There’s A Press Blackout on S 1959, the Thought Crime Prevention Bill; Why?
As odd as it sounds, it’s true. The Mainstream News Media appears to be in a total news blackout in regard S 1959. At first, I believed it was merely the reluctance of the MSM to discuss this Bill, however, the answer may be much more sinister than that! Below is a reply I found on Ron Paul’s Campaign site which references this Bill, and I double and triple checked for ANY Mainstream News Coverage on this issue - and so far, it appears to almost be non-existent!
The Greatest Obstacle
On December 4th, 2007 hemingway811 says:
is that the MSM has had a total blackout on the House’s passage of HR 1955 on Oct. 23rd. Do a search at any major newspaper & the major television stations, including cable. I have found a few comments in Blogs at a couple of television sites, but that’s about it.
For example, at the Washington Post you get:
“No Results Found”
LATIMES.COM ARTICLES
No matches found on search for: hr 1955
No matches found on search for: violent radicalization
404 members of the House voted for this “thought crime” Bill. The ACLU is working with members of the Senate to amend the language. They specifically refer to the regulation of thoughts. I don’t expect the ACLU to make much headway with the Senate. We have been bombarded with so much fear-mongering 24/7 for so long, members of Congress are too afraid of being labeled unpatriotic if they don’t vote for legislation like this.
RP did not cast a vote on HR 1955.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/32886prs20071128.html
It is time to flood Keith Olbermann, Lou Dobbs, Jack Cafferty, and anyone else speaking out of the real issues the rest of the MSM ignores, with e-mails urging them to speak out about this Legislation. I already have.
Lou Dobbs:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?9
Jack Cafferty
Unfortunately, writing Lou Dobbs or Jack Cafferty is futile, as CNN refuses to publish any information in regard this assault on our Constitution, and that’s after they have received hundreds, maybe even thousands of requests to editorialize on the subject. Has the government issued “signing letters” or other orders that prevent ALL of America’s Mainstream News Media from reporting on this vital issue? Jack Cafferty is attempting to promote his so-called “Blog” on CNN, however, if you even mention S 1959 in your comment, it probably won’t be published. CNN is stonewalling their viewer-ship, and on an issue where the public is demanding that this Bill be discussed in a public forum; CNN, along with the rest of the MSM, have turned their backs on America and have shown, despite increasing public outrage that they don’t give a damn about public opinion!
If you fine-tune your Internet searches, and Google S 1959, there are pages and pages of results, almost all of them Blogs and Discussion forums in the US who are discussing this matter and urging their subscribers to call, email, and write to Congress to defeat this Bill, yet it appears we are screaming into a void - and no one in the MSM has the courage to bring this odious Bill to the publics attention. In fact, there is little or nothing mentioned in the foreign press as well, and in this writer’s opinion, we must break the silence of the Mainstream News Media to bring about enough awareness where the people can protest in enough numbers to kill this Bill before free speech in America is nothing more than a fleeting memory.
To anyone that is aware of Naomi Wolf’s writing, the Guardian Unlimited published her recent essay, Fascist America, in 10 easy steps. One chilling part of that essay is published below, and we all need to take note that a Fascist America appears to be on our doorstep, and only by making the MSM report upon this attempt to silence free speech in America will we have any chance of stopping the steady march toward total fascism and dictatorship in America:
8. Control the press
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened “critical infrastructure” when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.
Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.
Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC’s Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN’s Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.
Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.
You won’t have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it’s not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can’t tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.
9. Dissent equals treason
Cast dissent as “treason” and criticism as “espionage’. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalize certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of “spy” and “traitor”. When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times’ leaking of classified information “disgraceful”, while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the “treason” drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.MORE
Based on all of the Blogs which are standing in solidarity against this issue, I’d bet my last dollar (If I had one to spare…) the Congress has received hundreds of thousands of phone calls and emails, yet they still remain mute and refuse to offer the public anything at all - not even an assurance they will look into our concern and outrage; instead, it appears The United States Congress is betraying their constituents, this time in an assault that could change the face of America! Based on the refusal of the MSM to publicize the issue, and Congress remaining deaf and dumb in the performance of their duties, we can only ascertain that Congress is attempting to pass this Bill while the bulk of the population isn’t even aware of its existence, and to me, that speaks of treason!
We have only one chance of defeating this Bill before it gets out of Committee, and that’s to make enough calls and send enough emails to effectively jam-up the phone systems in Congress, and only by acting in unison will we be able to save free speech in America. As an alternative, I’m calling upon the foreign press to publicize this matter, especially those in England, Germany, France, and all of the countries that America gave so many lives in World War I and II to help them throw off the yolk of oppression. America was there for them when Nazi Germany was attempting to enslave all of Europe, and I believe they have a debt of honor to repay -to stand tall and write about this critical issue that affects all of America. We were there for them, and now it seems that we need their help, if it’s nothing more than embarrassing the American Mainstream News Media into covering an issue that affects each and every American alive, here and abroad, and to lend their assistance in helping to insure that the United States will remain a free and democratic nation.
William Cormier
FootNote: This morning, I noted that NBC is quietly refunding money to advertisers because their ratings have been so low. LINK NBC, if you want to jump-start your ratings and be a top network again, maybe you might try reporting the news - all of it, and if you would break this press blackout and show some courage, I’m guessing, based on the interest of the public in regard S 1959, your ratings would soar and rather than giving refunds for poor ratings, you’d see your viewer-ship increase dramatically.
NOTE:
To anyone in the foreign Press reading this Op-Ed
As you read this Op-Ed, please sit back and contemplate on the significance of this matter; President Bush is blathering on and on about “Democratic Principles” while our own society is closing down and now we don’t even have a free press except for what the Internet offers us - and we can’t reach enough people by the Internet alone unless every one of us bands together in solidarity, and so far, that’s been a daunting task -although people from all walks of life are joining in, but without fair representation in the media, we remain unaware of how many thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of Americans who have called or emailed Congress in regard this assault on our constitution.
Freedom in Americana is quickly becoming what the Presidency “feels like” rather than a strict adherence to our constitution and laws - and without massive foreign coverage of the assault against the freedom of Americans by the Bush administration, this nation could easily be overwhelmed by fascism, something countless Americans died for in helping to protect Europe so many years ago.
Keep in mind these actions will not help the Bush administration and the Neo-cons who seem to want perpetual war, but will benefit the average American that still believes the United States should return to our constitutional roots, adhere to the Rule of American Law as well as International law, something this President holds in utter contempt.
Your help will be appreciated, and although I have been loathe to request international press support, however, with the mainstream news media compromised by so many factors, we are now looking for any measure that could help to bring awareness to the general public in regard S 1959. Even the United Nations should be able to see through this ploy to keep the American people in ignorance - and ignorance and propaganda is how a free society is transformed to a fascist and authoritarian government.
It’s time for the international community to understand the struggle the “Freedom Fighters” in America are engaged in to bring our country back under the rule of law, and publicizing this struggle and giving “the people” credit for their efforts to throw-off oppression and the unconstitutional muzzling of the News will help us to bring our fight to the countless millions of Americans who still remain unaware of the danger(s) they face. If the US MSM won’t represent us, then maybe it’s time for the international community to step-in and lend their support, and tomorrow won’t be fast enough!
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