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	<title>manufacturing-consent &amp;laquo; WordPress.com Tag Feed</title>
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<title><![CDATA[Beyond Freedom and Dignity, part III]]></title>
<link>http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-iii/</link>
<pubDate>Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:10:17 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>jenniferlake</dc:creator>
<guid>http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-iii/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[ [For ease of readng, all three parts are linked in the margin page "B.F. Skinner" &gt;&gt; &gt;&gt;]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><div> [For ease of readng, all three parts are linked in the margin page "B.F. Skinner" &#62;&#62; &#62;&#62;]</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Shifting &#8216;responsibility&#8217; to the environment and arguing for the intentional design of environments is the whole of Skinner&#8217;s thesis, however his own words are remarkably insightful into the paradigm of control. He made the need for it, more and more of it, appear as a supremely moral cause essential to survival, harking back to Betrand Russell who postulated &#8220;There will, therefore, be no more war&#8230;experts will control propaganda and education. Thus whatever the outward forms may be, all real power will come to be concentrated in the hands of those who understand the art of scientific manipulation.&#8221; And this is the basic dishonesty of science. But for the time being, having come this far in Skinner&#8217;s doctrine, I&#8217;ll highlight the rest of his proposition in an effort to cull the essence of his point of view and let his words speak for themselves.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>ALTERNATIVES TO PUNISHMENT</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p84] Permissive practices have many advantages. They save the labor of supervision and the enforcement of sanctions.</div>
<div>If men behave badly toward each other in a permissive world, it is because nature is less than perfect. If they fight when there is no government to preserve order, it is because they have aggressive instincts.</div>
<div>Permissiveness is not, however, a policy; it is the abandonment of policy, and its apparent advantages are illusory.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p89] Jean-Jacques Rousseau was alert to the dangers of social control, and he thought it might be possible to avoid them by making a person dependent not on people but on things&#8230;the contingencies which involve things are more precise and shape more useful behavior than contingencies arranged by other people.</div>
<div>[p90] But things do not easily take control&#8230;and they do not often work&#8230;</div>
<div>We must also remember that the control exercised by things may be destructive.</div>
<div>[p91] Those who work productively because of the reinforcing value of what they produce are under the sensitive and powerful control of the products.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p97] A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources. If people behave well under it, it is because they have been brought under effective ethical control or the control of things&#8230;[which includes things like 'propaganda', what Skinner calls 'weak methods']</div>
<div>[p99] The fundamental mistake made by all those who choose weak methods of control is to assume that the balance of control is left to the individual, when in fact it is left to the conditions.</div>
<div>When practices are concealed or disguised, countercontrol is made difficult; it is not clear from whom one is to escape or whom one is to attack. The literatures of freedom and dignity were once brilliant exercises in countercontrol, but the measures they proposed are no longer appropriate to the task.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p101] ..[T]he environment can be changed, and we are learning how to change it. The measures we use are those of physical and biological technology, but we use them in special ways to affect behavior.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p105] Feelings are said to be part of the armamentarium of autonomous man&#8230;he can &#8216;heighten his awareness&#8217; of the things inside inside his body&#8230;</div>
<div>[p107]..It is the reinforcer that feels good, not the good feeling.</div>
<div>Men do not work to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, as the hedonists have insisted;  they work to produce pleasant things and to avoid painful things&#8230;</div>
<div>..the only good things are positive reinforcers, the only bad things are negative reinforcers.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p109] Methods using positive reinforcement are harder to learn and less likely to be used because the results are usually deferred, but they have an advantage of avoiding counterattack.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p113] Once we have identified the contingencies that control behavior called &#8216;good&#8217; and &#8216;bad&#8217; and &#8216;right&#8217; and &#8216;wrong&#8217;, the distinction between facts and how people feel about facts is clear. How people feel about facts is a by-product. The important thing is what they do about them&#8230;</div>
<div>[p115] In the long run people behave more effectively if they have been told the truth&#8230;but the gains..are remote&#8230;</div>
<div>[p119] The good things in life have only to be made properly contingent on productive labor. if citizens are not law-abiding..it is..because law enforcement has become lax; the problem can be solved by refusing to suspend or abridge sentences, by increasing the police force and by passing stronger laws.</div>
<div>   The strategy may be successful, but it will not correct the trouble.</div>
<div>&#8230;but if a consequence is immediate&#8230;</div>
<div>[p121] The process of operant conditioning is committed to immediate effects&#8230;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p128] A person is not only exposed to the contigencies that constitute a culture, he helps to maintain them&#8230;so the culture is self-perpetuating.</div>
<div>[p129]&#8230;the culture determines many of the biological characteristics transmitted.</div>
<div>   Many of the current cultures, for example, enable individuals to survive and breed who would otherwise fail to do so. Not every practice..is adaptive&#8230;</div>
<div>[p132] A dominant controlling agency or system may hold a set of practices together..</div>
<div>&#8230;most of the practices which compose a culture are concerned with sustenance and safety rather than competition with other cultures.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p134] When it becomes clear that a culture may survive or perish, some of its members may begin to act to promote its survival&#8230;[for] the good of the culture.</div>
<div>[p135] A culture survives if its members survive, and this depends in part upon certain genetic susceptibilities to reinforcement&#8230;</div>
<div>[p136] None of this will explain what we might call a pure concern for the survival of a culture, but we do not really need an explanation&#8230;The simple fact is that a culture which for any reason induces its members to work for its survival..is more likely to survive. Survival is the only value&#8230;</div>
<div>[p137] It is not likely to evolve from successful competition&#8230;</div>
<div>The great problems of the world today are all global. [he cites overpopulation, depletion of resources, pollution, etc.]</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p143] The task of the cultural designer is to accelerate the development of practices which bring the remote consequences of behavior into play.</div>
<div>[p149] A programmed sequence of contingencies may be needed.</div>
<div>[p150] Such a technology is ethically neutral&#8230;[but] they will need to foresee some of the difficulties the culture will encounter.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p153] A collection of cultural designs is to be found in the utopian literature&#8230;and the transition to a new culture is facilitated by some formalized break with the past&#8230;</div>
<div>[p164] It is sometimes said that the scientific design of a culture is impossible because men will simply not accept the fact that he can be controlled.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p165] There are signs of emotional instability in those who have been deeply affected by the literature</div>
<div>[p167]..But if any theory is to be blamed, it is the all but universal theory of a free and worthy autonomous man.</div>
<div>[p168] The group calls it wrong to control through deception&#8230;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p171] The great problem is to arrange effective countercontrol and hence to bring some important consequences to bear on the behavior of the controller&#8230;</div>
<div>Control and countercontrol tend to become dislocated when control is taken over by organized agencies&#8230;</div>
<div>The priinciple of making the controller a member of the group he controls should apply to the designer of a culture.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p175] The intentional design of a culture and the control of human behavior it implies are essential if the human species is to continue to develop. Neither biological nor cultural evolution is any guarantee that we are inevitably moving toward a better world.</div>
<div>Survival value changes as conditions change.</div>
<div>[p177] What is needed is more control, not less&#8230;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p181] Attacking controlling practices is, of course, a form of countercontrol. It may have immeasurable benefits if better controlling practices are thereby selected&#8230; [but] to refuse to exercise available control because in some sense all control is wrong is to withold possibly important forms of countercontrol. Punitive measures. which the literature of freedom and dignity have otherwise helped to eliminate, are instead promoted.</div>
<div>   A preference for methods which make control inconspicuous or allow it to be disguised has condemned those who are in a position to exert constructive countercontrol to use of the weak measures. This could be a lethal mutation.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p182] All control is reciprocal, and an interchange between control and countercontrol is essential to the evolution of a culture. The interchange is disturbed by the literatures of freedom and dignity, which interpret countercontrol as the suppression rather than the correction of controlling practices.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p191] It would be foolish to deny the existence of [a] private [inner] world, but it is also foolish to assert that because it is private it is of a different nature from the world outside.</div>
<div>[p193] One need not be aware of one&#8217;s behavior or the conditions controlling it in order to behave effectively.</div>
<div>A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies&#8230;.</div>
<div>[p199] The picture which emerges from a scientific analysis is not a body with a person inside, but of a body which is a person..that displays a complex repertoire of behavior.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p200] ..what is being abolished is autonomous man&#8211; the inner man, the homunculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literatures of freedom and dignity.</div>
<div>His abolition has been long overdue.</div>
<div>[p205] It is only autonomous man who has reached a dead end.</div>
<div>[p215]&#8230;and that is a step forward.</div>
<div>He is ondeed controlled by his environment, but we must remember that it is an environment largely of his own making&#8230;man remains what he has always been.</div>
<div>We have not yet seen what man can make of man.</div>
<div>[end excerpts]</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
</div>]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title><![CDATA[Beyond Freedom and Dignity, part II]]></title>
<link>http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-ii/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:01:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>jenniferlake</dc:creator>
<guid>http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-ii/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Society of Experts   &#8220;The society of experts which I am imagining will embrace all eminent]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><div><span style="font-size:medium;">The Society of Experts</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:medium;">&#8220;The society of experts which I am imagining will embrace all eminent men of science except a few wrong-headed and anarchical cranks. It will possess the sole up-to-date armaments and will be the repository of all new secrets in the art of war. There will, therefore, be no more war since resistence by the unscientific will be doomed to obvious failure. The society of experts will control propaganda and education. It will teach loyalty to the world government and make nationalism high treason. The government, being an oligarchy, will instill submissiveness into the great bulk of the population, confining initiative and the habit of command to its own members. It is possible that it may invent ingenious ways of concealing its own power, leaving the forms of democracy intact, and allowing the plutocrats to imagine that they are cleverly controlling these forms. Gradually, however, as the pluocrats become stupid through laziness, they will lose their wealth; it will pass more and more into public ownership and be controlled by the government of experts. Thus, whatever the outward forms may be, all real power will come to be concentrated in the hands of those who understand the art of scientific manipulation.&#8221;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:medium;">&#8211;Bertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook, 1931</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:medium;"> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:medium;">[as found at <a href="http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=389">http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=389</a>, in an essay by Brent Jessup] </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:medium;"> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:medium;">                                      ____________________</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Prefacing the next part in the review of Skinnerian behaviorism, it&#8217;s worthwhile to notice how the society of experts protects itself under the cover of national secrets. A news story printed on Nov. 29, 2009 reveals this tactic:</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Washington &#8211;&#8221;President Obama will maintain a lid of secrecy on millions of pages of military and intelligence documents that were scheduled to be declassified&#8230;.The documents, dating from WWII to the early 1980s, covers the gamut of foreign relations, intelligence activities, and military operations &#8211;with the exception of nuclear weapons data, which remains protected by Congress&#8230;limited to information generated by more than one agency, the records in question are held by the CIA, the NSA, the departments of Justice, State, Defense and Energy, and other security and intelligence agencies&#8221;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/11/29/declassification_of_secret_documents_to_be_delayed" target="_blank">http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/11/29/declassification_of_secret_documents_to_be_delayed</a> </span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Skinner&#8217;s theory of behavior &#8220;extinction&#8221; appears to apply here &#8211;not in regard to the public, but to Congress and the agencies guarding these archives. A comment written by &#8216;truther&#8217; Jeff Gates about Congress suggests &#8220;policy-makers can be induced to support a predetermined agenda not because lawmakers are Evil Doers but because the public mindset has been preconditioned to respond to manipulated thoughts, emotions and beliefs..&#8221;; laughable to consider our Pavlovian Congress serving the public mindset, but no less a valuable idea to consider our Congress in the hands of the society of experts for which most all of the lawmakers themselves qualify. </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;"> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;"> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Basics on managerial behaviorism: <a href="http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Pr-Sa/Reinforcement-Theory.html">http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Pr-Sa/Reinforcement-Theory.html</a> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;"> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;"> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;"> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Had B.F. Skinner never lived, someone just like him would have been invented; cultivated in the proving grounds of academia. In the year of Russell&#8217;s &#8220;Scientific Outlook&#8221; publication, Skinner was receiving his PhD from Harvard. He had already &#8216;tried&#8217; and failed at the bohemian lifestyle of a writer in New York because, as he recalled for Time magazine, he &#8220;had nothing important to say&#8221;. Going back to grad school for his degrees in psychology, embracing it as an umplumbed science, at least gave him something important to do. Words came in their own time. By the mid-30s, they were flowing. Skinner did more than write and teach &#8211;he organized. Units of experimental behaviorists sprouted in his presence. At Harvard he was called an &#8220;institution&#8221;. His brand of radical behaviorism brought a calculable depth to animal motivation; experiments were arranged to show very long trends over multiple variations of situational &#8216;contingencies&#8217;. These were dogged trials over years of time &#8211;rats didn&#8217;t live long enough so Skinner chose pigeons with lifespans up to 15 years. His most interesting results unquestionably led to the &#8216;extinction&#8217; theory, or how behavior is deprogrammed by creating emotional states which become aversive. But &#8216;Beyond Freedom and Dignity&#8217; did not deal with the techniques of extinction theory or any specific techniques. It was instead the seminal statement of Skinner&#8217;s idealism.