Information Poverty

Do you ever flick channels during the news at six? And have you noticed that many of the reports on any subject are copies word for word on several channels? You often assume these similar news items are picked up from other mainstream news sources, as interesting tidbits for your consumption. Hmm.
But so many news stories today are written by corporate PR departments with the slant towards guiding your thoughts about a certain subject. The so called yellow journalism. Indeed, what actual free journalism goes on today? Not much it seems. Mainstream=Corporate.

The School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, under the supervision of Dr. Kathleen Cross has released a study on the most under-reported news stories today. It says 25 but includes 100, some of which may shock you and others only confirm your suspicions of being manipulated. All are relevant to us living in a sane world.

- Like the under-reporting of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Suppressed so the boiling public doesn't decide to take occupying action against the nuclear industry? And we're wondering how radioactive that gyre of Japanese earthquake-meltdown debris floating toward North America is and how it may affect our beaches? Keep your toddlers out of the sun AND the sand!

- Or the fact that so called Big Pharma (nickname for huge pharmaceutical companies) engineer their clinical studies to put a warm light on the use of their drugs. But you watch CNN and see the long lists of ailments from using their drugs, don't you? (side effects always downplayed during the shots of 'all-better-now' smiling actors) Well, you should. Do you care that pharmaceutical company reps are within the US Government FDA agencies right now writing the laws on the use of their drugs? Do you care that they may have omitted the fact that deaths occurred during their testings?

- I don't see it on their list but it is a lingering suspicion on my own; the Gulf oil spill and the fact that there are rumors of it still leaking and the ability of the oil companies to keep people away from the disaster area while they hide the pollution! That is cheating the world but did you think oil companies were ethical? Did you believe they could simply snub the US Government to do what they want? Even keeping the US Navy away and tieing the President of America's hands.

- Would you be shocked to learn that in 2010, in the American Army, 462 soldiers were killed in the line of duty? While 468 committed suicide!
Well of course you would because we only get the reports of 'embedded' reporters now. Those who travel with an Army unit and stage their reporting to suit the military minds. The mental health of war will be ongoing for decades!

- And did you read anywhere about the CETA negotiations? Sort of like NAFTA, no benefit whatsoever to Canada but allowing European corporations access to government procurement actions, to our public institutions like hospitals and public utilities. And all behind closed doors. Like NAFTA. A secret from the people. Does our news media have a don't- ask-don't-tell policy?

The SFU list makes excellent reading or even browsing if you like. And you could, if you cared enough, pick one of these items and make it your own. Something to yell about. Or write about. Or research yourself. Or complain about to your local news source for their lack of coverage.

Spend a little time perusing the SFU School of Communication study. All the items show a Synopsis, Significance, Media Coverage and Original Source Material. Beats the mainstream media's unnamed sources all to hell! Especially when those sources are PR Department flacks.
If you do go and read the study, be sure to go to Appendix A: Alternative & Independent News Sites Used for Researching Stories. This is important for anyone pursuing information on their own. Appendix D has the top 100 Underreported Stories.

Yes we all know that the current news organizations are firmly controlled by corporate interests. And we see the scandal in Britain about movie stars phones being tapped, but it is far more serious than gossip folks, it is about our small planet and your health, your family's safety, and our democratic right to reliable reporting.
And we, as a public interested in the preservation of our very lives, need to know truth, and to recognize where to find it and who is lying to us. The SFU Under-Reported News Study is a tool to use. A source for a further independent pursuit of the real information. Truth.

So one would ask: Are our reporters just lazy, stupid or bought? If there is a reason we are being denied investigative news reporting, that reason must be secret too. But secrecy fosters speculation and conjecture too, doesn't it?

Educate yourself and start using your voice. Information poverty is affecting us all, and they should not be getting away with it.


http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/newswatch/files/2011/11/NewsWatch-Canada_SFU-Research-Seminar_2010_2011_Underreported-Stories_Print-Ready.pdf


