Desperately Seeking Relevance: NPR, BBC Jump On Prince's Death

The musician/performer Prince died. His fans care. The rest of us, maybe not so much.

But to some propaganda platform managers, this is more important than actual news, enough so to take up time that might be used for significant information to instead tell us, over and over, that his fans care, and wish he hadn't died, and to play snippets of Prince's music, again and again. There is "reporting" from impromptu tribute sites created by fans. Thus is 30 seconds of information stretched like Turkish taffy into many minutes, even hours, of "coverage."

U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR and British government global propaganda network BBC made it the top story. NPR even "called on a couple of Prince scholars" [sic] during the morning "news" program "Morning Edition" (April 22) to opine on their favorite Prince tunes. Who ever knew there were such a thing as "Prince scholars"? Not I. I figured there'd be aficionados, not "scholars." Silly me.

Live and learn!

That Overrated New Yorker Fact-Checking Department

The U.S. magazine The New Yorker has created a legend around its fact-checking department of assiduous vetting of articles for accuracy. Supposedly no falsehood can get through its fine-toothed comb editorial process. The rest of the U.S. establishment media has bought into this legend and helps promote it- in fact does all the promoting.

Leaving aside matters of interpretation, I regularly come across flat-out wrong facts in the magazine. Here's one that just popped up in the mag online. Their writer, Jelani Cobb, wrote that Harry Truman replaces Henry Wallace as vice president of the U.S. in 1941. Of course it was 1944.

I was surprised that they would have gotten this one wrong. The death of Roosevelt, his succession by Truman, who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, are rather big deals in U.S. history.

The error occurred in the piece "Donald Trump, a Frightening Window Into the American Present," a "Daily Comment" piece dated March 15, 2016. In case they correct it before you can check, here's a screen shot.

The New Yorker is one of a stable of bourgeois magazines owned by Conde Nast, one of the media corporations controlled by the oligarchic Newhouse family. They also own many newspapers via Advance Publications.


For even more egregious examples of bad "fact-checking," New Yorker-style, examples that are downright malign and evil, see "Jeffrey Toobin Is A Loathsome Liar."

Compulsive Liars of FBI Blatantly Lie Again- Media Doesn't Notice

You may recall that for the last month or so, the FBI has been insisting that the only way they can get into the encrypted data on an iPhone used by one of two Islamofascists who committed a massacre in San Bernardino, California, is if the Apple Corporation creates a software program to break its own encryption on the phone. [1]

Well whaddaya know, turns out it's not so. The U.S. Department of "Justice" is dropping its court case to compel Apple to make cracker software for the FBI. The FBI, after a full-court press in the media for a month, claiming that the terrorists were going to destroy "National Security" if Apple didn't submit, said Never Mind. They "found" a company that can do the job. Surprise surprise.

Actually it was always obvious that the FBI could break into the iPhone of the dead killer without forcing Apple to create software that the FBI, contrary to its oh-so-innocent protestations, would then use routinely and in secret to break into the phones of whomever it doesn't like. (People like me. Although I personally don't have an iPhone.) For one thing, there's this outfit called the NSA (National Security Agency) that most certainly already has methods to defeat iPhone security. And the FBI has free access to the NSA's databases and can call on them for assistance. (They just don't want to admit it in open court.)

For another thing, there's an entire industry devoted to data retrieval. Edward Snowden even pointed this out weeks ago. So the FBI is availing itself of the services of a company that specializes in this.

It had already been pointed on tech websites that various means exist to get past the Apple encryption, such as merely copying the contents of the flash storage as many times as needed and trying out password possibilities on the copies until one worked. (That's called a brute force attack.) There was much repetition of the claim that after 10 wrong password attempts, all th date would be deleted and gone forever. Not so, according to some tech experts. The password would be deleted.

The point is, the FBI's original claim was bogus, knowingly false. But the U.S. media will never, ever, point out an FBI lie, no matter how obvious. (The BBC won't either, I've noticed.)

But in the meantime, we were subjected to a month of media attacks on Apple for selfishly putting profits ahead of "National Security" and Protecting the American People from Terrorism. (Funny, I thought corporate profits were the whole point of this system! That's the reason they overthrow governments and slaughter millions of people, to make the world safe for corporate profits.) As part of this propaganda offensive to aid and abet yet another FBI power grab, the media trotted out the usual suspects, giving a platform to various secret police poohbahs and the political enablers of the secret police state. Some of whom you might not have expected in such a role, such as the "progressive" mayor of New York City, that alumnus of the Clinton cabal, Bill "My Deeds Contradict My Words" de Blasio, who scolded Apple and lectured them on the necessity of "protecting" people's "safety" rather than worrying about their image and profits. His hand-picked police Commissioner, Bill "The Velvet Repressor" Bratton, chimed in likewise.

