I get stuck all the time. I have this need to write something that will explain it all. I am a great lover of history and government. But I think the most important part of those two subjects is where how do you go about keeping tabs on your government and where or how your knowledge of history was acquired.

Most of us keep up with our government through the mainstream media. It is a fact that mainstream journalism in this country -- mostly meaning newspapers and TV -- is in a sad state of affairs. They are completely profit driven and corrupt. How in the world can any network with NBC in it's name trash this war? GE, which owns NBC, is the biggest defense contractor in the country. Now follow me on this one. If war is good for the bottom line of GE how do you think the NBC's will treat the war. What was it, Showdown With Saddam!? CNN, now owned by whatever conglomeration it now is of Time, Warner, AOL and whoever else has jumped into that cesspool. ABC that's owned by Disney, which right now does not wants to release Michael Moore's new film. That sounds a little like censorship. CBS which is owned by Viacom which is the biggest media conglomerate of them all. And finally there is Fox, a.k.a NewsCorp, a.k.a Fair and Balanced, a.k.a The no Spin Zone, speaks for itself. I'm sure you've heard of the recent struggles of the New York Times, Jayson Blair as well as Judith Miller. In any case why did every single mainstream media outlet in the country fail to do their job in the lead up to this war? They were all too scared to take on a popular President after 9/11 that's why. Holy shit! I don't think that is why the founders put freedom of the press into the Bill of Rights.

Which leads us to history. I graduated from high school in 1985. At that time like most 17 year olds, and I'm sure many more today, I didn't read much. About two or three years after high school, not being a great college student, I made a decision that if I wasn't going to finish college I should probably start reading to make sure I didn't turn into an imbecile, or a bigger imbecile. And when one starts to see that there are different opinions and facts than what was in the history books you learned from it is enlightening to say the least, Howard Zinn will mess you up for the rest of you life.

Yesterday I linked an article about Daddy giving Dubya a history lesson. It just reinforces all of this. Who in the mainstream media in this country is going to point out that Iran and Israel, working together, schooled us into taking out Saddam for them? And that they've been playing us like this for years. That these two and Ronald Reagans campaign conspired (October Surprise) to not allow the release of the hostages to help insure Jimmy Carters defeat. Why you ask? Because Jimmy Carter was actually going to force Israel back to the 1967 borders in his second term. And if you watch anything other than the mainstream media you will notice that everything in the Middle East goes back to one thing. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the injustices involved in the conflict. You realize that when it comes to the Middle East as this article shows, History's Fools, it all goes back to that:

If there is a path to democracy in the Middle East, it begins in Jerusalem, not Baghdad.

As I have continued to read to get my history and my news I have come across some great information. I would like to recommend a book to you that shows what you media has become, Into The Buzzsaw. It shows how stories are censored. How the money for investigative reporting has dried up and newsrooms are more interested in ratings than good stories. How the truth is no longer important and much, much more. One last thing. This site will tell you who owns what in the media, Well Connected. The point of this is that to try and explain it all I have to keep looking.

Notice this is from the BBC, not NBC
Bush under fire over terror alert
Harold Schaitberger, president of the firefighters' union, said that the administration had known about the threats for a month.

"I do find it awfully convenient and suspicious that it happens to be tied in right behind the president's recent message to the nation as well as his troubling, plummeting poll numbers," he said.

The FBI goes after the neocons
The Bush orthodoxy is in shreds
At a conservative think tank in downtown Washington, and across the Potomac at the Pentagon, FBI agents have begun paying quiet calls on prominent neoconservatives, who are being interviewed in an investigation of potential espionage, according to intelligence sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information about the plans of the US government and military?
Perle jumps ship. Is that the FBI knocking?
U.S. war policy 'grave error'
Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure.
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 11:57 AM