for the free market gone wild neo-conservative ideology to destroy our free press forever. An entire media controlled by a few huge owners is not a free press...........