http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/newswatch

New USA-Canada Trade Deal

So you're reading about it now. A new deal that the US thought up, and has been programming Canadians to accept for at least 10 years now. The Bush/Cheney people thought it up, and as we all know now, Barak Obama has little to do with running America, and no president in the future will have either.
So the paranoid Americans 'conditioned' Canadians to believe that those wild-eyed terrorists were on their way here too, and unless we go along with their ideas, we'll be unsafe. Left to duck under our beds while the bombs go off. We need the same protection as all red blooded Americans get to keep them safe. Yes.
Well, not exactly. Terrorism hasn't much to do with the real plan.
Because along with the sharing of a national border with America, we will now go ahead with the so-called North American Security Border Perimeter Protection. This allows information sharing, and interoperability, (nice vague word) and Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (IBET). The Civil Assistance Plan of 2008 allows the military of one country to respond to a cross-border domestic civil emergency, at the request of the other country. The Shiprider Agreement of 2009 enables jointly-crewed RCMP and Coast Guard vessels to patrol shared waterways and seaways, with cross-border jurisdiction.
Interoperability also encourages a militarized approach to border crimes such as drug smuggling, contraband and the undocumented movement of people. Already, unmanned drones are patrolling the Canada-U.S. border. Since 9/11, five land and marine military bases have been established close to the Canada-U.S. border as part of the U.S. Northern Border Air Wing.

But don't just think of that border below us, folks, think North too!

Yes this agreement of course, considers OUR borders from sea to sea to sea.
And the third sea is the Arctic. And that's where America wants to be active. And protecting ALL North American borders means using US troops for that task. And allowing those troops to occupy our sovereign border in the Arctic. Why?
To guard against sandy terrorists or Russians sneaking across the diminishing ice floes disguised as polar bears (also diminishing) with high explosives strapped under their bomber jackets and destined for targets in Toronto! OMG! WTF?

Well of course the American and Canadian governments are playing it down. But the result of this new protection we get by signing the agreement, will be to allow America to control the emerging Canadian Arctic resource of billions of barrels of oil beneath those thawing ice packs! Estimated to be about 400 BILLION barrels!
A US based oil company has laid claim to ALL the Arctic oil reserves under OUR North, and has a legal argument based on their proposal that the Arctic's petroleum deposits are the "common heritage of mankind," (the lawyer who thought up that one got a huge bonus) and has argued that the polar region requires a private "lead manager" to organize.

Now wouldn't that conveniently come under the new perimeter border of North America? Of course it would. We need secure oil resources to lessen our dependance on foreign oil and to guarantee $1.00 a gallon prices to those righteous mid-western straw chewers who are still living in the fifties.
So all the talk about helping us poor Canadians get our goods to market across the Ambassador Bridge is subterfuge.

And that's not all. We have water. And lots of it. In a relevant aspect. It has been said that water will be the oil of the 21st century, and that it will cause wars between nations.
Sea water makes up 97.5 percent of all the water on Earth. And not all the remaining 2.5% is drinkable. Of that tiny amount we have an estimated 6 to 20% as renewable resource. That is 20% of about ONE percent, people.
America is in a drought situation and has been for a century or more! Some say the worst in 500 years! And getting scary worse.

Many people believe that the quality CBC TV show Intelligence was cancelled because the Americans were nervous of Chris Haddock's plot direction which was moving toward the US using the FBI and CIA to influence decisions in Canada which would allow America free access to our water! http://thetyee.ca/Entertainment/2007/12/03/NoIntelligence/

The Great Lakes water levels continue to drop. Barge traffic on America's waterways only carry half loads to avoid scraping bottom in those rivers. Americans continue to use up to 350 gallons a day for drinking and sanitation when the world average is 20 to 40 gallons! And again, the big bad corporations are lobbying to drain America's wetlands to put more water into the river systems! Crops are failing, livestock cannot be fed.
And all the while sprinklers are pouring water non stop into the nice green golf courses of Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas!

America has been looking to the North for years. The Keystone XL oil pipeline is but the first step in draining Canada's liquid resources into America. Why not a water pipeline to follow? Do you think Keystone is a random name? You can bet the idea of a water pipeline is under discussion right now. And the first action will be to 'condition' the Canadian public into accepting the idea.
And it will probably hinge on existing clauses within the new border perimeter agreement to protect us from (once again) terrorists.
Why not?
The concept has worked on Americans since 9/11 who now have no recourse to sue American corporations for misdeeds or to stop police from tracking you or storming into your home without judicial warrants! And the growth of private security forces, like America's Blackwater, now called Xe, and Canada's Can/Aust Security could be used to subjugate and control an emerging angry populace. (Blackwater was used during Hurricane Katrina, Can/Aust was involved in a plan to smuggle Saadi Gaddafi to Mexico) Homeland security is about to become omnipotent. President Obama has just signed into law, an act that allows the US Military to police the streets, make arrests and jail citizens without charge or US Constitutional protection!