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">                                                              _____________</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">ON FREEDOM</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p.26] &#8220;Almost all living things act to free themselves from harmful contacts.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">..Behavior of this kind presumably evolved because of its survival value; it is as much a part of what we call the human genetic endowment as breathing, sweating, or digesting food.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">..We do not attribute them to any love of freedom; they are simply forms of behavior which have proved useful in reducing various threats to the individual, and hence to the species in the course of evolution..</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p.27] A much more important role is played by behavior which weakens harmful stimuli in another way. It is not acquired in the form of conditioned reflexes, but as the product of a different process called operant conditioning. When a bit of behavior is followed by a certain kind of consequence, it is more likely to occur again, and a consequence having this effect is called a reinforcer.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">&#8230;some stimuli are called negative reinforcers&#8230;Negative reinforcers are called aversive in the sense that they are the things organisms &#8216;turn away from&#8217;</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p.28] Escape or avoidance play a much more important role in the struggle for freedom when the aversive conditions are generated by other people. Other people can be aversive; they can be rude, dangerous, contagious or annoying&#8230;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">They may also be &#8216;intentionally&#8217; aversive&#8230;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">&#8230;a slave driver induces a slave to work by whipping him when he stops; by resuming work the slave escapes from the whipping, and incidentally reinforces the slave driver&#8217;s behavior in using the whip&#8230;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">In one form or another, intentional aversive control is the pattern of most social coordination.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">A person escapes from or avoids aversive treatment by behaving in ways which reinforce those who treated him aversively.</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p.29] Another anomalous mode of escape is to attack those who arrange aversive conditions, and weaken or destroy their power.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">&#8230;when treated aversively people tend to act aggressively.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">If two organisms which have been coexisting peacefully receive painful shocks, they immediately exhibit characteristic patterns of aggression toward each other. The aggressive behavior is not necessarily directed toward the actual source of the stimulation: it may be &#8216;displaced&#8217; toward any convenient person or object..</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p.30]What we may call the &#8216;literature of freedom&#8217; has been designed to induce people to escape from or attack those who act to control them aversively.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">The literature of freedom..has a simple objective status. It does not impart a philosophy of freedom; it induces people to act.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">The literature often emphasizes the aversive conditions under which people live..thus &#8216;increasing the misery&#8217; of those it is trying to rescue.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">The literature also prescribes modes of action. It has not been much concerned with escape..;instead, it has emphasized how controlling power may be weakened or destroyed.</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p31] The would-be controllers do not, of course, remain inactive. Governments make escape impossible by banning travel..punishing or incarcerating defectors..</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">They keep weapons and other sources of power out of the handds of revolutionaries. They destroy the written literature of freedom&#8230;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">The importance of the literature can scarcely be questioned.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Without help or guidance people submit to aversive conditions in the most surprising way.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">&#8230;Many people have submitted to the most obvious religious, governmental and economic control for centuries, striking for freedom only sporadically, if at all.</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p32] The feeling of freedom becomes an unreliable guide to action as soon as would-be controllers turn to to nonaversive measures, as they are likely to do to avoid problems&#8230;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Nonaversive measures..have obvious advantages which promote their use.</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p33] Until recently, teaching was almost entirely aversive&#8230;but nonaversive techniques are..being discovered and used.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">The effects are not as easily recognized as those of aversive contingencies&#8230;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">A problem arises for the defender of freedom when the behavior generated by positive reinforcement has deferred aversive consequences.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">..conditioned positive reinforcers can often be used with deferred aversive results. Money is an example.</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p34] But the misuse of many social reinforcers often goes unnoticed.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">..a government may prevent defection by making life more interesting&#8230;the schedule of reinforcement is more important than the amount received.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Certain schedules generate a deal of behavior in return for very little reinforcement&#8230;not overlooked by would-be controllers</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p.35] The problem to be solved by those who are concerned with freedom is to create immediate aversive consequences&#8230;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p36] ..sufficiently aversive so that a person will &#8216;escape from it&#8217;..</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">The more deferred the aversive consequences the greater the problem. The literature of freedom has never come to grips with techniques of control which do not generate escape or counterattack because it has dealt with the problem in terms of states of mind and feelings.</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p.37] Freedom is a matter of contingencies of reinforcement, not of the feelings the contingencies generate.</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p39] Uncertainty about positive control is evident in two remarks which often appear in the literature of freedom; it is better that a man &#8220;feel free&#8221; or &#8220;believe that he is free&#8221;</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p40]What the slave is..conscious of is his misery; and a system of slavery so well designed that it does not breed revolt is the real threat.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">The literature of freedom has..failed to rescue the happy slave.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Jean-Jacques Rouseau..in his remarkable book &#8216;Emile&#8217;..gave the following advice to teachers:</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">    &#8216;Let [the child] believe that he is always in control, though it is always you who really controls. There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom, for in that way one captures volition itself.&#8217;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">Rousseau..had unlimited faith in the benevolence of teachers&#8230;</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p41] The literature of freedom has encouraged escape from or attack upon all controllers [i.e.] those who manipulate human behavior are said to be evil men. What is overlooked is control which does not have aversive consequences at any time;&#8230;social practices essential to the welfare of the species&#8230;</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[p42] Man&#8217;s struggle for freedom is not due to a will to be free, but to certain behavioral processes characteristic of the human organism, the chief effect of which is the avoidance of or escape from so-called aversive features of the environment. Physical and biological technologies have been mainly concerned with natural aversive stimuli; the struggle for freedom is concerned with stimuli intentionally arranged by other people&#8230;</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:small;">[the literature] has made the mistake of defining freedom in terms of states of mind or feelings, and it has therefore not been able to deal effectively with techniques of control which do not breed escape or revolt but nevertheless have aversive consequences. It has been forced to brand all control as wrong and to misrepresent many of the advantages to be gained from a social environment. It is unprepared for the next step, which is not to free men from control but to analyze and change the kinds of control to which they are exposed.</span></div>
<div>  </div>
<div>                                                                   _______________________________</div>
<div>
<div>Skinner&#8217;s comments on dignity revolve around concepts of  &#8220;credit&#8221; , &#8220;admiration&#8221;, and &#8220;achievement&#8221;, which are immeasurable ideas that he calls &#8220;occult&#8221; and are considered significant impediments to progress, arising from a misunderstanding of their causes. He believed if humanity acknowlegded collective &#8220;progress&#8221; and transferred the concepts of dignity to the achievements of the species as a whole, allowing scientists to lead the way, &#8220;we&#8221; would accomplish the idealization of human potential &#8211;his version, in any case, which is postulated to solve all human problems. Is this the ultimate form of narcissism?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>ON DIGNITY</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p44]&#8230;&#8221;dignity concerns positive reinforcement.</div>
<div>[p45] The amount of credit a person receives is related in a curious way to the visibility of the causes of his behavior.</div>
<div>[p47] We give credit generously when there are no obvious reasons for the behavior [i.e. reward or originality]</div>
<div>We give maximal credit when there are quite visible reasons for behaving differently [i.e. persecution or threat, etc.]</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p49] We attempt to gain credit by disguising or concealing control&#8230; We try to gain credit by inventing less compelling reasons for our conduct&#8230;. We conceal coercion by doing more than is required.</div>
<div>[p50] We magnify the credit due us by exposing ourselves to conditions which ordinarily generate unworthy behavior while refraining from acting in unworthy ways.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p51] We do not give credit if it will work no change. We do not give credit on reflexes&#8230;[or] for what has been done by accident.</div>
<div>We also withold credit if it is going to be supplied by others&#8230;</div>
<div>&#8230;we do not commend people who are obviously working..for commendation..</div>
<div>We seem to be interested in judicious use when we call rewards and punishments just or unjust and fair or unfair. We are concerned with what a person &#8220;deserves&#8221;&#8230;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p54] What we may call the struggle for dignity has many features in common with the struggle for freedom.</div>
<div>The literature of dignity identifies those who infringe a person&#8217;s worth..</div>
<div>A large part of the literature of dignity is concerned with justice&#8230;[and the] encroachment on personal worth.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p57] Behavioral technology does not escape as easily as physical and biological technology because it threatens too many occult qualities.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p58] It is in the nature of scientific progress that the functions of autonomous man be taken over one by one as the role of the environment is better understood.</div>
<div>   Science naturally seeks a fuller explanation of..behavior; its goal is the destruction of mystery.  The defenders of dignity will protest, but in doing so they postpone an achievement for which, in traditional terms, man would receive the greatest credit and for which he would be most admired.</div>
<div>   What we may call the literature of dignity is concerned with preserving due credit. It may oppose advances in technology, including a technology of behavior, because they destroy chances to be admired&#8230;[or] for which the individual himself previously has been given credit. The literature thus stands in the way of further human achievements.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>ON PUNISHMENT</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p60] Freedom is sometimes defined as a lack of resistence or restraint. Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment.</div>
<div>Punishment is very common in nature, and we learn a great deal from it&#8230;[though] the word punishment is usually confined to contingencies arranged by other people who arrange them because the results are reinforcing to them..</div>
<div>Government is often defined in terms of the power to punish..</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p61] We should expect the literature of freedom and dignity to oppose measures of this sort.</div>
<div>&#8230;the military and police remain the most powerful arms of government.</div>
<div>[p62]&#8230;punishment may generate incompatible emotions</div>
<div>&#8230;fleeing to escape from a punisher is incompatible with attacking him.</div>
<div>&#8230;a person may subsequently behave &#8216;in order to avoid punishment&#8217;. Some of these are disruptive and maladaptive or neurotic&#8230;The so-called &#8216;dynamisms&#8217; of Freud.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p63] There are more effective ways of avoiding punishment. One may avoid occasions on which punishable behavior is likely to occur&#8230;</div>
<div>Still another strategy is to change the environment so that behavvior is less likely to be punished&#8230;.Still another strategy is to change the probability that punishable behavior will occur.</div>
<div>[A man] may make punishable behavior less likely by changing his physiological condition&#8230;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p64] A person may even take steps to strengthen contingencies which teach him to stop behaving in punishable ways.</div>
<div>Physical technology has reduced the number of occasions upon which people are naturally punished&#8230; [i.e. safety devices]</div>
<div>Punishable behavior can be minimized by creating circumstances in which it is not likely to occur.</div>
<div>[p65] Punishable behavior can also be suppressed by strongly reinforcing any behavior which displaces it. If all this fails, punishable behavior may be made less likely by changing physiological conditions [Skinner mentions hormones and surgery]</div>
<div>These problems are in essence soluble, however, it should be possible to design a world in which behavior likely to be punished seldom or never occurs.</div>
<div>T.H. Huxley saw nothing wrong with it.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p66] ..[such as] T.S. Eliot&#8217;s contempt for &#8220;systems so perfect that no one will need to be good&#8221;&#8230;</div>
<div>[p67] There are of course, valid reasons for thinking less of a person who is automatically good, for he is a lesser person.</div>
<div>The problem is to induce people not to be good but to behave well&#8230;.The issue again is the visibility of control.</div>
<div>..a state which converts all of its citizens into spies or a religion in which an all-seeing God makes escape from the punisher practically impossible.</div>
<div>[p70] The goodness to which good behavior is attributed is part of a person&#8217;s worth or dignity&#8230;Goodness, like other aspects of dignity or worth, waxes as visible control wanes, and so of course, does freedom.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p71]..[people engaged in bad behavior because] they cannot do so in one environment and they do not do so in the other is a fact about techniques of control, not about goodness or freedom.</div>
<div>Appropriate contingencies can often not be arranged for primitive people&#8230;primitive people are not ready for freedom.</div>
<div>We hold a person responsible for his conduct in the sense that he can be justly or fairly punished.</div>
<div>[p73] If we want to say they are free, we must hold them responsible&#8230;</div>
<div>Any move toward an environment in which men are automatically good threatens responsibility&#8230;As responsibility diminishes, punishment is relaxed.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p74] The real issue is the effectiveness of techniques of control.</div>
