Readers' Comments

I don't believe there is any question about the viewing publics' intellegence level.

President Bush declared The Lancet "not credible" when it announced over 650,000 Iraqi deaths, but The Lancet already was "not credible" for supporting science over creationism, intelligent design and other revisionist theories.

President Bush proudly signed the death certificate of Habeas Corpus over a "Protect Amerika" billboard Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of. Dubya even dared add this was "a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill he knows will save American lives".

Tell that to the relatives of the 2,783 Americans "saved" from life in Iraq (3,020 overall for what's left of the pretended coalition, according to Icasualties.org). Not to mention non-lethal US casualties (somewhere between 30 and 50,000). So far.

The fact is Bush has never had any occasion of actually saving American lives. Beyond his own, that is, for instance during the Vietnam War as an outfielder Washington Dodger.

I'll tell you what Dubya : not only American lives are not saved, America's soul his being repeatedly tortured and raped by your abject Administration.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't know if I should visit the US again. I love the country but I don't feel quite secure under a fascist regime where anyone can be abducted anytime anywhere, deprived from any justice, tortured and even supersized (in Amerika, even Guantanamo residents are overfed with junk food). And even before landing I'm compelled to sign a paper where I give up my rights. After landing it's rather Get Up Stand Up, Just Give Up Your Rights.
I don't know if I should confess... Are you or have you ever been a humanist ?

______________________________________________________________________________________
Stephane MOT -
http://e-blogules.blogspot.com

______________________________________________________________________________________

I'm so glad you covered this in the Weekly Spin.

I volunteer for Binghamton Indymedia, and after watching several fake news stories about breast cancer (e.g., http://www.wicz.com/fox40/video.asp?video=6%2D5+Breast+Cancer%2Ewmv ), and I wanted to do an article about the connection between the PR industry and how the local news covers breast cancer.

I contacted about 8 women working in the local media, including the ACS spokeswoman. None would talk to me! http://home.stny.rr.com/bhuston/Breast%20Cancer%20Media%20Request%20w_responses.html

I then went to a breast cancer walk for "awareness", and noticed that a local dairy supplier had a big display. (Dairy is indicated as a cause of breast cancer). I approached with my camera rolling, started asking routine questions, "how much money did you raise last year", etc. When I asked what is the purpose of the event, one woman said "to get people to understand that early detection is the best way to fight the disease". I then asked if they ever heard of any risks of mammography, if they ever thought about the dangers of radiation. "Nah, it's all digital now" was the answer.

I then found a woman from the corporate media shooting b-roll of the event. I asked her if she wanted someone to speak about another side of this story, and she said "I don't want to get another side". I thought professional journalism was supposed to be about balance?

I had contacted eight women in the press. Coincidentally, this is the same number of police officers who escorted me out of the park.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20061001170648163

Outline of my prepared presentation about Breast Cancer vs. PR:
http://home.stny.rr.com/bhuston/breast%20cancer%20talk.html

Just in case you haven't been watching or listening to baseball recently, almost everything is for sale these days: the starting lineups, pitcher changes, etc. I attend 15-20 Sox games/year and the night games (except the Friday 7:30 starts) usually begin around 7:06 or 7:07. What's the big deal about a few extra minutes?

I'm not crazy about all of this commercialism but this seems to be a minor infraction. I may call the ballpark "The Cell" at times but that's as close as I'll get.

Someone didn't bother to look inside the magazine.The Afghanastan article appears in the international section as a six page spread, even though it's not the cover story.

Who is doing the spinning now? Next time do a better reporting job.

It's sad, because the rest of the world should know about Annie Leibovitz. When I was in the Peace Corps, the government sent us NEWSWEAK; now I wonder which edition I was recieving.

I think that your comment is very valuable from a position of advocacy for victims of sexual abuse. But I do think that there is an added dimension given that the Republican Party has done its best to claim the mantle of being the ethical, moral, family-oriented, and pro-child Party. By claiming that moral superiority, they should be held accountable not just for the actions of Foley, but particularly for whatever cover-up or sweeping under the rug may have occurred.