Don't hide under your bed, folks, without looking under it first. You might find a wild-eyed terrorist or a wild-eyed Senator there already. Go back to sleep, that's the only place you'll have freedom.
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US oil company lays claim to ALL oil in the Arctic -
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/story.html?id=0e151a0a-c5e6-49d7-bfa7-99bc4ff85f57

Canada's potential oil -
http://www.gac.ca/PopularGeoscience/factsheets/ArcticOilandGas_e.pdf

USA drought monitor -
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/new.html
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Researching Motion

This is odd. Certain Middle Eastern countries won't allow RIM, (Research in Motion, a Canadian company) to set up Blackberry phones in their countries. In August, the United Arab Emirates announced a ban on Blackberry messaging and other services by RIM. Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Bahrain have followed. India became nervous, and then China. Who could be nervous about RIM? They weren't nervous about buying our Candu Reactors.

The problem is that Blackberry encrypts its own messages using its own systems, and these governments and others want to access that encrypted information. Blackberry encryption is unbreakable and is the only cell phone smartphone company using its own operating systems. In other words certain branches of governments want to listen in on what you are saying and they can't on Blackberries. They read and hear everything you do on other smartphone devices, but Blackberry will not reveal any cipher or encryption keys. (They are the only personal phone that President Obama uses. And you KNOW the Secret Service must have approved it.)

So now we recently have have services disrupted in the Middle East, Europe, India, then Africa, South America, Brazil, Chile and Canada. Coincidence or enemy action? Blackberry says it is not hacked. But they wouldn't tell you would they? For the same reasons banks don't tell how or when they get swindled.

And we wonder if there isn't some concentrated efforts going on here to bring down Blackberry and RIM itself. Microsoft and a few other companies want to buy them.
It may be in the interests of the traveling businessman, corporation or tourist to keep their communications secret, but governments can't stand not knowing what you are doing while passing through their countries.

They blame terrorism of course. As usual. Who knows what WMDs you could stuff into a Blackberry. Isn't that how the endless wars started in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Maybe Canada isn't so harmless after all. Don't forget, we did design, engineer and build the Avro Arrow, and you know how pissed off the Americans were about that!

Is it odd or is it me?

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Odd Marriage?

The military now has a new drone. They have adapted a regular drone which now can simply fly over a certain area, and gather virtually ALL electronic communications speeding through the ether below! Pause for a moment here, please ........

That means ALL the cell phone communications, who is making them, and who they are going to. ALL your text messages. ALL your Tweets about whatever you are typing about. ALL your facebook info and what you are saying to whomever you are saying it to. Probably all your RDF information nestled snugly into that new credit card with ALL your recent purchases and where you bought that stuff. ALL your driver's info on that new radio frequency ID chip licence you just got. Probably ALL your health records from that CARE card. Ultimate surveillance.

Where does this all point? Match it up with some of that video evidence of military helicopters in Iraq, targeting smart bombs from a mile up and you can see that with a little cross referencing of who is doing what to whom, and how they can be pinpointed to be 'taken out' by one of those stealth black choppers hovering high over your house, there will be no room for rebels in Future World. (read New World Order) Yul Brenner isn't the bad guy.

So it all points to a slave society, completely under control of a military elite, (Google Blackwater, Xe, Fema Camps) almost helpless to resist the subjugation of the populace.

Almost.
But there has always been that element in our democratic society of suspicion driven free people intent on resisting the efforts of Big Brother to control us. Sort of the new Hippies of North America. Now add these flower-haired freedom seekers to the rebellious M15 toting Minutemen, who are ALSO suspicious of anything the government tries to control free people and you have an odd marriage of those who think free and others who also value freedom and have enough weaponry to throw a wrench into the takeover attempts of whatever cells the CIA, NSA, Shadow Government, et al have in mind for the people of North America.

(In 2011 there was a 54% increase in FBI background checks for new and used handguns. 11 MILLION! And those are the legal figures. The public is arming themselves, folks)

Moonchild Mary, meet Redneck Skywalker, say I do and I will and get on with the kiss, we're gonna need this marriage in Future World.
We have work to do.
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This day in history - - - September 27

(1963 – 64) The Warren Commission. A group appointed by Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the circumstances surrounding President John F. Kennedy's slaying and the shooting of his (alleged) assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. It was chaired by Earl Warren and included two U.S. senators, two U.S. congressmen, and two former public officials.
After months of investigation, it reported that Kennedy was killed by Oswald's rifle shots from the Texas School Book Depository and that Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby two days later was not part of a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.
Its findings were later questioned in a number of books and articles and in a special congressional committee report in 1979, though no conclusive contradictory evidence was found.