<div>It is the environment which is &#8216;responsible&#8217;&#8230;.and it is the environment, not some attribute of the individual, which must be changed.&#8221;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>                                                                      __________________________</div>
<div>&#8230;.to be continued with Part III</div>
<div>  </div>
</div>
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<title><![CDATA[Shut Up Liam (Updated)]]></title>
<link>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/shut-up-liam-updated/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:24:47 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>wh00ps</dc:creator>
<guid>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/shut-up-liam-updated/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Our &#8220;Chief Medical Officer&#8221; is now advising us not to allow our children to drink at all]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p>Our &#8220;Chief Medical Officer&#8221; is now advising us not to allow our children to drink at all under the age of 15, and only &#8220;once a week and under supervision&#8221; from 16 to 18. Oh, and we musn&#8217;t drink too much in front of them, either.<br />
The BBC breakfast team arranged a typically lively debate, with a balanced panel including some frump from (fake?) charity DrinkAware and an A&#38;E doctor.<br />
Actually it was more balanced than usual, the A&#38;E doctor didn&#8217;t agree at all, taking Bill Turnbull&#8217;s anecdotal point that when people get to university age the ones who had never touched a drop that went mental on booze. Susannah also pulled the frump up on her ridiculous analogy that you &#8220;wouldn.t put your children under a car to teach them about road safety, would you!!!&#8221;<br />
&#8220;We&#8217;re not teaching children that getting run over is a pleasurable experience though, are we?&#8221;<br />
Well done, another attempt to denormalise drink by the Righteous but this time even the shills at the BBC were not playing ball. I think this version of the game is up, although I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll have new balls in the new year.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> I knew it was too good to last, by the 8am headlines they were reading from autocue and showing a completely one-sided segment towing the government line. They didn&#8217;t show any parts of the interview although an edited version may have been shown after I left the house. Oh, and it&#8217;s Sian this morning, not Susannah.</p>
<p>Sometimes I wonder if I&#8217;ve fallen through the tv screen in my sleep and woken up in <em>The Running Man.</em></p>
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<title><![CDATA[Letter to Editor Defending Science: Truly, the “hegelian mind fck” is endless! By Zahir Ebrahim]]></title>
<link>http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/letter-to-editor-defending-science-truly-the-%e2%80%9chegelian-mind-fck%e2%80%9d-is-endless-by-zahir-ebrahim/</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:28:14 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>humanbeingsfirst</dc:creator>
<guid>http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/letter-to-editor-defending-science-truly-the-%e2%80%9chegelian-mind-fck%e2%80%9d-is-endless-by-zahir-ebrahim/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Letter to Editor Defending Science: Truly, the “hegelian mind fck” is endless! To: &#8216;Defending ]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Letter to Editor Defending Science: Truly, the “hegelian mind fck” is endless! To: &#8216;Defending ]]></content:encoded>
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<title><![CDATA[Beyond Freedom and Dignity, part I]]></title>
<link>http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-i/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:04:34 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>jenniferlake</dc:creator>
<guid>http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-i/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This essay is based on B.F. Skinner&#8217;s 1971 book &#8220;Beyond Freedom and Dignity&#8221;   The]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p>This essay is based on B.F. Skinner&#8217;s 1971 book &#8220;Beyond Freedom and Dignity&#8221;</p>
<div> </div>
<div>There is much not to like about B.F. Skinner;  he set himself on a course to obliterate the concepts of &#8216;freedom&#8217; and &#8216;dignity&#8217; sensing, he writes, that they are fatal to human survival, or more specifically, to the culture that &#8220;we&#8221; have made. Skinner&#8217;s use of the words &#8220;we&#8221; and &#8220;our&#8221; must be deduced to mean &#8220;anyone who has an interest in controlling human behavior, other than self&#8221;. He never uses the word &#8220;they&#8221; in any other context than to describe the proponents of &#8216;freedom and dignity&#8217;, and so the lines are clearly drawn. The implication is that in a social order there are two kinds of people: controllers and controllees. According to Skinner, controllers may, in turn, be controlled by the systems they design and controllees have the power of &#8216;reinforcement&#8217; to affect the behavior of controllers, but ultimately everyone is controlled by &#8216;environmental contingencies&#8217; which are humanly controllable and therefore the balance falls squarely in favor of the controllers. Skinner&#8217;s contribution as a controller was to develop a science of behaviorism : reduce &#8216;man&#8217; to his observable forms, assess the sum of his parts, and gather experimental data to prove that he is accurately and justifiably categorical.</div>
<div>*</div>
<div>   What we have to imagine, from Skinner&#8217;s point of view, is that science will solve all of our problems and that furthermore the process is honest enough to become nearly flawless. There is an awful lot riding on Skinner&#8217;s assertions. He assumed &#8220;we&#8221; would advance toward a perfect state by &#8220;our&#8221; willingness to be scientifically guided there if only we would discard the obsolete traditions of freedom and dignity. In aid of that objective Skinner reconstructs the &#8216;autonomous man&#8217;, the self-willed individual, and then demolishes him in a demonstration of behaviorism. Was he right? Is science impartial and honest enough to answer that question? If you and I applied Skinner&#8217;s theories to himself and the &#8220;we&#8221; he speaks of, will we be able to discern the likelihood of general improvements that behaviorism has to offer? Skinner&#8217;s ascendancy as a psychologist indicates the favor of his views with his paymasters &#8211;is it Skinner&#8217;s Program and outlook that we are being subjected to ?</div>
<div>*</div>
<div>   Admittedly, the literature of freedom and dignity has won humanity much of its &#8216;progress&#8217;. Why wouldn&#8217;t expanding and applying its concepts continue to advance the human cause? What ultimately is the human cause? The risk of not defining it for ourselves (my &#8216;our&#8217; and not Skinner&#8217;s) is to fail in matching our Controllers with effective countercontrols. As we shall see, the defenders of &#8216;autonomous man&#8217; have already been done away with. Lack of control is not an option. Organization and articulation overcome disorder and weakness, subsuming and assimilating its energy, and &#8216;man&#8217; is easily disordered by novel contingencies which behaviorism so adequately illustrates. What seems most dire in the views of B.F. Skinner is that he himself had to have disregarded fundamental principles of biology in higher organisms in order to sustain support for his thesis of intentional social design. He did not compare a society to an orgainsm. I don&#8217;t know if he ever did, was qualified, or incorporated qualified evidence of complex living organisms as models for larger systems. If he knew that the health of complex lifeforms was dependent on necessary interactions of seemingly opposed internal systems, it did not detract from his enthusiasm to suggest that &#8216;perfect&#8217; design would eliminate conflict.</div>
<div>*</div>
<div>   The fact that every historical Utopian experiment has failed, and &#8221;ignominiously&#8221; so agreed Skinner, did not deter him from urging that designers press forward. Is this the definition of madness? Or is it reasonable that science will provide the keys to perfecting the controlled society, and more importantly, will that ensure human survival? Were it possible to do so, would a human &#8216;organism&#8217; have a better chance of survival if all harmful &#8217;stimuli&#8217; such as pathogens are designed out of the environment? With no need for a strong immune system will we &#8217;select&#8217; it out of existence? &#8220;Beyond Freedom and Dignity&#8221; is not concerned with health &#8211;it is concerned with the survival of Skinner&#8217;s culture. The task then appears to be identifying Skinner&#8217;s culture, deciding whether or not it should survive, if tolerated then to what degree, and how best to apply countercontrols with the support of a new literature of freedom and dignity. Skinner was wrong in the end. Freedom and dignity are as essential to a human society as an immune system is to a human body. Without it we become sick, and we die, and may fail to endure as a species.</div>
<div>*</div>
<div>I have no idea if a &#8216;new&#8217; literature of freedom exists, or if I would agree to it if it did. Undeniably, it works, motivating revolutionary spirit into action despite the faults found in it by Skinner. The main fault was that it was incomplete. The problem now is that it may not meet the needs of the present and &#8216;revolution&#8217; as it was conceived in the past may not be the ideal spirit to engender. My personal sense is to &#8216;recover&#8217; the freedom lost by the slow and &#8217;silent&#8217; revolutions that have turned legal constructs upside down. Technology has inserted vast new contingencies that alter the definitions once given to &#8217;self&#8217;, &#8216;privacy&#8217; and &#8216;privileges&#8217;, and with it we may have to forge a broad class of counter-contingencies. In Skinner&#8217;s view, &#8217;spirit&#8217; is merely a colloquialism for a seemingly uncaused behavior. He rejected the notion of &#8216;uncaused&#8217; &#8211;it was simply something lacking an observable form. Perhaps in the process of re-valuing freedom and dignity in light of the present challenges we will come closer to preserving them than our existing  literature can provide. We&#8217;ll have to lay our modern technologies on the table and account for them, as they are the &#8216;inconspicuous&#8217; contingencies that Skinner advocated.</div>
<div>*</div>
<div>
<div>Behaviorism was not rejected, but it was energetically opposed by journalists, psychologists, and theologians such as Noam Chomsky, Arthur Koestler, Peter Gay, Herbert Kelman, Rollo May and others. Quoting Time magazine in 1971, as a pre-release notice of the book, Time states &#8220;To Theologian [Richard] Rubenstein, Beyond Freedom and Dignity is an important but &#8216;terrifying&#8217; book. Skinner&#8217;s <em>&#8216;utopian</em> <em>projection&#8217;</em> he says <em>&#8216;is</em> <em>less</em> <em>likely</em> <em>to</em> <em>be</em> a <em>blueprint</em> <em>for</em> <em>the</em> <em>Golden</em> <em>Age</em> <em>than</em> <em>for</em> <em>the</em> <em>theory</em> <em>and</em> <em>practice</em> <em>of</em> <em>hell&#8217;</em>.&#8221; </div>
<div><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909994-1,00.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:#800080;">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909994-1,00.html</span></a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>The fatal flaw in Beyond Freedom and Dignity is that Skinner destroyed the very &#8216;countercontrol&#8217; that he was certain would balance an &#8216;intentional society&#8217;. His critics were wrong too. They said it would never work. Did the critics offer a false security to the public? Was it pretention that they were guardians of freedom and dignity? Skinner&#8217;s behaviorism and designer communities do work  which is why his outlook poses such a threat to us. He made himself a &#8220;useful idiot&#8221;, convinced of his own genius, and his detractors fairly recognized the ultimate price of implementing Skinnerian plans : totalitarianism. Their derision inflated the opinion that Skinner would be easily dismissed, but in fact, the plan is visibly attended. It is becoming much of what he hoped, despite appearances, and with great irony we can look back at the man who constructed himself a &#8220;pleasant environment&#8221; to live in, yet confessed to being deeply unhappy.</div>
<div><a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://cultblender.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/bfskinner.jpg&#38;imgrefurl=http://cultblender.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/did-skinner-answer-why-we-have-a-thing-called-religion/&#38;usg=__LGRUdMJWj99YU1WSq-HUyxnsrHk=&#38;h=613&#38;w=432&#38;sz=53&#38;hl=en&#38;start=2&#38;tbnid=QTxA1AhkA-oLZM:&#38;tbnh=136&#38;tbnw=96&#38;prev=/images%3Fq%3DB.F.%2BSkinner%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN"><img src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AQTxA1AhkA-oLZM%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcultblender.files.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F07%2Fbfskinner.jpg&#038;w=96&#038;h=136" alt="" width="96" height="136" /></a></div>
<div>Excerpts from <strong>Beyond</strong> <strong>Freedom</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Dignity</strong></div>
<div><strong> </strong></div>
<div>
<div>&#8220;In trying to solve the terrifying problems that face us in the world today, we naturally turn to things we do best. We play from strength, and our strength is science and technology.</div>
<div>&#8230;we can point to remarkable achievements in all these fields [birth control, weapons, medicine]&#8230;But things grow steadily worse, and it is disheartening to find that technology itself is increasingly at fault. Sanitation and medicine have made the problems of population more acute, war has acquired a new horror with the invention of nuclear weapons, and the affluent pursuit of happiness is largely responsible for pollution. As Darlington has said,&#8221;Every new source from which man has increased his power on the earth has been used to diminish the prospects of his successors. All his progress has been made at the expense of damage to his environment which he cannot repair and could not foresee&#8221;. Whether or not he could have foreseen the damage, man must repair it or all is lost.&#8221;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.4]&#8230;physical and biological sciences alone will not solve our problems&#8230;we need to make vast changes in human behavior.</div>
<div>[p.5] What we need is a technology of behavior&#8230;But a behavioral technology comparable in power and precision to physical and biological technology is lacking&#8230;</div>
<div>Today [man] is the thing he understands least. Physics and biology have come a long way, but there has been no comparable development of anything like a science of human behavior.</div>
<div>[p.6]..our practices in government, education, and much of economics..have not greatly improved. [The Greeks'] thinking about human behavior must have had some fatal flaw&#8230;Greek theories..led nowhere&#8230;they did not contain the seeds of anything better.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.7]..the methods of science have scarcely yet been applied to human behavior&#8230;It has to do with our treatment of the causes of behavior.</div>
<div>..Intelligent people no longer believe that men are possessed by demons..but human behavior is still commonly attributed to indwelling agents. A juvenile delinquent is said, for example, to be suffering from a disturbed personality. There would be no point in saying it if the personality were not somehow distinct&#8230;Psychoanalysts have identified three of these personalities &#8211;the ego, superego and id&#8211; and interactions among them are said to be responsible for the behavior of the man in whom they dwell.</div>
<div>[p.9] To the medieval alchemist&#8230;properties of substances were compared in what might have been called a &#8220;chemistry of individual differences&#8221;. Newton complained..&#8221;To tell us that every species of thing is endowed with an occult specific quality by which it acts and produces manifest effects is to tell us nothing&#8221;. Almost everyone who is concerned with human affairs..continues to talk about human behavior in this prescientific way.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.10]&#8230;certain stubborn questions about the nature of the mind..still go unanswered. How for example, can the mind move the body? As late as 1965 Karl Popper put it this way: &#8220;What we want is to understand how such nonphysical things as purposes, deliberations, plans, decisions, theories, tensions and values can play a part in bringing about physical changes in the physical world&#8221;.</div>
<div>[p.11]..the commonest alternative [to God(s)] is to appeal to antecedent physical events.</div>
<div>A person&#8217;s genetic endowment..is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest. For example, because of (physical) competition during the course of evolution people now have (nonphysical) feelings of aggression which lead to (physical) acts of hostility.</div>
<div>&#8230;aggression reaches back into millions of years of evolutionary history, and anxiety acquired when one is a child survives into old age.</div>
<div>[p12] Psychotherapists say feelings which have been put out of mind fight their way back in&#8230;and so on.</div>
<div>&#8230;but it is ususally possible to ignore them, and this may be a good strategy&#8230;The world of mind steals the show.</div>
