From: clifto
Organization: Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Newsgroups: rec.radio.shortwave
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 12:47:53 -0600
Subject: Planting phony stories

Greg wrote:
From: clifto
Greg wrote:
From: clifto
Greg wrote:
Or maybe red white & blue would be more appropriate, since our founding
fathers were so adamant about keeping a free press in our new democracy
that
they incorporated its protection in the very First Amendment.

Let's treat it the same as we treat that other thing protected even
before free press in the First Amendment (religion). You can have a
free press, but your press people can't do their thing on public
property or in schools, and they can't offer the paper for sale in
public, it has to be sought out quietly by those who want it.

School is not the place to promote conformity to the majority religion.

Or to the majority press.

Neither are government offices.

Same here. If they can't accommodate ALL the press, they shouldn't be
accommodating ANY of the press.

And churches, religious groups can offer
their services for sale just like everyone else.

Hell, no. You can buy a newspaper in the Federal Building; you can't
practice religion there. They should restrict the press the same way
they restrict that other thing that was protected first by the First
Amendment.

Well you can't practice skeet shooting there either. But selling newspapers
isn't the same as holding a religious service. If you want to hold a
religious service, why don't you do it in a church?

Most do.

We're talking about things like an occasional prayer, or a bible study,
things that aren't all-out religious service. And to parallel it,
selling newspapers, something that's not an all-out free-speech event
with real speeches. If you can't do the one in public, you shouldn't
be able to do the other in public either. If you should be able to do
one but not the other, then it should be the one mentioned first in
the First Amendment.

And you can pray anywhere
you want.

Bullswozzle. You can't pray in school. No, not even all by yourself
where people can't see you. And you'd better not pray on public property
where any ACLU people can see you.

Paranoia.

I've documented it here in this newsgroup and I know you've seen it.

The irony here is that you would criticize those newspapers for telling
the
truth.

No, when the NYT or LAT tells the truth, all you'll see out of us is
amazed silence.

Amazed silence? That would be sweet! But the subject of this thread was
the placing of paid propaganda in so-called "independent newspapers" in
Iraq. Are you saying that isn't true?

I've yet to see evidence that anything untrue was in those articles.
Until then, it's no worse than the liberal American press spreading
the propaganda of the Democratic Party.

No one said the articles were untrue. The lie is in the fact that the
material is partisan propaganda (and propaganda can be true), not
independent reporting.

Show me.

Oh, wait, you can't. No one here knows what articles were "bought".
No one has seen one. You're judging them sight unseen.

I see. You believe they MUST be false because... DOWN DOWN BUSH! DOWN
DOWN BUSH! DOWN DOWN BUSH!

Now calm down Clifto, you're starting to foam a little around the mouth. I'm
judging what has been reported in print media and television and admitted to
by the military: The US military produced "reports" and hired a consultant
to bribe Iraqi newspapers to run them, at least some of them without
attribution. The reports may be factual, but deceitful as to the source and
motive.
In this case the truth is that the Bush administration, while
bragging about the "free and independent" news sources springing up in
Iraq,
seeks to control what those sources report.

Control? No. Persuade them to print some good stuff about us? Sure, in
the ages-old way of persuasion in the middle east; we crease their
palms with silver.

Agreed. But dishonest, nontheless, when it's done covertly. It gives the
impression that the story was generated by independent observers.

What "covertly"? No one asked and there was no reason to tell them.
Have you criticized the toilet facilities over there? Have you even
asked what they're like? So why are you criticizing our government
doing business their way when you don't criticize our citizens going
there and doing toilet duty their way? Facts is facts; you can go back
to movies of the 1940's and see characterizations of arab people
demanding to have their palms creased with silver to do a favor,
there's certainly nothing new about it in the 21st century.

Covertly in that the Iraqi people didn't know their newspapers were a tool
of the US Army propaganda machine, and neither did the American people, and,
if they are telling the truth, neither did the Pentagon or the White House.

The people over there know that the press will print anything that comes
with a few dinars under the table, just as nearly anyone in nearly any
occupation over there will do special work for a little grease.

And you still haven't proven there's anything untrue about the material.

I never claimed the material was untrue. And if everything they do over
there is corrupt, it's okay fer us to participate?
A free press has always been
anathema to the Bush administration because of all the administration's
devious pursuits and corrupt practices that don't hold up well to public
scrutiny.

The truly free press, which has originated with the Internet and other
available forms of mass communication not controlled by traditional
media, has been the best thing for Bush and the conservative movement
in general since the founding fathers created the Constitution. It's
really anathema to liberal lies. And that ****es you off, doesn't it?

No, I enjoy the give and take available to all of us on the Internet. But
there is a lot of crap, and you really have to examine what is offered as
factual. And I don't see how Bush is being helped by the Internet. Sure,
there are a lot of conservatives venting their rage against "Liberal
Neo-Communists", but so what?

News gets around. We now get details on stuff we'd never have had
any idea had ever happened, like Gore causing an international incident
by telling racist jokes in Indonesia, or getting lost ten feet into the
woods while taking a leak, or someone forging evidence against Bush
and someone else going ahead with it even knowing it was forged. Before
conservatives developed means of communication that didn't depend on
the traditional media, we were stuck with whatever the liberal press
wanted us spoon-fed.

Yes, it's fun to read the gossip. And the Bush papers business is an
Internet coup for sure. Although, it's doubtful those documents would have
held up under the inevitable scrutiny, Internet or no.

No one person outed those documents. It was several people expressing
doubts and talking them through that started the whole research project.
If there wasn't that element of interactive communication, as was the
case ten years ago before enough people knew about the 'net, the
documents would probably be the linchpin of a massive liberal-media
hate Bush campaign.

If John McCain gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination,
my vote for President will be a write-in for Jiang Zemin.

Please do.

It could happen. Hopefully the Repubs won't be so foolish.

Okay, I'll bite, what's your case with McCain?

He's a liberal Democrat who somehow managed to get onto a Republican
ticket. He's already betrayed his party publicly by bypassing the
party's workings and co-founding this "gang of 14".

Too bad that "liberal Democrat" wants to send more troops to Iraq to do the
job right. I guess he just doesn't have the military chops that
Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld have. You would think he would have deserted the
Republican party after the Carl Roves's dirty tricks in S. Carolina in the
2000 campaign. But the man keeps working away in the Senate, following his
conscience rather than carrying water for the Republican leadership.
Certainly not the kind of man we would want in the White House.
--
Greg