After years of negociation, all French detainees have eventualy been delivered to the French justice. They expect a verdict next May 2007. Without much fear - not because they're fearless hardcore killers but because most of them are not so dangerous misfits.
The judgement was supposed to be delivered last September the 27th but there is another case within the case : some detainees have been interviewed by French agents during their stay. The interviews were normal but to a certain point : in the legal void of this twilight zone, they are by definition illegal.
So these agents are likely to be prosecuted too. At least, there is an investigation on how the case was made... which is exactly the kind of investigations the Bush Administration don't want on their home turf (even if that turf actually belongs to a former US puppet called Fidel Castro - by the way, funny how US puppets tend to turn nasty : Fidel, Saddam, Osama, Noriega...).
Anyway. I wonder when the President of the United States and his head of "Justice" will answer for their own attacks on the values that used to make America respected.
And I don't think the Dems played it smartly by passing the UnPatriot law : they keep following the Rove agenda and roadmap instead of shifting gears and planes. Wake up, lads : the first step out of this mess is the total respect of the core values of your country. You cannot expect any good decision otherwise. Don't answer to their question "are you with us or against us ?" , just be yourselves.

______________________________________________________________________________________
Stephane MOT -
http://e-blogules.blogspot.com

______________________________________________________________________________________

Evan Naseem is not a democracy activist. He was jailed for doping. I think it would be better if you speak the truth though he was killed brutally by the police in the Maldives.

They could care less about kids. They just need a new moral issue to use after all the disgraces they have suffered. I am sure they latched on to childhood obesity before Foley, but now their efforts will only intensify. Why bother with introspection or a little humility when they can step right back up on the pulpit with a safer issue? Same dynamics, they preach, judge, moralize and gain the upper hand through guilt. They are exploiting obesity the same way Joe McCarthy exploited communism. Funny, Disney was in on that too. The bright side for me as a sociologist interested in deviance scares created by social breakdown, I couldn't ask for any more text book examples than these folks. They are practically archetypical! (And don't expect any real change in the industry's marketing efforts any more than you should expect those in power to stop molesting children! The point is to turn your disfunction into an advantage for as long as you can get away with the charade!)

"Fat can be beautiful. Intolerance is ALWAYS UGLY!!!"

I've just started reading it so maybe I'm "jumping the gun" to post a comment. But I can't get "Source Watch" to come up right now, and this does fit in here in a way, being that commercialism is a major root of these sorts of social problems today.

Though we might never guess that(commercialism being a root problem), being that spin is so effective. (For instance an ad might state "trade your dentures for teeth" to keep up the positive attitude --- when actually dentures usually mean trading teeth for dentures. Also skimmed over are any other kinds of drawbacks that might accompany the different forms of false teeth, which maybe are better than no teeth. But why is their no focus on how to protect and maintain teeth in the first place, such as avoiding too much sugar?)

Anyway the "trendy" filthy attitudes out and about (PROMOTING EXTREME-ISM in thinking, instead of moderation) are amazing --- so commercialistic and they all stink.

For instance I saw a youth recently with a tee-shirt that said something like 'Winners always give their all' --- I might be paraphrasing as I don't recall the words exactly, but that was the definite jist.

(Okay now to the original point of this post):

And it reminded me of the EXTREME-ISM that is being promoted in our society.

Okay it is true that quite often to "win" in life, one must "give their all."

But this is NOT ALWAYS THE CASE, and sometimes this just means things like burn-out, or sacrificing or sabataging one area of life for another (eg. thinking) --- or for instance raising the kids properly, or leaving them to the dog for a babysitter, etc., or any other thing like that --- where one area of life must be sacrificed or sabataged for the another.

This sort of "thinking" (that extreme-ism" is always the pat answer) does not address the issue of developing life priorities, and young people often have not developed much of any life priorities. It is as if a young inexperienced person can or should "have it all" --- and it is ridiculous to assume this. (Incidentally, young naive inexperienced people being put in big positions of authority was also a characteristic of The Third Reich in Nazi Germany.) Gullible people are easier to fool, and therefore have certain convenience to certain people.

Life around us seems to be full of young (or youngish) people who have not lived long enough to catch on to the fact that they cannot superimpose the ideals of how they have grown up to think things are supposed to be (or should be) onto actual life. (Dreams are nice, but often they can be quite skewed, or incomplete.)

For instance some of them (the young) think that if they are "good" or are of a certain political party, they therefore deserve to be "rich." (They are too young to even be able to define "rich" really.) Then they find hard workers who have actually worked hard and attained a little bit of "wealth" (even if not much), and while they want to stand on their shoulders, they do not appreciate them.

Instead they want to do a sort of "wealth" act (to others and for show), and superimpose their ideal that they learned somewhere in life, that God himself has "blessed" them, or that they are "wealthy" because of their attitude or political stance, etc. (This has nothing to do with whether a theif comes in to plunder spoils, etc. There is, unfortunately, such a thing as thievery in life.)