<div>The conditions of which behavior is a function are also neglected&#8230;The professional psychologist often stops&#8230;how many of those who have considered [William] James&#8217; arguments have noted that no antecedent event has..been pointed out?</div>
<div>[p.13] There is a good deal of current interest, for example, in what must have happened during the evolution of the species to explain human behavior&#8230;behavior we cannot explain&#8230;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.14] The [invented] function of the inner man is to provide an explanation&#8230;he is a center from which behavior emanates. He initiates, originates, and creates, and in so doing he remains, as he was for the Greeks, divine. We say that he is autonomous &#8211;and, so far as a science of behavior is concerned, that means miraculous.</div>
<div>His existence depends upon our ignorance, and he naturally loses status as we come to know more about behavior. The task of a scientific analysis is to explain how the behavior of a person as a physical system is related to the conditions under which the human species evolved and the condition under which the individual lives&#8230;.these events must be related&#8230;</div>
<div>The contingencies of survival responsible for man&#8217;s genetic endowment would produce tendencies to act aggressively, not feelings of aggression&#8230;.any feelings which may arise are at best by-products.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.15] Our age is not suffering from anxiety but from the accidents, crimes, wars, and other dangerous and painful things to which people are so often exposed&#8230;.we do not need to try and discover what personalities, states of mind, feelings, traits of character, plans, purposes, intentions, or other perquisites of autonomous man really are in order to get on with a scientific analysis of behavior&#8230;The inner man has been created in the image of the outer.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.16]&#8230;[Feelings] are by-products and not to be mistaken for causes.</div>
<div>For thousands of years in the history of human thought the process of natural selection went unseen in spite of its extraordinary importance.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.17] The effect of the environment on behavior remained obscure for an even longer time. We can see what organisms do to the world&#8230;but it is much harder to see what the world does to them. It was Descartes who first suggested that the environment might play an active role in the determination of behavior&#8230;(he excluded the human organism, presumably to avoid religious controversy)</div>
<div>   The triggering action of the environment came to be called a &#8217;stimulus&#8217; &#8211;the Latin word for &#8216;goad&#8217;&#8211; and the effect on the organism a &#8216;response&#8217;, and together they were said to compose a &#8216;reflex&#8217;. Reflexes were first demonstrated in small decapitated animals&#8230;it seemed to deny the existence of an autonomous agent &#8211;the &#8217;soul of the spinal cord&#8217;&#8230;</div>
<div>When Pavlov showed how new reflexes could be built up through conditioning, a full-fledged stimulus-response psychology was born, in which all behavior was regarded as reactions to stimuli.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.18] The stimulus-response model..did not solve the basic problem, because something like an &#8216;inner man&#8217; had to be invented to convert a stimulus into a response. Information theory ran into the same problem when an inner &#8216;processor&#8217; had to be invented to convert input to output.</div>
<div>&#8230;Descartes hypothesis held a dominant position in behavior for a long time, but it was a false scent from which a scientific analysis is only now recovering.</div>
<div>   It is now clear that we must take into account what the environment does to an organism not only before but after it responds. Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. Once this fact is recognized, we can formulate the interaction between organism and environment&#8230;</div>
<div>   There are two important results. Behavior which operates upon the environment to produce consequences (&#8216;operant&#8217; behavior) can be studied by arranging environments in which specific consequences are contingent upon it&#8230;.The second result is practical : the environment can be manipulated.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.19] A technology of operant behavior is..already well advanced. We have moved forward by dispossessing autonomous man, but he has not departed gracefully.</div>
<div>   He is still an important figure in political science, law, religion, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychotherapy, philosophy, ethics, history, education, [etc.], and family life.</div>
<div>   In the traditional view, a person is free. He is autonomus in the sense that his behavior is uncaused. He can therefore be held responsible for what he does and justly punished if he offends. That view..must be re-examined when a scientific analysis reveals unsuspected controlling relations between behavior and environment.</div>
<div>&#8230;new evidences of the predictability of human behavior are [being] discovered.</div>
<div>   By questioning the control exercised by autonomous man and demonstrating the control exercised by the environment, a science of behavior also seems to question dignity and worth.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.21] [in the traditional view] A person is responsible for his behavior not only in the sense that he may be justly blamed or punished when he behaves badly, but also in the sense that he is given credit and admired for his achievements. A scientific analysis shifts the credit as well as the blame to the environment, and traditional practices can then no longer be justified.</div>
<div>   These are sweeping changes, and those who are committed to traditional theories and practices naturally resist them.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.22] As the emphasis shifts to the environment, the individual seems to be exposed to a new kind of danger. Who is to construct the controlling environment and to what end? Autonomous man presumably controls himself in accordance with a built-in set of values; he works for what he finds good. But what will the putative controller find good and will it be good for those he controls? Answers to questions of this sort are said, of course, to call for value judgements.</div>
<div>   A science of behavior is by no means as far advanced as physics or biology, but it has an advantage in that it may throw some light on its own difficulties. Science is human behavior, and so is the opposition to science.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.23] We can reject traditional explanations if they have been tried and found wanting in an experimental analysis&#8230;</div>
<div>[p.24] Almost all our major problems involve human behavior and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone&#8230;but we have been slow&#8230;</div>
<div> </div>
<div>[p.25]   The behavioral sciences have been slow to change partly because the explanatory entities..have been hard to find. The environment is obviously important, but its role has remained obscure. It does not push or pull, it selects, and this function is difficult to discover and analyze.</div>
<div>&#8230;the selective role of the environment in shaping and maintaining the behavior of the individual is only beginning to be recognized and studied&#8230;effects, once assigned to states of mind, feelings, and traits, are beginning to be traced to accessible conditions&#8230;</div>
<div>   It will not solve our problems however, until it replaces traditional prescientific views, and these are strongly entrenched. Freedom and dignity illustrate the difficulty. They are the possessions of the autonomous man of traditional theory and they are essential to practices in which a person is held responsible for his conduct and given credit for his achievements. A scientific analysis shifts both the responsibility and the achievement to the environment. It also raises questions concerning &#8216;values&#8217;. Who will use a technology and to what ends? Until these issues are resolved, a technology of behavior will continue to be rejected, and with it possibly the only way to solve our problems.&#8221;</div>
<div>[end excerpts]  </div>
<div>   </div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>]]></content:encoded>
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<title><![CDATA[Demokratiets Funktionsgrænse]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/demokratiets-funktionsgr%c3%a6nse-2/</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:25:45 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/demokratiets-funktionsgr%c3%a6nse-2/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[DF vil forbyde minareter i Danmark Alt peger på forbud mod minareter i Schweiz Med jævne mellemrum f]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p><A HREF="http://politiken.dk/politik/article847221.ece" target="_blank">DF vil forbyde minareter i Danmark</A><br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article847108.ece" target="_blank">Alt peger på forbud mod minareter i Schweiz</A></p>
<p>Med jævne mellemrum fristes man til at stille spørgsmålstegn ved demokratiets hensigtsmæssighed.</p>
<p>Fx. da det schweiziske parlament i 1958 med overvældende flertal havde besluttet at give kvinderne valgret.<br />
Og folkeafstemningen i februar 1959 forkastede beslutningen, så de schweiziske kvinder først fik valgret ved en fornyet folkeafstemning i 1971.</p>
<p>Eller da NSDAP blev stemt ind i det tyske parlament.</p>
<p>Eller da DF blev stemt ind i Folketinget.</p>
<p>Den slags vækker associationer om Niels Hausgårds &#8216;Hvem bestemmer&#8217;:</p>
<p>Hvad er det for noget? Hvad ender det med?<br />
Hu’dan æ wi kommet så tosset afste’?<br />
De fleste har jo magten, så det er så nemt<br />
Det er jo præcist som de fleste har bestemt<br />
Men der er nu en ting, det var skjønt å ha’ wist<br />
Om de fleste er de bedste eller bare de fleste.</p>
<p>Heldigvis er DK stolt af sin høje himmel: <A HREF="http://www.pi-news.net/wp/uploads/2009/09/Der-Himmel-über-der-Schweiz-ist-weit-genug.jpg" target="_blank">Der Himmel über der Schweiz ist weit genug</A>.</p>
<p>Pak dig, Pia!</p>
<p>Tag på kulturkampskursus hos <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article847404.ece" target="_blank">stormuftien</A> sammen med din ven <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article847490.ece" target="_blank">Geert Wilders</A>!</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>RitzKLaus Tro Fobi</strong> sammenfatter Ritzaus, klaustrofobi og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217;,<br />
hvor Ritzaus står for ensrettet envejskommunikation og magtmonopoliseret ytringsfrihed<br />
klaustrofobi for den indeklemte stemning, DKs monokulturelle medielandskab skaber<br />
og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217; for en del danskeres religiøse analfabetisme og animositeter.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong><A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/we-are-all-africans/" target="_blank">We are all Africans</A> &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
</div>]]></content:encoded>
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<item>
<title><![CDATA[Green Propaganda Continues Unabated]]></title>
<link>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/green-propaganda-continues-unabated/</link>
<pubDate>Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:57:19 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>wh00ps</dc:creator>
<guid>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/green-propaganda-continues-unabated/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Auntie lead on two global warming stories this morning. Apparently &#8220;Carbon-Offsetting&#8221; i]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p>Auntie lead on two global warming stories this morning. Apparently &#8220;Carbon-Offsetting&#8221; is a waste of time and money. &#8220;But I could have told you that!&#8221; I hear you say.<br />
Ah yes, true but not for the reasons you think. It&#8217;s a waste of time because it&#8217;s a licence to keep emitting! Hmmm.<br />
The other story concerned the upcoming Copenhagen summit, followed quickly with images of the flooding in Cumbria in typical BBC sleight-of-hand.</p>
<p>You might be forgiven for thinking that the CRU thing had never happened for all the coverage it&#8217;s had, on breakfast at least, and they haven&#8217;t stopped taking AGW as a given.</p>
<p><a href="http://rt.com/Top_News/2009-11-26/global-tricks-climate-change.html"> Russia Today </a> have been all over it on their news channel though. Funny that.</p>
</div>]]></content:encoded>
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<item>
<title><![CDATA[Kunstigt som krigen]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/kunstigt-som-krigen/</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:28:12 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/kunstigt-som-krigen/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Dansk støttet anti-narkoprojekt i Helmandprovinsen i Afghanistan ramt af korruption. &#8230; Bønder ]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p>Dansk støttet anti-narkoprojekt i Helmandprovinsen i Afghanistan ramt af korruption. &#8230; Bønder i Helmand, der modtager såsæd og kunstgødning, skal skrive under på, at de ikke vil dyrke opium. &#8230; Skriver <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article845140.ece" target="_blank">politiken.dk</A>.</p>
<p>Hvede og kunstgødning er i denne sammenhæng lige så kunstige elementer som hele krigen.</p>
<p>Giv bønderne lov til at dyrke opium og brug afgrøderne til produktion af medicinsk opium, som der er så stor mangel på, at bl.a. fattige udviklingslande ikke har råd til det.</p>
<p>Apropos &#8216;Krigen mod Taleban&#8217;: Amerikanske efterretningstjenester vurderer nu, at hovedfjenden ikke længere er Taleban og al-Qaeda. De udgør kun 10 procent af de krigere, som den internationale styrke kæmper mod.</p>
<p>Kald det bare krigen mod Afghanistan &#8212; og den er som bekendt og proklameret slået fejl. </p>
<p>Eller sig det som det er og få de bagvedliggende bevæggrunde med: Clash of Civilizations til sikring af USAs verdensherredømme og olieforsyning.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>RitzKLaus Tro Fobi</strong> sammenfatter Ritzaus, klaustrofobi og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217;,<br />
hvor Ritzaus står for ensrettet envejskommunikation og magtmonopoliseret ytringsfrihed<br />
klaustrofobi for den indeklemte stemning, DKs monokulturelle medielandskab skaber<br />
og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217; for en del danskeres religiøse analfabetisme og animositeter.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong><A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/we-are-all-africans/" target="_blank">We are all Africans</A> &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
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<title><![CDATA[DK besat af muslimsk militær?]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/dk-besat-af-muslimsk-milit%c3%a6r/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:38:47 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/dk-besat-af-muslimsk-milit%c3%a6r/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Rapporter: Krigen er slået fejl Hovedfjenden i Afghanistan er ikke længere Taleban og al-Qaeda, mene]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p>Rapporter: Krigen er slået fejl<br />
Hovedfjenden i Afghanistan er ikke længere Taleban og al-Qaeda, mener efterretningskilder.<br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article844249.ece" target="_blank">politiken.dk</A></p>
<p>Krigen har &#8212; som alle krige &#8212; fra starten været en fejl.</p>
<p>Afghanernes reaktioner på krigen er naturlige.<br />
Var Danmark besat af fx. en muslimsk hær, ville reaktionerne være af samme karakter, som det vi ser i Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Man skal hverken være synsk eller efterretningstosse for at kunne forudse dette reaktionsmønster.</p>
<p>Krig gavner kun våbenindustrien.</p>
<p>Havde man brugt bare en brøkdel af krigsudgifterne i Afghanistan, Irak osv. konstruktivt og produktivt, var meget nået.</p>
<p>Hvorfor etablerer man fx. ikke en legal opiumproduktion efter tyrkisk forbillede i Afghanistan?<br />
Hvorfor blokerer amerikanerne for den slags forslag, som virkelig kunne stabilisere landet?</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>RitzKLaus Tro Fobi</strong> sammenfatter Ritzaus, klaustrofobi og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217;,<br />
hvor Ritzaus står for ensrettet envejskommunikation og magtmonopoliseret ytringsfrihed<br />
klaustrofobi for den indeklemte stemning, DKs monokulturelle medielandskab skaber<br />
og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217; for en del danskeres religiøse analfabetisme og animositeter.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong><A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/we-are-all-africans/" target="_blank">We are all Africans</A> &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Hors d'ondes]]></title>
<link>http://jeanneemard.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/hors-dondes/</link>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:06:46 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>jeannemard</dc:creator>