One of those first books, Rush to Judgment, by lawyer Mark Lane, pointed out that the conclusions in the Summery, those few pages that most people and reporters read, had little to do with the volumes of actual evidence in the content.
Today a believer of this, 'Oswald alone', conclusion is rare. And because that summery seemed falsified, it berthed a lifetime of conspiracy theories about the President's death.
Even following the interesting side story of the trail of Officer Tippit on that day and you might join the legions of disbelievers.

The members of that Warren Commission were -

- Earl Warren - Chief Justice of the United States. Eisenhower offered Warren the post of solicitor general, with the promise of a seat on the Supreme Court. But before it was announced, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson unexpectedly died in September 1953 and Eisenhower replaced him with Warren. As Chief Justice of the United States some said many of his decisions were 'inappropriate'.

- Hale Boggs - Died mysteriously in a plane crash while flying over remote Alaska in October, 1972 . Wreckage never found. In April 1971 he had made a speech on the floor of the House in which he strongly attacked J. Edgar Hoover and the whole of the FBI.

- Gerald Ford - Future President. Ford commented in his own report that the CIA destroyed or kept from investigators critical secrets connected to the assassination.

- John Sherman Cooper - In the general election in 1954 Cooper was defeated by Alben W. Barkley a Democrat who had been Vice President under Harry S. Truman but Barkley subsequently died, and Cooper was elected to fill his unexpired term in 1956.

- John J. McCloy - He was initially skeptical of the lone gunman theory, but a trip to Dallas with Allen Dulles, an old friend also serving on the Commission, in the spring of 1964 to visit the scene of the assassination convinced him of the case against Lee Harvey Oswald.

- Allen Welsh Dulles - Director of the CIA. It evolved under his directorship into a team of assassins. One member, Frank Sturgis, claimed: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members." (Sturgis was also one of the Watergate burglars) Dulles and his staff were forced to resign in September 1961 when President Kennedy reportedly said he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds."

The Warren report's lack of candor furthered antigovernment cynicism, which in turn stimulated conspiracy theorists who propounded any number of alternative scenarios, all mutually contradictory, and all going strong today.

Who can you trust?
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In a new revelation by Jackie Kennedy she recently revealed her suspicions of LBJ. And we all know she married Onassis simply because he was the one man in the world who could actually protect her from an 'unexpected' death.
source mostly Wikipedia
start here - Officer Tippit timeline
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Time to leave?

The US plans on withdrawing all troops from Iraq at the end of this year. Leaving the Iraqis to run their own country.
Today there were bombings all over the troubled nation. In a dozen cities using a combination of parked car bombs, roadside bombs and a suicide bombers driving vehicles. It seems there are no secure areas in the whole country. The scope of the violence is only increasing in spite of the Iraqi and US forces. Even within the so-called Green Zone, of Bagdad suicide bombers are able to move about, coordinate their people and kill when they want.

As the American effort winds down the question looms larger than ever; Can Iraq govern itself? It is like the religious groups are just waiting to begin their civil war. Only this time Iraq will not have a strong Saddam Hussein directing an army to control the insurgents. What will happen to all the building and infrastructure implemented by the US? It looks to many as if Iran will play a large role in cooperation with Syria to allow control of this huge and valuable part of the Middle East. Iraq has a huge portion of the known oil reserves.
In this 'George Bush War' as some call it, the question also haunts the West whether leaving Saddam alone and dealing with him would have been the realistic and sane answer. Indeed, the best strategy for peace. Alas, it seems GW Bush was intent on vengeance over sanity.

In Afghanistan, a similar scenario awaits. The Taliban are stronger than ever. Al Qaeda operates freely. The control of the country centers in only a small part of Kabul. Everywhere else is intensely dangerous. The poppy crop is burgeoning and opium production is higher then ever before, some even suspect the CIA of encouraging it. While they use armed spy drones near Pakistan to try to limit the expansion of the insurgents.

President Hamid Karzai, the inserted ruler, has little control, is often refered to as the Mayor of Kabul because his influence is so limited, and is also suspected of actually working against the US. But he fled the country once before and is totally likely to follow the US troops out whenever that happens again. Leaving what?

Of course Afghanistan will descend quickly into tribal conflict with warlords, drug cartels, Taliban and al Qaeda all tearing it apart once more. The country will go back 200 years overnight.