Okay I am getting off the subject again because what I started to say was that it is pathetic yet interesting to observe how youths are being used to bandy about commercialistic propaganda on things like tee-shirts, that imply that to "win" in life, one must be some kind of total unrelenting extreme-ist (give their "all,") instead of learn anything about personal autonomy or BALANCE (eg. a toddler learning to walk must also learn balance). It is like one does not have to think, but rather slavishly give their all (as the tee-shirt implied). Well someone is making a lot of money for society forfeiting their abilities and time to think for themselves, and defaulting to commercialistic tee-shirt "wisdom" instead.

Okay I wish I had time to write the above up better, but sorry I don't. The jist is just that this commercialist extreme-ist, "fast food" (if you will) tee-shirt wisdom (which is apparently all we have time for) is obnoxious and pathetic. Extreme-ism is not always the total be-all, end-all answer, and if we actually assume so, this is only to our own peril.

This might seem like it has nothing to do with the above book, but actually non-thinking extreme-ism, or letting others do one's own thinking, is what puts many of these crack-pot "puppets" into office, who end up effectively leading the rest of us around like so many dogs on a leash.

Of course there are two issues, however: one is "thinking" for one's own self, and the other is a general knowledge of the facts. And since compared to the earth, the perspective of one individual human is only something like a virus, it is not easy to always have a grasp of all the relevant facts. So we just let them be spoon-fed to us.

Okay I've gotta go -- have many other things to do today.

P.S. I do not mean to totally disparage the young. Their fresh ideas are often very helpful and often they are not jaded, etc. They have good and valuable characteristics. But neither should they be made kings, and the idea that they know it all is ludicrous.

I know of a woman who thinks she is psyhic, and actually she probably is somewhat psychic. But because she had a psychic incident once long ago in her life (where she somehow picked up on an either murder or suicide that happened in a house she passed --- I forget the exact details), she now apparently assumes she knows about all situations where there has been a murder. So once she swore up and down to me that she was sure the mother killed the daughter in this Jon Benet case.

Okay I think the mother was somewhat naive and had flimsy priorities, to put a small child into those contests, dressed up like an adult. And small children simply trying to grow up are not meant to be in those sorts of vicious competitions, also, in my opinion. Yeah it could be nice to have nothing else to do but focus on one's appearance. What a life. Maybe it would seem to be "over" though when the first wrinkle appeared, if one had their every priority and focus on appearances.

ANYWAY BACK TO THE SUBJECT: it is nice to be psychic and/or intuitive and lots of people (if not everyone) are somewhat that way, or at least I think they are --- to some degree, anyway.

But there is a danger also if someone who is inclined to be psychic or intuitive starts confusing their own thoughts or presumed intuitions, like because they ONCE (upon a time) got it right or were "on target," like thinking they are now instant, total absolute judges of every situation they ever hear about, such as the case of this woman being so sure the mother was guilty in the Jon Benet case.

I really do not believe the mother did this to her daughter. Some pervert snuck into the house and did it. If the mother had anything to do with it, it would have to have been because of something like she was withdrawing from one of those anti-depressant type drugs, or was otherwise going through a fit of insanity and didn't even know what she was doing. (IF she somehow did it or had anything to do with it, she certainly did not INTEND to, and if I remember correctly there has to be INTENT -- like not accidents and such --- to prove murder. So why then was this "psychic" so disparaging towards a mother who only would have had anything to do with the crime if she was insane? To me, that does not add up. I am more inclined to believe that this "psychic" had a personal agenda against women who put their small daughters through the superficial world of beauty pageants. And this was maybe a valid point. But it did not constitute murder, and in no way indicated motive for murder.

That mother was guilty of nothing except not raising her child exactly like most of us would. She was a believer in beauty pageants, in my opinion, to a fault --- to the extreme of subjecting a small child to that superficial world --- as if it was the only world out there to discover and live or focus on.

Anyway I apologize if I am harping too much on this whole subject, but I truly am bothered --- not ONLY at the idea of a murder of a little girl --- but also by the way I heard this presumed "psychic" lash out accusing the mother of being guilty of this crime, and it makes me think that even if a person really has a few psychic incidences in their lives, they should not presume they are therefore some kind of all-knowing God on every situation they ever happen to hear about in life. This sort of attitude genuinely bothers me --- that because someone had a psychic incident once upon a time in their lives, they now are using the egotistical "high" from having been once right or on target --- as a stage or arena to work out their own unresolved dramas about how they think world "should" be (eg. imperfect mothers must murder their children as well, etc.) --- it is quite narcissistic to presume upon oneself that sort of deity.