<guid>http://jeanneemard.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/hors-dondes/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Frappé par une grippe qui devrait normalement être réservée aux cochons de ce monde, j&#8217;ai été ]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><img class="alignright" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2725/4127907076_05e7eabcde_m.jpg" alt="" width="134" height="106" />Frappé par une grippe qui devrait normalement être réservée aux cochons de ce monde, j&#8217;ai été forcé de garder la position horizontale durant toute une toute semaine.  Incapable de poser mes doigts sur le clavier de mon ordinateur, mon existence s&#8217;est limitée à lire un peu et à regarder la télévision beaucoup.  Les nuits courtes m&#8217;ont amené d&#8217;étranges cauchemars, j&#8217;ai même cru un moment que la maladie m&#8217;avait été infligée par les gouvernements et les chambres de commerce, un complot visant à m&#8217;empêcher de critiquer mon existence et m&#8217;invitant à reprendre les rangs de la ferme.  Napoléon est fort têtu: il fera tout en son pouvoir pour amener Boule de Neige à une docilité nécessaire&#8230;</p>
<p>Toutes ces heures passées devant le téléviseur ont provoqué un effet contraire.  Après avoir visionné les chaînes d&#8217;information en continu &#8211; qu&#8217;elles soient québécoises, canadiennes, américaines ou britanniques &#8211; je n&#8217;ai pas réussi à modifier mon interprétation du quotidien.  À l&#8217;exception de quelques bons films et de rares documentaires, je n&#8217;ai pas pu faire autrement que de constaster que la télévision est toujours le reflet de notre imbécilité. En réécoutant une vieille copie du documentaire &#8220;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media">Manufacturing Consent</a>&#8220;, j&#8217;ai au moins trouvé une explication à cette supercherie en couleurs, 24 heures sur 24, 7 jours sur 7: on nous veut confortablement engourdis.  Surtout avec l&#8217;arrivée de Noël, à <a href="http://www.lesaffaires.com/secteurs-d-activite/commerce-et-produits-de-consommation/les-quebecois-maintiendront-leurs-depenses/506198">637 dollars</a> par famille&#8230;</p>
<p>Je me sens beaucoup mieux.  Retour au boulot aujourd&#8217;hui, retour à la vie normale.  Le blogue devrait reprendre vie au cours des prochains jours.  Bien hâte de reprendre le dialogue.  Santé à vous.</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Paid Lying - What Passes For Major Media Journalism]]></title>
<link>http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/paid-lying-what-passes-for-major-media-journalism/</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:57:17 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pakalert</dc:creator>
<guid>http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/paid-lying-what-passes-for-major-media-journalism/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[By Stephen Lendman 11-9-9 Today&#8217;s major media journalism is biased, irresponsible, sensational]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[By Stephen Lendman 11-9-9 Today&#8217;s major media journalism is biased, irresponsible, sensational]]></content:encoded>
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<title><![CDATA[To The Googler...]]></title>
<link>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/to-the-googler/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:37:56 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>wh00ps</dc:creator>
<guid>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/to-the-googler/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[&#8230;who arrived at my blog via the search term &#8220;why did Hitler start the Hitler youth?]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p>&#8230;who arrived at my blog via the search term &#8220;why did Hitler start the Hitler youth?&#8221;</p>
<p>Simple. Regimes generally find that capturing the hearts and minds of the youth of a nation is not only easier to achieve than capturing the hearts and minds of the adult population, but also has huge benefits. </p>
<p>The children can be, among other things, induced to keep tabs on the adults (ever see the excellent movie <em>Fatherland</em>?). They will also be adults themselves soon enough, and having been indoctrinated in their youth will find it hard to break free of their indoctrination upon reaching adulthood, especiallly in an environment where other ways of thinking are suppressed. This helps to ensure the future of the regime. They can also be relied upon to be more fanatic in their following whilst children than their adult counterparts. </p>
<p>In regimes based upon a cult of personality like Hitler&#8217;s and Mao&#8217;s, the effect can be more pronounced (rather like youth being indoctrinated in sunday school) as they will more readily accept the Leader as a god, although by no means is this the only setting that indoctrination of the young can be found.</p>
<p>Under our current system in the west of Gramscian Marxism, we find that leftist views are indoctrinated on our young throughout their school years, perpetrated by teachers and lecturers who had their views formed by the same system. The system long ago became self-perpetuating although recent years have seen ever-closer state control of our education system accelerating the process. Not only are our children now indoctrinated into marxist thought (without reference to the name, natch) but they get used to being assessed, searched, drugged into submission (the &#8220;difficult&#8221; ones, ie the born leaders), appraised and shoved into boxes they will stay in for the rest of their lives. </p>
<p>So that&#8217;s why Hitler started the Hitler Youth. It&#8217;s just good sense.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> No sooner do I post this, but I catch up on my RSS and <a href="http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2009/11/read_the_whole.html">this prime example</a> drops into my lap. Read it and weep.</p>
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<title><![CDATA[More Subtle Propaganda In Holby City]]></title>
<link>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/more-subtle-propaganda-in-holby-city/</link>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:12:08 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>wh00ps</dc:creator>
<guid>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/more-subtle-propaganda-in-holby-city/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Tonight&#8217;s episode featured a young woman running her own wedding planning business who, as peo]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p>Tonight&#8217;s episode featured a young woman running her own wedding planning business who, as people do, carried on working from her hospital bed, laptop and mobile phone permanently glued to her hands. Quite right too, as long as she was conscious, people who run their own businesses don&#8217;t get sick pay, and her clients needed servicing. A lot of hard work and dedication goes into running your own business, that&#8217;s why I don&#8217;t do it. Members of my family have, and I worked for them for a while so I&#8217;ve seen how difficult it can be.</p>
<p>The subtle subtext screamed (subtly) &#8220;difficult patient.&#8221; Visiting hours consisted of models in wedding dresses and she was on her phone and working via laptop from her hospital bed despite the funny looks she was getting from both doctors and nurses, which she gaily ignored.</p>
<p>Eventually of course (she had some sort of heart condition I think) she collapsed, whilst on the phone, looking at models.</p>
<p>So what does this suggest? The BBC has long been using it&#8217;s dramas to push the establishment agenda, and Holby City is a prime vehicle for this. We know already that small business owners don&#8217;t fit, that&#8217;s why they are hampered with excessive regulation and tax regimes. It doesn&#8217;t fit in with the brave new corporatist world order.</p>
<p>So are they, like smokers, drinkers and fat buggers next to be de-normalized, as they &#8220;cost the NHS money?&#8221; Despite the lions share of the fruits of their labours going to FUND the state and it&#8217;s apparatus?</p>
<p>Possibly.</p>
<p>Hey, like Eric Cartman, &#8220;I&#8217;m just asking questions here.&#8221;</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Hjælp til selvhjælp]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/hj%c3%a6lp-til-selvhj%c3%a6lp/</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:50:07 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/hj%c3%a6lp-til-selvhj%c3%a6lp/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Terrorplaner mod Jyllands-Posten kan være eksempel på ny strategi hos al-Qaeda. &#8230; eller også e]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p><A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article835398.ece" target="_blank">Terrorplaner mod Jyllands-Posten kan være eksempel på ny strategi hos al-Qaeda.</A></p>
<p>&#8230; eller også er det hele bare lidt hjælp til selvhjælp fra FBI, CIA &#38; Co. til de nødlidende europæiske søsterorganisationer. FET kunne fx. sikkert godt tænke sig at blive lidt mere FAT.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>RitzKLaus Tro Fobi</strong> sammenfatter Ritzaus, klaustrofobi og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217;,<br />
hvor Ritzaus står for ensrettet envejskommunikation og magtmonopoliseret ytringsfrihed<br />
klaustrofobi for den indeklemte stemning, DKs monokulturelle medielandskab skaber<br />
og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217; for en del danskeres religiøse analfabetisme og animositeter.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong><A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/we-are-all-africans/" target="_blank">We are all Africans</A> &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Pater Sarkastrup]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/pater-sarkastrup/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:03:07 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/pater-sarkastrup/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Politiken opretter Irak Centeret for at ansætte afviste asylansøgere. Dansk Folkeparti betegner Irak]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p>Politiken opretter Irak Centeret for at ansætte afviste asylansøgere.<br />
Dansk Folkeparti betegner Irak Centeret som et rent proformaarrangement. &#8230; »Hvem har dog fundet på den tåbelige idé«, spørger integrationsordfører Peter Skaarup &#8230; »Irakerne har formentlig ikke kvalifikationer til at oppebære en løn på 32.000 kroner om måneden, så der vil givet vis være tale om en omgåelse af reglerne«, siger Peter Skaarup. &#8230; Sriver <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/politik/article832611.ece" target="_blank">politiken.dk</A></p>
<p>Pater Sarkastrup har heller ikke kvalifikationer til at oppebære en løn på 32.000 kroner om måneden, men får givetvis mere. Noget lignende gælder for Pia den Fromme Kræmmersjæl samt resten af Præstestyret og Papegøjerne.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>RitzKLaus Tro Fobi</strong> sammenfatter Ritzaus, klaustrofobi og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217;,<br />
hvor Ritzaus står for ensrettet envejskommunikation og magtmonopoliseret ytringsfrihed<br />
klaustrofobi for den indeklemte stemning, DKs monokulturelle medielandskab skaber<br />
og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217; for en del danskeres religiøse analfabetisme og animositeter.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong><A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/we-are-all-africans/" target="_blank">We are all Africans</A> &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Media Whores &amp; Liars: "Mainstream" Journalism ]]></title>
<link>http://atomicnewsreview.org/2009/11/11/media-whores-liars-mainstream-journalism/</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:07:48 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Mr.Anderson</dc:creator>
<guid>http://atomicnewsreview.org/2009/11/11/media-whores-liars-mainstream-journalism/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[by STEPHEN LENDMAN, Article from sjlendman.blogspot.com Today&#8217;s major media journalism is bias]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p>by <strong>STEPHEN LENDMAN, </strong>Article from <a href="http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/"><strong><span style="color:#0000ff;">sjlendman.blogspot.com</span></strong></a></p>
<p><strong><em><a href="http://atomicnewsreview.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/acf3c82.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-3157" title="ACF3C82" src="http://atomicnewsreview.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/acf3c82.jpg" alt="ACF3C82" width="250" height="309" /></a>Today&#8217;s major media journalism is biased, irresponsible, sensationalist reporting that distorts, exaggerates or misstates the truth.<br />
</em></strong><br />
It&#8217;s misinformation or agitprop disinformation masquerading as fact to boost circulation, readership, viewers, or listeners, and on vital issues lie about or suppress uncomfortable truths to provide unqualified support for state and/or corporate interests &#8211; to the detriment of the greater good that&#8217;s always sacrificed for profits and imperial aims.</p>
<p>As a result, major media sources produce a daily propaganda diet and what Project Censored calls &#8220;junk food news,&#8221; and get most people to believe it.</p>
<p>In their landmark book, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained the &#8220;propaganda model&#8221; that controls the public message by &#8220;filter(ing)&#8221; disturbing truths, &#8220;leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print&#8221; or air.</p>
<p>Today the media is in crisis and a free and open society at risk at a time fiction substitutes for fact, news is carefully controlled, dissent marginalized, and on-air and print journalists support powerful interests as paid liars, or what famed journalist George Seldes (1890 &#8211; 1995) called &#8220;prostitutes of the press.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>-</p>
<p><!--more--></p>
<p>As a result, imperial wars are called liberating ones. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good. Major topics go unaddressed or are misrepresented. Government and business interests are endorsed wholeheartedly.</p>
<p>America is always called &#8220;beautiful.&#8221; Beneficial social change is considered heresy. The market works best, we&#8217;re told, so let it, and patriotism means supporting lawlessness and corporate outlaws by shopping till we drop.</p>
<p>The New York Times &#8211; Its Lead Role in Distorting and Suppressing Truth</p>
<p>For many decades, The Times has been the closest thing in America to an official ministry of information and propaganda masquerading as real news, commentary and analysis.</p>
<p>Its unmatched clout once got media critic Norman Solomon to call its front page &#8220;the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA;&#8221; most everywhere, in fact, because its reports are widely circulated and followed globally.</p>
<p>The Paper of Record has a long history of:</p>
<p>&#8211; supporting the powerful;</p>
<p>&#8211; backing corporate interests;</p>
<p>&#8211; endorsing imperial wars;</p>
<p>&#8211; supporting CIA efforts to topple elected governments, assassinate independent leaders, prop up friendly dictators, secretly fund and train paramilitary death squads, practice sophisticated forms of torture, and menace democratic freedoms at home and abroad. For decades, in fact, some Times&#8217; foreign correspondents were covert Agency assets. Others today likely are as well as other prominent fourth estate members.</p>
<p>The Times management is also comfortable with:</p>
<p>&#8211; Washington and corporate lawlessness;</p>
<p>&#8211; an unprecedented and growing wealth gap;</p>
<p>&#8211; Wall Street banksters looting the federal treasury;</p>
<p>&#8211; a private banking cartel controlling the nation&#8217;s money;</p>
<p>&#8211; unmet human needs and increasing poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair for growing millions in a nation run by rogue politicians who don&#8217;t give a damn as long as they&#8217;re re-elected;</p>
<p>&#8211; a de facto one-party state;</p>
<p>&#8211; deep corruption at the highest government and corporate levels;</p>
<p>&#8211; democracy for the select few alone;</p>
<p>&#8211; sham elections; and</p>
<p>&#8211; a deepening social decay symptomatic of a declining state, yet The Times management won&#8217;t use its clout to expose and help reverse it.</p>
<p>Of course, the same applies throughout the corporate media, the only variance being audience size, the ability to influence it, and the special impact of TV news and talk radio to arouse their faithful. Plus their power of round-the-clock persuasive repetition.</p>
<p>Examples of Journalism, New York Times Style</p>
<p>After a Washington staged February 29, 2004 middle-of-the-night coup ousted democratically elected Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, The Times March 1 editorial lied by:</p>
<p>&#8211; stating he resigned;</p>
<p>&#8211; saying sending in Marines to abduct him &#8220;was the right thing to do;&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; claiming they only came after &#8220;Mr. Aristide yielded power;&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; blaming him for &#8220;contribut(ing) significantly to his own downfall (because of his) increasingly autocratic and lawless rule&#8230;.;&#8221; and</p>
<p>&#8211; accusing him of manipulating the 2000 legislative elections and not &#8220;deliver(ing) the democracy he promised.&#8221;</p>
<p>In fact, he&#8217;s a beloved democrat first elected in 1990 with 67% of the vote, ousted by a US-supported coup months later, returned to Haiti in 1994, then, because he couldn&#8217;t succeed himself in 1996, ran in 2000 and was overwhelmingly re-elected with 92% of the vote. Today in exile, the great majority of Haitians want him back but paramilitary occupiers, under orders from Washington, won&#8217;t let him.</p>
<p>Following Hugo Chavez&#8217;s December 1998 election, The Times Latin American reporter, Larry Roher, wrote:</p>
<p>Regional &#8220;presidents and party leaders are looking over their shoulders (concerned about the) specter (they) thought they had safely interred: that of the populist demagogue, the authoritarian man on horseback known as the caudillo (strongman)&#8221; taking power.</p>