And what will be the legacy of these costly adventures in muslim countries? Perhaps only a newly inflamed hatred of the West, and especially the United States.
It seems that the correct and safe strategy in Afghanistan would be to let them sort it out themselves, no matter how hard it will be to watch from afar, and then deal with the winner, who no doubt will be a strong brutal leader, and who has democracy furthest from his intentions.

In Iraq, the new hope to deflect the efforts of Syria and Iran would seem to be a new Sunni leader, like Saddam, someone who can keep the Shiites at bay and Iraq's two volatile neighbors inside their own borders.

It remains to be seen if the shadowy cadre of insiders in the US government will allow anyone but the Saudis to control the oil flow into the US and anyone but their choice of who supplies the bulk of heroin into America. And it is all above and beyond the input of a US President, that control is already gone.

However it works out, the sad conclusion drawn by many is that these American adventure wars which cost so much in brave young lives may have been all in vain.

It IS time to leave.

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Who did this?

The world is spiraling downward. The stock markets are actually crashing. The US had its credit rating lowered for the first time in history. Canada is doing just okay but pundits all say we'll be close behind America when it plunges. Dragged down with Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and others on the brink of something bad. And no one seems to know what to do about it all.

Well correct that ... lots of people know what to do, but the power brokers in charge of actually doing something aren't about to upset their own plush limousines.

Do you believe it? China has actually warned the US to watch its step and get its act together. China.
OMG. Shouldn't that be the exact opposite? Shouldn't the Western world be warning the backward countries about their spending behavior? How did China emerge with so much power?

Well, the truth is, the greed of the West gave it to them. For example, years ago Canada sent technology and effort to China to help them mine their minerals and ores. By building the mines and mills and sending them equipment necessary to produce goods from those ores.We knew how to do it, they didn't. Then they weren't able to transport those ores to the mills so we sent them all those huge Euclid trucks. To help them out. All free. Paid for by the Canadian government. America did exactly the same thing countless times. So China got the product out of the ground, built their own factories, and set about undercutting American factories and bankrupting the economies of North America!

We as a free enterprise democratic society condoned the actions of the few rich who needed to do 'business' with these Marxist Communists. To sell them stuff. Any technology the West didn't give the Chinese they simply stole through industrial espionage. All this while they suppressed and oppressed their population with the brutality of their regime. While we looked away.

Nixon opened up China and is heralded for that. But by who? The billionaires who added to their fortunes with deals in China. Those inside deals enriched a very few while destroying workers at home. And it went round and round until today the Chinese hold the debt balance for America. They have successfully destroyed the North American steel industry, the manufacturing industry, high tech is going or gone, nothing left but the pizza shops and Wendy's. Farming controlled by Monsanto. Health by offshore pharmaceutical corporations. Even space is being taken over by Chinese rockets!

The Arabs hold the other half of this equation by strangling us with artificially high oil prices. Courtesy of their confidant, George HW Bush. The Tea Party Conservative Republicans pound away at Obama without a single mention of the costs of the two wars they started. Estimated by the end of this year to be 1.3 TRILLION dollars! Isn't that almost what the US is in debt for?

It's like the powers that be are lining up their tanks in a row to bring down the world so they can emerge as the keepers of the New World Order. The consequences too frightening to imagine.

We did this to ourselves by allowing power and greed to take precedence over home interests. We dealt with the Devils in China and Saudi Arabia who tore apart the fabric of what was a proud world-leading America. The home-grown foreign devils in America might be the losers, however. If there is nothing left to control who wins?

We did this by tolerating corporate greed to overrun our governments. And over-rule our governments. And to place their needs above those of the population. We did this by allowing people like the Bushes and Cheney to ignore what the founders and builders of America had in mind and to set the dominoes of democracy falling. We did this by allowing Enron to slip into oblivion, by forgetting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and now likely Rupert Murdoch. We did this by not yelling for our media to tell us what is really happening. We did this by accepting the glowing reports of 'embedded' reporters in those wars. Like Afghanistan where the so called Western Coalition has only a small zone in Kabul barely under control. We did this by allowing BP to spill and hide the results and not answer for their stupidity. We did this by not demanding that Obama order the Navy into the Gulf to supervise and control the 'cleanup' and tell us the truth.

If the world plunges into chaos, we have only ourselves to blame for our complacency and acceptance of nefarious doings at our expense. We did this by ignoring the phrase, power of the people, for the people. It is not rhetoric, it is truth.

We did this.

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