<p>Ever since, Times writers consistently:</p>
<p>&#8211; turned a blind eye to Venezuelan democracy;</p>
<p>&#8211; bashed Chavez as &#8220;divisive, a ruinous demagogue, provocative (and) the next Fidel Castro;&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; said he &#8220;militarized the government, emasculated the country&#8217;s courts, intimidated the media, eroded confidence in the economy, and hollowed out Venezuela&#8217;s once-democratic institutions:&#8221; common conditions during decades of pre-Chavez rule that columnist Roger Lowenstein falsely said exist now in:</p>
<p>&#8211; calling him anti-capitalist for sharing his nation&#8217;s oil wealth with the people by providing essential social services, and for lifting the most needy out of poverty; and</p>
<p>&#8211; denouncing his making foreign investors pay their fair share.</p>
<p>Lowenstein backed the aborted April 2002 coup by calling Chavez&#8217;s ouster a &#8220;resignation,&#8221; then saying Venezuela &#8220;no longer (would be) threatened by a would-be dictator.&#8221;</p>
<p>Post-911, the Times played the lead role in taking the nation to war by highlighting the &#8220;day of terror&#8221; and saying the &#8220;President Vows to Exact Punishment for &#8216;Evil.&#8217; &#8220;</p>
<p>In the run-up to the Iraq war, Judith Miller was a weapon of mass deception with her daily front page Pentagon press release columns masquerading as real news, later exposed as manipulative lies, but they worked.</p>
<p>Following the September 15, 2009 Goldstone Commission report, a same day Neil MacFarquhar column suggested that Israel&#8217;s &#8220;disproportionate attack&#8221; followed Hamas provocations, so perhaps it was justified. While The Times gave Judge Goldstone op-ed space, it:</p>
<p>&#8211; published scathing letters denouncing his &#8220;one-sidedness&#8221; and a September 18 piece saying &#8220;the Obama administration said (today) that a United Nations report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza was unfair to Israel and did not take adequate account of &#8216;deplorable&#8217; actions by the militant group Hamas in the conflict last winter.&#8221;</p>
<p>The paper then imposed a near-blackout on its news and editorial pages to bury the story and kill it through silence &#8211; never mind its importance in documenting clear evidence of Israeli war crimes against a civilian population.</p>
<p>National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting (PBS)</p>
<p>Founded in 1970 as an independent, private, non-profit member organization of US public radio stations, NPR promised to be an alternative to commercial broadcasters by &#8220;promot(ing) personal growth rather than corporate gain (and) speak with many voices, many dialects.&#8221;</p>
<p>Having long ago abandoned its promise, and given its substantial corporate and government funding, NPR is indistinguishable from the rest of the corporate media, just as corrupted, and consider its former head, Kevin Klose.</p>
<p>He was president from December 1998 &#8211; September 2008 and CEO from 1998 &#8211; January 2009. Earlier he was US propaganda director as head of the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television, and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti, so he fit easily into his new role.</p>
<p>On January 5, 2009, Vivian Schiller succeeded him as president and CEO. Her official bio says she was previously with &#8220;The New York Times Company where she served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of NYTimes.com.&#8221;</p>
<p>She&#8217;ll oversea &#8220;all NPR operations and initiatives, including the organization&#8217;s critical partnerships with our 800+ member stations, and their service to the more than 26 million people who listen to NPR programming every week.&#8221;</p>
<p>Most don&#8217;t know they&#8217;re getting the same corporate propaganda and &#8220;junk food news&#8221; or that NPR calls itself &#8220;public&#8221; to conceal its real agenda, and why critics call it &#8220;National Pentagon or Petroleum Radio&#8221; with good reason.</p>
<p>Created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) calls itself &#8220;a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress&#8230;and is the steward of the federal government&#8217;s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,100 locally-owned and-operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.&#8221;</p>
<p>Like NPR, it&#8217;s heavily corporate and government funded and provides similar services for them. Under George Bush, former Voice of America director Kenneth Tomlinson was chairman of CPB&#8217;s Board of Governors until an internal 2005 investigation forced him out for repeatedly braking the law.</p>
<p>On September 16, 2009, a CPB press release announced that &#8220;The board of directors (of the CPB) today elected Dr. Ernest Wilson III (as) chairman and re-elected&#8230;.CEO Beth Courtney (as) vice-chair.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wilson previously held senior policy positions as Director of International Programs and Resources on the National Security Council. He was also Policy and Planning Unit Director for the US Information Agency and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).</p>
<p>Beth Courtney is a George Bush appointee, a past chairman of the board of America&#8217;s Public Television Stations and present CPB vice chairman. Currently she also serves on the boards of Satellite Educational Resources Consortium, the Organization of State Broadcasting Executives, the National Forum for Public Television Executives, and the National Educational Telecommunications Association along with other appropriate credentials for her re-appointment.</p>
<p>In its May/June 2004 &#8220;Extra&#8221; report, FAIR (Fairness &#38; Accuracy in Reporting) asked &#8220;How Public Is Public Radio? Writers Steve Rendall and Daniel Butterworth quoted past head Kevin Klose saying:</p>
<p>&#8220;All of us believe our goal is to serve the entire democracy, the entire country.&#8221;</p>
<p>Not according to FAIR on &#8220;every on-air source quoted in June 2003 on four of (NPR&#8217;s) news shows: All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday.&#8221; Each guest was classified &#8220;by occupation, gender, nationality, and partisan affiliation.&#8221; Combined, 2,334 sources from 804 stories were quoted.</p>
<p>FAIR found that NPR relies on the same dominant sources as the major media that include government officials, professional experts, and corporate representatives nearly two-thirds of the time.</p>
<p>Spokespeople for public interest groups accounted for 7% of total sources, and ordinary people appeared mostly in &#8220;one-sentence soundbites.&#8221;</p>
<p>Male guests outnumbered women about 4 &#8211; 1, and those quoted most often came from the same elite categories as men.</p>
<p>Overall, NPR represents the same dominant interests as the major commercial media &#8211; conservative, pro-business, pro-war, pro-Israel, and very much against the public interest while pretending to support it.</p>
<p>FAIR analyzed PBS&#8217;s flagship NewsHour guest list and drew similar conclusions. Like NPR, it&#8217;s ideologically right and usually censors progressive content and public interest programming. In a 1990 NewsHour evaluation, FAIR compared its content to ABC&#8217;s Nightline and found that it presented &#8220;an even narrower segment of the political spectrum.&#8221; It then conducted an October 2005 &#8211; March 2006 analysis of all of its programs, got similar results, and determined that NewHour is even more ideologically right than NPR that tilts far in that direction itself.</p>
<p>FAIR concluded that NPR and NewsHour content &#8220;overwhelmingly represent those in power rather than the public&#8221; they&#8217;re obliged to serve. While masquerading as public programming, they betray their listeners and viewers by offering the same propaganda and &#8220;junk food news&#8221; as the dominant corporate media. Considering their funding sources, what else would they do.</p>
<p>An October 6 NPR story is typical of most others. It charged Hugo Chavez with &#8220;Targeting Opponents For Arrest.&#8221; Reporter Juan Forero claimed &#8220;dozens of university students&#8221; went on hunger strike outside OAS headquarters in Caracas on September 28 along with others &#8220;across the country&#8230;.in support of Julio Cesar Rivas, a student who was arrested during an anti-government demonstration in August&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>Rivas is the coordinator and founder of Juventud Activa de Venezuela Unida (United Active Youth of Venezuela &#8211; JAVU). Earlier, he was part of a staged, violent street protest against Venezuela&#8217;s new Education Law. The government says JAVU acts as &#8220;shock troops&#8221; in opposition protests and is liberally funded by the National Endowment of Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and US Agency or International Development (USAID) to disrupt internal Venezuelan affairs. It&#8217;s a familiar scheme, repeated numerous times in the past, to discredit and disrupt the Chavez government in hopes of eventually ousting it.</p>
<p>JAVU has about 80,000 members in most Venezuelan states, and its blog site calls for bringing down the government and supporting the Honduran military coup.</p>
<p>Rivas was released on September 29, but must appear for trial. He&#8217;s a Washington-funded provocateur, charged with resisting arrest, instigating crime, conspiracy, inciting rebellion, damaging public property, and using &#8220;generic&#8221; weapons.</p>
<p>While in custody, Venezuela Public Defender Gabriela Ramirez assured him in person that his full constitutional rights will be protected. Street protests still continue and have been countered by pro-Chavez ones calling for &#8220;peace and tolerance.&#8221; According to the Federation of Bolivarian students&#8217; Carlos Sierra:</p>
<p>Opposition &#8220;students are being used and manipulated by the top leadership of the irrational opposition, which, via the (dominant) media, send them to generate violence and terrorism in the country&#8221; much like on previous occasions.</p>
<p>But according to NPR&#8217;s Forero, Rivas was &#8220;sent to one of Venezuela&#8217;s most infamous prisons&#8221; where other government opponents are held as political prisoners. Chavez &#8220;has been jailing dozens of key opponents &#8211; some of them students, some of them veteran politicians&#8221; in citing unnamed &#8220;human rights groups and constitutional experts (claiming) Venezuela is increasingly singling out and imprisoning its foes in politically motivated witch hunts.&#8221;</p>
<p>Forero didn&#8217;t mention that Rivas fomented violence. Others arrested also broke the law. No one is a political prisoner, and all Venezuelans get fair and equitable trials, unlike in America where real political arrests, prosecutions and convictions happen regularly against innocent targeted victims &#8211; a topic NPR and PBS won&#8217;t touch except to vilify them publicly on-air.</p>
<p>Nor do they report truthfully on Occupied Palestine. On October 12, 2009, on NPR&#8217;s Morning Edition, reporter Renee Montagne practically extolled Israeli racism in stating:</p>
<p>&#8220;There is a new enemy for some Israelis: romance between Jewish women and Arab men, (so) vigilantes have banded together to fight it.&#8221; She means from &#8220;Jewish settlements&#8221; that &#8220;have sprung up (in) traditionally Arab&#8221; East Jerusalem, but won&#8217;t admit they&#8217;re on stolen Palestinian land.</p>
<p>NPR&#8217;s Sheera Frankel joined a patrol, implied Arabs are inferior to Jews, and suggested they pose a danger to Jewish women and girls. She described vigilantes on the lookout for &#8220;Arab-Jewish couples (to) break up their dates,&#8221; suggesting it&#8217;s the right thing to do, but never questioning the legitimacy of settlements, vigilante violence in East Jerusalem, its lawless disregard for the law, or great harm to innocent people. Instead she called &#8220;mixed couples a growing epidemic&#8221; of miscegenation &#8211; typical of NPR&#8217;s racism and one-sided support for Israel.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)</p>
<p>The WSJ is Dow Jones &#38; Company&#8217;s flagship publication, now a News Corp. one since Rupert Murdoch bought it in August 2007.</p>
<p>Stating its ideology up front, it says it supports &#8220;free markets and free people&#8221; as well as &#8220;free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases (edicts) of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.&#8221;</p>
<p>In October 2007, FAIR bemoaned the Murdock takeover because of his &#8220;penchant for using his holdings as vehicles for his personal (views) and business interests.&#8221; Earlier FAIR and the Columbia Journalism Review criticized its editorial page for inaccuracy, extreme bias, and dishonesty.</p>
<p>The Journal is unapologetic in saying its philosophy &#8220;make(s) no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view&#8230;.We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether (from) private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government.(We&#8217;re) not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical.&#8221;</p>
<p>Radical can be revolutionary and beneficial when it backs fundamental progressive change and reform.</p>
<p>Webster defines it as:</p>
<p>&#8220;marked by a considerable departure from the usual and traditional: extreme; tending or disposed to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions; of, relating to, or constituting a political (or perhaps business) group associated with views, practices, and policies of extreme change; (or) advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs&#8221; such the radical right represented by the WSJ&#8217;s management and editorial writers.</p>
<p>Critics agree that they&#8217;re on the far right extremist fringe, a supporter of voodoo economics, tax cuts for the rich, a staunch defender of executive privilege, and disdainful of anything to the left of their views as witnessed daily by some of the most outlandish, one-sided, pro-business commentaries countenancing no alternatives, with the rarest of rare exceptions showing up to make the paper look fair, which it&#8217;s not.</p>
<p>Consider editorial board member Mary O&#8217;Grady in her weekly Americas column on &#8220;politics, economics and business in Latin America and Canada.&#8221; Her extremism is unmatched. Her style is agitprop; her space a truth-free zone; her language hateful and vindictive; her tone malicious and slanderous; her style bare-knuckled thuggishness; and her material calculating, mendacious, and shameless. Yet she&#8217;s a WSJ regular and an award-winning op-ed writer, but surely no journalist according to Webster&#8217;s definition:</p>
<p>&#8220;writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.&#8221;</p>
<p>O&#8217;Grady fails on both counts. She&#8217;s a kind of print version of Fox News&#8217; Glenn Beck, who promotes himself on glennbeck.com looking arrogant in a uniform reminiscent of the Nazi SS.</p>
<p>Consider O&#8217;Grady&#8217;s support for the Washington-backed June 28 Honduran coup ousting a democratically elected president. It was followed by months of mass arrests, disappearances, killings, targeting the independent media, suspending the Constitution, declaring martial law, and threatening the Brazilian embassy&#8217;s sovereignty where President Manuel Zelaya took refuge after returning.</p>
<p>In one of her many pro-coup articles, O&#8217;Grady (on July 13) headlined &#8220;Why Honduras Sent Zelaya Away.&#8221; In a &#8220;perfect world,&#8221; according to her, he &#8220;would be in jail in his own country right now, awaiting trial. The Honduran attorney general (part of the coup regime) has charged him with deliberately violating Honduran law and the Supreme Court (stacked with pro-coup justices) ordered his arrest in Tegucigalpa on June 28,&#8221; the day of the coup.</p>
<p>&#8220;But the Honduran military whisked him out of the country, to Costa Rica,&#8221; to save itself the embarrassment of jailing a democratically elected leader whose lawful actions were endorsed by the majority of Hondurans wanting progressive constitutional change and a president willing to give it to them.</p>
<p>Yet according to O&#8217;Grady, &#8220;Mr. Zelaya&#8217;s detention was legal, as was his official removal from office by Congress&#8230;.Besides eagerly trampling the constitution, Mr. Zelaya had demonstrated that he was ready to employ the violent tactics of &#8216;chavismo&#8217; to hang onto power. The decision to pack him off immediately was taken in the interest of protecting both constitutional order and human life.&#8221;</p>
<p>In fact, Zelaya neither espoused or practiced violence, and his call for a public June 28 vote on whether to hold a referendum for a new Constitutional Convention at the same time as the November elections lawfully asked for a &#8220;yes&#8221; or &#8220;no&#8221; on one question:</p>
<p>&#8220;Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box (the other three were for candidates) in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?&#8221;</p>
<p>According to Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran &#8220;Civil Participation Act,&#8221; government officials may hold non-binding inquiries (referenda) to determine popular support for proposed measures. Gauging sentiment for a National Constituent Assembly for a new Constitution is legal.</p>
<p>Yet in her June 28 article titled, &#8220;Honduras Defends Its Democracy,&#8221; O&#8217;Grady falsely claimed Zelaya planned &#8220;a constitutional rewrite (following) a national referendum&#8221; only the Congress can approve. In fact, Zelaya called for a vote to assess public sentiment, pro or con, on whether Hondurans want a Constitutional Convention, an act no different from a public opinion poll that&#8217;s perfectly legal or should be anywhere. But according to O&#8217;Grady, Zelaya &#8220;decided he would run the referendum himself.&#8221; It&#8217;s typical O&#8217;Grady truth reversal that earns her weekly space on the WSJ&#8217;s op-ed page.</p>
<p>The BBC&#8217;s Long Tradition As An Imperial Tool</p>
<p>State-owned and funded, it&#8217;s tradition is long, unbroken, and disturbing as the world&#8217;s largest and most influential broadcaster reaching global audiences in 32 languages.</p>
<p>From inception in 1925, it&#8217;s been reliably pro-government and pro-business, or as its founder Lord Reith wrote the establishment: &#8220;They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.&#8221; Neither he or his successors disappointed on topics mattering most, including war and peace, corporate crimes, US-UK duplicity, labor rights, democratic freedoms, human and civil rights, social justice, and Western imperialism.</p>
<p>They&#8217;re consistently distorted, suppressed, marginalized or ignored throughout decades of misreporting despite claiming &#8220;honesty (and) integrity (is) what the BBC stands for (because it&#8217;s) free from political influence and commercial pressure.&#8221;</p>
<p>As a propaganda service, its record is uncompromisingly anti-union, pro-business, and dependably safe for Whitehall and its allies. It moralizes Western aggression, bashes independent democratic leaders, and cheerleads for the powerful at the expense of providing real news and information for millions believing BBC is credible. For over eight decades, it&#8217;s record is solid and predictable &#8211; betraying the public trust to reliably serve the powerful. The tradition continues.</p>
<p>Prominent TV Demagogues</p>
<p>Among the many, consider a select few. For example, CNN&#8217;s Lou Dobbs, &#8220;Mr. Independent&#8221; he calls himself. Critics use more descriptive terms, yet according to his loudobbs.tv.cnn.com bio:</p>
<p>He&#8217;s &#8220;anchor and managing editor of CNN&#8217;s Lou Dobbs Tonight (and also anchor of) a nationally syndicated financial news radio report, The Lou Dobbs Financial Report&#8230;.&#8221; In addition, he writes a weekly CNN.com commentary, is an author and award-winning &#8220;journalist,&#8221; most recently in 2005 when &#8220;the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded (him) the Emmy for Lifetime Achievement&#8221; for serving the usual special interests nightly on prime time TV.</p>
<p>In June 2004, he also won &#8220;the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies for his ongoing series &#8216;Broken Borders,&#8217; which examines US policy towards illegal immigration.&#8221; Little wonder in an August 2006 article, this writer called him CNN&#8217;s Vice President of Racism. He&#8217;s also a paid liar and in America wins awards.</p>
<p>In May 2008, a Media Matters Action Network report titled, &#8220;Fear &#38; Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News&#8221; highlighted undocumented Latino hatemongering by Dobbs, Bill O&#8217;Reilly, and Glenn Beck, each claiming:</p>
<p>&#8211; an alleged connection between undocumented Latinos and crime; in fact, clear evidence shows they&#8217;re no more likely to break laws than American citizens;</p>
<p>&#8211; how they exploit social services and don&#8217;t pay taxes; in fact, undocumented immigrants are ineligible, without proof of legal status, for Medicaid, food stamps, State Children&#8217;s Health Insurance (SCHIP) and welfare; they do pay income, payroll, property, sales and other taxes and are entitled to public education; according to the National Academy of Sciences, immigrants provide a net annual gain of up to $10 billion to US GDP; according to Rand Corp. economist James P. Smith, the &#8220;net present value of the gains from those immigrants who arrived since 1980 would be $333 billion.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; the &#8220;reconquista&#8221; myth about a supposed Mexican plot to take over the US Southwest; and</p>
<p>&#8211; an epidemic of Latino voter fraud that, according to Dobbs&#8217; incessant drumbeat, puts America&#8217;s &#8220;democracy absolutely in jeopardy.&#8221;</p>
<p>He also propagates the myth that undocumented Latinos caused an increase in US leprosy (or Hansen&#8217;s disease). In an on-air April 2005 report (among others), correspondent Christine Romans quoted &#8220;medical lawyer&#8221; Dr. Madeleine Cosman saying:</p>
<p>&#8220;We have some enormous problems with horrendous diseases that are being brought into America by illegal aliens (including) leprosy&#8230;.&#8221; Romans added that, according to Cosman, &#8220;there were about 900 (US) cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to a May 2007 &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; report, the National Hansen&#8217;s Disease Program (NHDP) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported that &#8220;7,000 is the number of leprosy cases over the last 30 years, not the past three, and nobody knows how many of those cases involve illegal immigrants.&#8221; NHDP added that from 2002 &#8211; 2005 (the timeline of Cosman&#8217;s claim), only 398 cases occurred. To that, Dobbs responded: &#8220;If we reported it, it&#8217;s a fact.&#8221;</p>
<p>Founded in 1971, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is internationally known for its activism against hate groups and scoring legal victories against white supremacists. It says Dobbs regularly features inaccurate racist reports and features anti-immigrant hatemongers like:</p>
<p>&#8211; Glenn Spencer, head of the anti-immigration American Patrol, whose web site highlights anti-Mexican vitriol and the idea that Mexico plans a secret takeover of the Southwest;</p>
<p>&#8211; Joe McCutchen, head of the anti-immigration Protect Arkansas Now group, that Dobbs calls &#8220;a terrific group of concerned, caring Americans;&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; Paul Streitz, co-founder of Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control, who once denounced Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. for &#8220;turning New Haven into a banana republic;&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; Barbara Coe, leader of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform who routinely calls Mexicans &#8220;savages;&#8221; and</p>
<p>&#8211; Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Project and a leading anti-immigration figure.</p>
<p>SPLC explains that Dobbs &#8220;doggedly explores and supports the anti-immigration movement (and) won&#8217;t report salient negative facts about anti-immigration leaders he approves of&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>Instead, he falsely claims that:</p>
<p>&#8211; &#8220;just about a third of the prison population in this country is estimated to be illegal aliens;&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; states have been &#8220;overwhelmed by criminal illegal aliens;&#8221; and</p>
<p>&#8211; US borders are &#8220;unprotected&#8221; allowing &#8220;criminal illegal aliens (to) murder police officers.&#8221;</p>
<p>In 2007 alone, the connection between illegal immigration and crime was discussed on 94 episodes of Lou Dobbs Tonight, and dozens more focused on an &#8220;army of invaders,&#8221; immigrants not paying taxes, draining social services, and threatening our white Anglo-Saxon culture.</p>
<p>CNN reporters Casey Wian, Bill Tucker, Kitty Pilgrim and others present a steady diet of subtle and overt racism to incite viewers to believe it. Through constant repetition, it propagates the myth, and according to the Media Matters Action Network report:</p>
<p>Dobbs &#8220;is hailed by the entire spectrum of immigration opponents, from the reasonable to the unreasonable. And the degree to which extremist elements see (him) as an ally indicates at the very least that they believe he is helping their cause&#8221; because they feel he&#8217;s a populist crusader.</p>
<p>Yet according to a July 30 New York Observer report, recent Nielsen data showed that after Dobbs began reporting (on July 15) that Barack Obama&#8217;s birth certificate was fraudulent (an apparent stunt to increase ratings), his viewership dropped significantly &#8211; 15% overall and 27% in the valued 25 &#8211; 54 age category.</p>
<p>Fox News Channel (FNC)</p>
<p>When it debuted in 1996, one of its on-air hosts said:</p>
<p>The &#8220;Channel was launched (because) something was wrong with news media&#8230;.somewhere bias found its way into reporting&#8230;.Fox&#8230;.is committed to being fair and balanced (covering) stories everybody is reporting &#8211; and&#8230;.stories&#8230;.you will see only on Fox.&#8221;</p>
<p>Later the Columbia Journalism Review said several former Fox employees &#8220;complained of &#8216;management sticking their fingers&#8217; in the writing and editing stories to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes.&#8221; But it hasn&#8217;t hurt ratings.</p>
<p>As of Q 1 2009, FNC was the second highest rated cable channel in prime time total viewers. CNN ranked 17th and MSNBC 24th. The O&#8217;Reilly Factor has been #1 rated on cable news for 100 consecutive months and gained 27% more viewers year-over-year. Glenn Beck increased 90% over the previous year. Overall, FNC topped CNN and MSNBC combined in prime time total audience.</p>
<p>Fairness &#38; Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said &#8220;Fox&#8217;s signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume (now with Bret Baier) was originally created as a daily one-hour update devoted to the 1998 Clinton sex scandal.&#8221; In the past year, it gained 39% more viewers.</p>
<p>As for accuracy and being &#8220;fair and balanced,&#8221; FAIR (in summer 2001) called FNC &#8220;The Most Biased Name in News,&#8221; yet according to Murdoch in March 2001:</p>
<p>&#8220;I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel.&#8221;</p>
<p>In FAIR&#8217;s Seth Ackerman article and later ones, FNC&#8217;s blatant manipulation of the news is exposed.</p>
<p>For example, Bret Baier&#8217;s &#8220;Political Grapevine&#8221; is a right-wing &#8220;hot sheet&#8221; featuring a &#8220;series of gossipy items culled from other right-wing&#8221; sources. It and other reports are blatantly partisan propaganda against &#8220;liberal media bias,&#8221; progressives, environmentalists, anti-war activists, civil rights groups, and others to the left of their views.</p>
<p>According to FAIR, the commentary on political punditry programs like The O&#8217;Reilly Factor, the Sean Hannity Show, and The Beltway Boys is so slanted that it&#8217;s like watching &#8220;a Harlem Globetrotters game (knowing) which side is supposed to win.&#8221;</p>
<p>FNC&#8217;s Bill O&#8217;Reilly</p>
<p>His official bio calls The O&#8217;Reilly Factor &#8220;a unique blend of news analysis and hard hitting investigative reporting dropped each weeknight into &#8216;The No Spin Zone.&#8221; He also hosts a syndicated radio show, writes a weekly column carried in over 300 newspapers, and authored several books that according to New York Times writer Janet Maslin were &#8220;either (done) with a collaborator or (O&#8217;Reilly) was born with a ghostwriter&#8217;s gift for filling space with platitudes&#8230;.&#8221; With good reason, Maslin called him &#8220;one of the most controversial human beings in the world&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>In an October 2008 report titled &#8220;Smearcasting,&#8221; FAIR called him an &#8220;Islamophobe&#8221; for spreading &#8220;fear, bigotry and misinformation&#8221; along with 11 other popular figures, including Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin (another FNC regular), David Horowitz, and Pat Robertson.</p>
<p>After 9/11, FAIR said O&#8217;Reilly proposed attacking a list of Muslim countries &#8220;if they did not submit to the US &#8211; starting with Afghanistan.&#8221;</p>
<p>On air he said:</p>
<p>&#8220;The US should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble &#8211; the airport, the power plants, their water facilities and the roads&#8230;.If they don&#8217;t rise up against this primitive country, they starve, period.&#8221;</p>
<p>Iraq must also be destroyed he said, and &#8220;the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain.&#8221; As for Libya, &#8220;Nothing goes in, nothing goes out&#8230;.Let them eat sand.&#8221;</p>
<p>FAIR called his penchant for attacking Muslim countries &#8220;an O&#8217;Reilly trademark&#8221;, and &#8220;his disregard for Muslim civilians is matched by the anti-Muslim sentiments he frequently expresses on both his nationally syndicated radio show, the Radio Factor,&#8221; reaching 3.5 million listeners, and his top-rated FNC show.</p>
<p>Some of his hateful comments include saying:</p>
<p>&#8211; areas of London are &#8220;just packed with just dense Muslim neighborhoods, which breed this kind of contempt for Western society. Why do they let them in;&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; &#8220;We&#8217;re at war with Muslim fanatics. So all young Muslims should be subject to (special) scrutiny, (saying it&#8217;s not racial, just) &#8220;criminal profiling;&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; &#8220;the most unattractive women in the world are probably in Muslim countries;&#8221; and</p>
<p>&#8211; in Iraq, he blamed killing on Islam: &#8220;They&#8217;re all Muslims, and they&#8217;re doing what they do. They&#8217;re killing each other. And they&#8217;re killing Americans.&#8221;</p>
<p>O&#8217;Reilly is equally racist about Latino immigrants with frequent comments like:</p>
<p>&#8220;The extreme elements in this country want open borders, blanket amnesty, and entitlement for foreign nationals who have come here illegally, and generally want to change the demographics in the USA so political power can be assumed by the left. That is the end game.&#8221; He also argues that &#8220;Low-skilled immigrant labor costs the taxpayers today $19,000 to (subsidize) people who are using the hospitals (and) the education system&#8230;.These are rock-solid stats,&#8221; but O&#8217;Reilly won&#8217;t say from where.</p>
<p>They&#8217;re blatantly false and may be from a May 2007 Robert Rector/Christine Kim (right-wing think tank) Heritage Foundation paper titled, &#8220;The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to State and Local Taxpayers.&#8221;</p>
<p>O&#8217;Reilly spreads daily misinformation, innuendo, and hateful demagoguery to millions of his daily faithful. Like the others above, they&#8217;re paid liars delivering what passes for today&#8217;s major media journalism. It&#8217;s why so much of the public is misinformed and the reason more hate groups than ever proliferate.</p>
<p>According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), they numbered 926 in 2008, up from 602 in 2000 and are &#8220;animated by the national immigration debate.&#8221; Since Obama took office, they&#8217;re also driven by their hatred of a black president, exacerbated by a growing economic crisis that&#8217;s easy to blame on the undocumented and a non-white head of state.</p>
<p>These groups are ideologically vicious and extremely dangerous when motivated by racist right-wing media commentators reaching far larger audiences than more saner voices drowned out. It&#8217;s more evidence of social decay and the urgent need for change.</p>
<p>The Right-Wing Media Attack ACORN</p>
<p>Founded in 1970, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) &#8220;is the nation&#8217;s largest grassroots community organization of low and moderate income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in about 75 cities across the country.&#8221;</p>
<p>As the nation&#8217;s preeminent community organizing group, it backs a living wage, opposes predatory lending and foreclosures, supports affordable housing, better public schools, welfare reform, voting rights, rebuilding New Orleans, and other social and economic justice issues.</p>
<p>For many months as a result, right-wing extremists have tried to discredit its successes online and through the media. Led by Fox News, Lou Dobbs, and others, it&#8217;s accused of financial corruption, massive voter fraud, and other indiscretions, mostly fabricated to destroy the group&#8217;s credibility, cut off its funding, and harm other community organizing efforts.</p>
<p>However, compared to corporate fraud and abuse scandals, ACORN&#8217;s occasional missteps are minor, insignificant, and undeserving of inflammatory media headlines.</p>
<p>Nonetheless recent news stories featured false accusations that ACORN engages in prostitution nationwide. The supposed evidence came from two right-wing filmmakers (Hannah Giles and James O&#8217;Keefe) posing as prostitute and pimp, conveniently videotaped for airing. In prime time especially, Fox News, Lou Dobbs and others featured it nightly.</p>
<p>On September 14, Dobbs reported &#8220;another pimp and prostitute scandal at the left-wing activist organization ACORN. For the third time, ACORN workers for the left-wing advocacy group (got) caught on hidden camera breaking the law. Now calls from Congress to investigate and cut off public funding are growing.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to Fox News Bill O&#8217;Reilly, &#8220;With more than 30 criminal &#8216;convictions&#8217; on its resume, the organization cannot be trusted.&#8221; Based on no credible evidence, other FNC reports accuse ACORN of &#8220;operat(ing) as a criminal enterprise,&#8221; including prostitution, running a prostitution ring, filing false documents with taxing and other government authorities, bank fraud, violating immigration laws, transporting women and children to America for immoral purposes, and impairing the welfare of minors.</p>
<p>More evidence of reprehensible innuendo, distortion, deceit, and misinformation from major media paid liars. It&#8217;s why web sites like this one gain followers.</p>
<p>*** Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at <a href="http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/">http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/</a><br />
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday &#8211; Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Project Humanbeingsfirst unravels Hamid Mir's and Geo TV's bullying of a little blog – The Real Agenda]]></title>
<link>http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/project-humanbeingsfirst-unravels-hamid-mirs-and-geo-tvs-bullying-of-a-little-blog-%e2%80%93-the-real-agenda/</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:16:44 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>humanbeingsfirst</dc:creator>
<guid>http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/project-humanbeingsfirst-unravels-hamid-mirs-and-geo-tvs-bullying-of-a-little-blog-%e2%80%93-the-real-agenda/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Project Humanbeingsfirst unravels Hamid Mir&#8217;s and Geo TV&#8217;s bullying of a little blog – T]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Project Humanbeingsfirst unravels Hamid Mir&#8217;s and Geo TV&#8217;s bullying of a little blog – T]]></content:encoded>
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<title><![CDATA[Fjender PETs venner]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/fjender-pets-venner/</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:51:51 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/fjender-pets-venner/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[PET: Spioner er vendt tilbage til Danmark &#8230; Forsvaret er dog på vej til at genoptage uddannels]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p>PET: Spioner er vendt tilbage til Danmark &#8230; Forsvaret er dog på vej til at genoptage uddannelsen af sprogofficerer i russisk, som var gledet ud til fordel for arabisk. &#8230; Skriver <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article829250.ece" target="_blank">politiken.dk</A>.</p>
<p>Når araberne holder pause, har vi heldigvis stadig folk som Frank Aaen: <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/politik/article829330.ece" target="_blank">Jeg er stadig kommunist</A>.</p>
<p>Mens folk som de følgende per PET-tradition får lang snor til narrestreger: <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article829535.ece" target="_blank">Jonni Hansen</A>, <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article829448.ece" target="_blank">Dansk topnazist i dronningens klæ&#8217;r</A>, <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article829502.ece" target="_blank">Livgarden</A>, den kongelige klæ&#8217;rsælger &#8230;</p>
<p><strong>Fra 9/11 til 9/11</strong><br />
Fra Murens til World Trade Centers fald,<br />
fra 9/11 (tysk) 1989<br />
over <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clash_of_Civilizations_and_the_Remaking_of_World_Order" target="_blank">Samuel P. Huntingtons The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order</A><br />
til 9/11 (amerikansk) 2001.</p>
<p>Længere tog det ikke kapitalismens kolde krigere<br />
at formulere og fundamentere et nyt fjendebillede.</p>
<p>Sådan et skal man da have,<br />
om ikke andet, så for militærindustriens skyld!<br />
-&#62; <A HREF="http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/ford/f26.htm" target="_blank">http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/ford/f26.htm</A></p>
<p>Historien er efterhånden så perfekt instrueret,<br />
at fjenderne fra fjendebilledet<br />
nok skal leve op til fjenderollen,<br />
lige meget hvad de gør og om de vil eller ej.</p>
<p>Se <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A></p>
<p><HR><br />
KoKs &#8212; Klausul om Konerigets sikkerhed<br />
<HR><br />
Skulle ovenstående tekst indeholde oplysninger eller fordrejninger, der på nogen måde kunne tænkes at være til fare for Konerigets sikkerhed, bedes dette anmeldt til en eller flere af følgende instanser:</p>
<p>Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste &#8211; Kastellet 30 &#8211; 2100 København Ø &#8211; Telefon: 33 32 55 66 &#8211; Fax: 33 93 13 20<br />
Forsvarets Auditørkorps &#8211; Kastellet 14 &#8211; 2100 København Ø &#8211; Telefon: 72 26 50 00 &#8211; E-mail: fauk@mil.dk<br />
Politiets Efterretningstjeneste &#8211; Klausdalsbrovej 1 &#8211; 2860 Søborg &#8211; Telefon: +45 33148888 &#8211; Email: pet@pet.dk<br />
eller endnu bedre direkte til <A HREF="https://www.cia.gov/contact-cia/index.html" target="_blank">Central Intelligence Agency</A>.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>RitzKLaus Tro Fobi</strong> sammenfatter Ritzaus, klaustrofobi og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217;,<br />
hvor Ritzaus står for ensrettet envejskommunikation og magtmonopoliseret ytringsfrihed<br />
klaustrofobi for den indeklemte stemning, DKs monokulturelle medielandskab skaber<br />
og &#8216;tro fobi&#8217; for en del danskeres religiøse analfabetisme og animositeter.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong><A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/we-are-all-africans/" target="_blank">We are all Africans</A> &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Hullet Alibi]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/hullet-alibi/</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:15:06 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/hullet-alibi/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Per Stig: Tal ikke om exit fra Afghanistan Soldater: Afghanistan-mission er som en hullet robåd Miss]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p><A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article825798.ece" target="_blank">Per Stig: Tal ikke om exit fra Afghanistan</A><br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article825588.ece" target="_blank">Soldater: Afghanistan-mission er som en hullet robåd</A></p>
<p>Missionens alibi &#8212; demokrati i Afghanistan &#8212; er så hullet, at det er gået ned med mand og mus.</p>
<p>Nu bliver det helt klart, at det hele ene og alene handler om USAs magt- og energipolitik.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221;, &#8220;editor&#8217;s picks&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong><A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/we-are-all-africans/" target="_blank">We are all Africans</A> &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Haile Selassie &amp; Bob Marley]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/haile-selassie-bob-marley/</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:34:10 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/haile-selassie-bob-marley/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Politikens Udlandsredaktør: Krig mod terror slutter aldrig 1. Trods otte års blodig krig i Afghanist]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p><A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article819314.ece" target="_blank">Politikens</A> Udlandsredaktør: Krig mod terror slutter aldrig<br />
1. Trods otte års blodig krig i Afghanistan er terrortruslen imod Danmark stadig alvorlig.<br />
2. Skader krigen mere, end den gavner?<br />
3. Risikerer man &#8230;, at krigen skaber lige så megen ekstremisme, som den forsøger at udrydde med magt?</p>
<p>Ad 1: Ikke trods, men (neutralt) efter og (realistisk) på grund af otte års blodig krig i Afghanistan &#8230;<br />
Ad 2: Ja!<br />
Ad 3: Krigen skaber mere ekstremisme, end den forsøger at udrydde med magt.</p>
<p>Haile Selassie &#38; Bob Marley har ret:<br />
Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221;, &#8220;editor&#8217;s picks&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>We are all Africans &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Styret af magt, moneter ... ]]></title>
<link>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/styret-af-magt-moneter-militarister/</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:46:31 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hedage</dc:creator>
<guid>http://hedage.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/styret-af-magt-moneter-militarister/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Muslimer: Terrorplan er i strid med Islam Rygterne løber blandt terrormistænkts naboer Terrormistænk]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p><HR></p>
<p><A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article819161.ece" target="_blank">Muslimer: Terrorplan er i strid med Islam</A><br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article819203.ece" target="_blank">Rygterne løber blandt terrormistænkts naboer</A><br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/incoming/article819176.ece" target="_blank">Terrormistænkt vil løslades mod kaution</A><br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article819239.ece" target="_blank">Her er bagmanden bag terrorplanerne mod JP</A></p>
<p><A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article819272.ece" target="_blank">Eksplosion rammer pakistansk storby</A><br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article819221.ece" target="_blank">Taleban slår til i Kabuls hjerte</A><br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article819200.ece" target="_blank">Talebanangreb dræber FN-folk</A><br />
<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/udland/article819173.ece" target="_blank">USA vil belønne talebanoprørere</A></p>
<p>Styret af magt, moneter &#38; militarister</p>
<p>Terroren er overalt &#8212; under os, ved siden af os og ikke mindst over os: i de regeringer og institutioner, der mener at skulle føre krig &#8212; på facaden mod terror, under overfladen for at understrege egen betydning* (efter murens fald var der brug for en ny fjende) samt for at sikre USAs verdensdominans og adgang til ressourcer.</p>
<p>Apropos penge: Hvis den officielle begrundelse for &#8216;krigen mod terror&#8217; holdt vand, havde det fra starten været langt bedre at give pengene til nogenlunde pålidelige lokale allierede** &#8212; i s.f. at stoppe dem i halsen på militærindustrien.</p>
<p>Ud fra en magtpolitisk betragtning er det overvejende sandsynligt, at Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L.) m.v. har et helt andet formål end det officielle.</p>
<p>*<A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article819090.ece" target="_blank">PET-chef: Truslen er der &#8212; gud ske lov &#8212; stadig</A> &#8230; tumpen Brian the SchmuckMikkel hopper prompte på limpinden: <A HREF="http://politiken.dk/indland/article819082.ece" target="_blank">Brian Mikkelsen er »tilfreds« med PET og FBI</A></p>
<p>**Hvorfor vil amerikanerne fx. ikke gå med til at etablere en legal opiumproduktion i Afghanistan efter tyrkisk forbillede? Der er mangel på opium til medicinske formål. Specielt verdens fattigste lande har hårdt brug for effektive bedøvelsesmidler til en overkommelig pris.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Bloggen</strong> kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.<br />
-&#62; kig og klik på menuen under &#8220;nye indlæg&#8221;, &#8220;nye kommentarer&#8221;, &#8220;editor&#8217;s picks&#8221; m.v.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>Websitet</strong> (klik på de øverste menupunkter &#8212; under sider) handler især om <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/" target="_blank">Danmarks Radio &#38; Co.</A></p>
<p>Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder<br />
(<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/børnbananas/" target="_blank">Børn&#38;Bananas</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/danske-danskere/" target="_blank">Danske Danskere</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/jantefjante/" target="_blank">JanteFjante</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/mytertraditioner/" target="_blank">Myter&#38;Traditioner</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/tumpetv/" target="_blank">TumpeTV</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/varmvindlunluft/" target="_blank">Varmvind&#38;Lunluft</A>)<br />
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister<br />
samt Sand&#38;Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden<br />
&#8211; og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.</p>
<p>DR&#38;Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.<br />
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (<A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/religionsrabalder/" target="_blank">ReligionsRabalder</A>, <A HREF="http://hedage.wordpress.com/kulturkamp/" target="_blank">KulturKamp</A>). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>English abstract</strong><br />
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the <A HREF="http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/Ecri/4-Publications/" target="_blank">European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)</A> said in its Third Report on Denmark:<br />
&#8230;<br />
Climate of opinion<br />
&#8230;<br />
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><strong>We are all Africans &#8212; thanks to Mama Africa!</strong></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Capitalism is not the fairest face of the human race<br />
As long as it works, we might forget this and live with that.<br />
When it doesn&#8217;t, any thing is better than capitalism.</p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p>Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior<br />
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned<br />
everywhere is war &#8211; me say war.</p>
<p><A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfetO-RACg" target="_blank">Bob Marley</A> citing <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selassie's_Address_to_the_United_Nations" target="_blank">Haile Selassie&#8217;s Address to the United Nations</A></p>
<p><HR NOSHADE SIZE="10"></p>
<p><a href='http://hedage.wordpress.com/danmarks-radio-co/attachment/15/' rel='attachment wp-att-15' title='harald.jpg'><img src='http://hedage.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/harald.thumbnail.jpg' alt='harald.jpg' /></a> Blåtand, ej blåøjet</p>
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<title><![CDATA[Question Time]]></title>
<link>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/question-time/</link>
<pubDate>Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:48:40 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>wh00ps</dc:creator>
<guid>http://wh00ps.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/question-time/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Oh. I love saturdays, especially the ones I don&#8217;t have to work. I love my telephone too; my wi]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class='snap_preview'><p>Oh. I love saturdays, especially the ones I don&#8217;t have to work. I love my telephone too; my wife and sister-in-law are here and have control of the television, so I took advantage of the time to watch thursday&#8217;s Question Time on IPlayer, on my phone. </p>
<p>Now. I&#8217;m no BNP supporter, I could never support a leftist party racist or no. I&#8217;ve been down the left-hand path before and I didn&#8217;t like where it was going. I determined to watch it with an open mind however, and I thought he came across quite well. In fact, I think this was a spectacular own goal for an establishment still crippled by the no-platform debate. </p>
<p>They started on race issues in an early attempt to derail Griffin, and he manfully managed to dissemble his way through, not a difficult task as the other panellists (and audience) talked over and interrupted him throughout the section. This had the dual effects of not only setting him up as an underdog straight away (and as we know, the British love underdogs) but also saving him the trouble of having to explain and debate his views. Classic. </p>
<p>Once the &#8216;debate&#8217; moved onto Islam, he was remarkably restrained, clearly and simply mentioning the things from the Koran that we&#8217;re not supposed to talk about while the other <del datetime="2009-10-24T10:10:00+00:00">contestants</del> panellists frothed and foamed. He cleverly framed the issue in terms that nobody can disagree with (women&#8217;s rights and the stoning of rape victims etc.) and was fairly unimpeachable on this, at least among those who don&#8217;t really want shariah law, thankyou very much.</p>
<p>In fact, once he was past the race section of questions he was pretty straight throughout. He may have been lying (and probably was) but if he was, he was lying straight out, while the others waffled and dissembled and shouted him down and refused to answer questions in traditional Westminster style. To someone pretty pissed off with the LibLab Con (who didn&#8217;t know any better) he could really seem like a straight-talkin&#8217; kinda guy. </p>
<p>Which leads me again to wonder, is this deliberate? There was a lot he said that I could agree with. He doesn&#8217;t like the EU, he doesn&#8217;t like the BBC, and I had to nod my head when he asked Jack Straw if he would dare go to a Maori or a Sioux and ask them &#8220;what do you mean by indiginous?&#8221; Not because I&#8217;m a white supremacist (I&#8217;m not) but because it was a fair and logical question, and Straw&#8217;s refusal to be drawn on it was frustrating. If I didn&#8217;t know any better, and didn&#8217;t know all about liberty and freedom and what leftists like Griffin <em>really</em> want (control, same as the other three leftists on the panel) I might well have started to think maybe he&#8217;s got something, and no wonder the others don&#8217;t want him to speak, because they&#8217;re all saying the same things and he&#8217;s saying the sort of things that people are really thinking. In short, I may well have thought he was a reasonable man not being given a fair shake of the stick, and he&#8217;s not really a racist anymore, and maybe we should give him a chance?</p>
<p>Of course, I didn&#8217;t think any of those things because I know what Griffin&#8217;s really about, but to others? Especially those white, English working class who are sick of being disallowed from acknowledging or celebrating their own culture (another point Griffin tried to raise and was shouted down on), and some of them <em>do</em> watch Question Time, you know.</p>
<p> This was either a spectacular own-goal <em>or</em> this was how it was intended to be. I&#8217;ll let you decide for yourself. </p>
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