Apple, for self-interested reasons, dug in its heels. Other tech companies verbally backed them. But this is only a defeat for the secret police leviathan in the sense that a grab for still more repressive power was stymied. The principle that corporations have to act as accomplices to the secret police in making cracker software was temporarily staved off. But no legal precedent was set, since the case was dropped. In practice however the secret police still strip all of us naked of any privacy every second of every day. And the tech companies, and especially the phone companies, are still almost fully cooperative with the secret police, as they have been ever since the invention of the telephone. (The telegraph too, for that matter.)

We'll see what repercussions, if any, will be visited on Apple CEO Tim Cook for his effrontery. Remember what happened to the head of Qwest Communications, Joseph Nacchio, when at the beginning of the regime of Bush the Younger, the NSA went around to all the telecoms to tap into their networks illegally. Nacchio said Sure, just show us the warrant. He was the ONLY telecom exec to require a warrant. The NSA said Never Mind, and the next thing that happened was the Federal government found an excuse to indict Nacchio on a insider trading charge and he was socked with a 6 year stretch in prison.

By the way, the NSA was setting up this massive illegal spying in February 2001. That's 7 months before September 11, when agents of the U.S. Deep State, acting on the orders of Richard Cheney, blew up those three buildings at the World Trade Center, which has ever since been used as a justification for every state crime under the sun.

1] The San Bernardino massacre occurred December 2 of last year. The attack was carried out by a married ethnic Pakistani couple, who targeted an office party for the husband's co-workers, killing 14 of them. For details and background on the San Bernardino killers, see "Last Days: Preparing for the apocalypse in San Bernardino," New Yorker, February 22, 2016. For an interesting insight into how extremists go unnoticed by people who know them, see "San Bernardino and the Mechanics of a Double Life," New Yorker, December 16, 2015. This also refutes the demagogues who insist that the Muslim "community" shelters and hides terrorists.We just heard it again from the U.S. demagogues, including Donald Trump and the "talk" radio stormtrooper ranters, saying that the Muslims in Belgium "had to know" the terror suspects were among them. Like everybody knows who's hiding in a given apartment! It's called hiding for a reason.

Still Smearing the Anti-War Movement After All These Years

The spontaneous grassroots movement against the monstrous war on the three Indochinese nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, was one of the noblest occurrences in U.S. history. The power establishment reviled it at he time, simultaneously fearing and hating it. The view of those who rule was- and is- that the proper role of the citizenry is to be docile and obedient and willingly offer themselves up as cannon fodder in whatever imperialist war the masters decided on. It was certainly not to meddle in “policy decisions” made by the Wise Ones, and it was most certainly not to protest such policies. And attempting to reverse those evil policies was regarded as depraved and diabolical. [1]

Lest you think that “elite” attitudes have changed, today on a U.S. government-hosted propaganda show, “Fresh Air,” presented by Terry Gross and aired on the U.S. domestic radio network NPR, one Elaine Kamarck, a minor made member of the U.S. nomenklatura, casually tossed off the following slander with no demurral from the program host; that the anti-war movement “were out rioting” during the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago, Illinois. [2]

Actually, what really happened was “a police riot” that went on for a week! Those are the words of the official government-appointed commission that reviewed the matter! But inconvenient history is routinely tossed down the memory hole and replaced with lies by the U.S. commentariat. The Chicago police, under the rule of the corrupt, iron-fisted political boss Mayor Richard Daley, brutally attacked protesters assembled in a park and on the street, tear-gassed the delegates of the anti-war candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy in their hotel (the CIA had assassinated Robert Kennedy in June, who otherwise would have won the nomination and the election against Nixon), and even punched CBS reporter Dan Rather in the stomach on the convention floor on live television. [3]

But pseudo-scholar Kamarck tells us it was a “riot” by protesters.[4]

Anyway, that cheap shot was just a gratuitous sideswipe. Kamarck was brought on to explain to us how the electoral primary process works. And who better to give an objective explanation than a Hillary Clinton superdelegate, which is what Kamarck is! Kamarck is also the perfect person to tell us why superdelegates are necessary, which she proceeds to do. (Clinton started with over 500 superdelegates before the first primary. It's like a race with one person having a hundred yard- or meter- headstart.)

You see, when the grip of rightwing corporatist party bosses, the kind who are aggressive imperialists, was broken after Senator George McGovern managed to get the party's presidential nomination in 1972, the result was, according to Kamarck, “a lot of uncertainty and chaos.” Chaos! And horror of horrors, machine hack pols weren't going to the convention as delegates! And they were sorely needed as “leaders,” according to both Kamarck and Gross. So in 1982 something called the Hunt Commission was formed, to reempower the machine party hacks. Oh, by the way, Kamarck was a member of the Hunt Commission. Just an irrelevant coincidence. I'm sure it in no way biases her version of history and contemporary politics.

Look, if you're interested in the rest of the Democratic Party establishment propaganda that party machine apparatchik Kamarck spoon-fed to Terry Gross's audience, you can go online and listen to it. Obviously she is not a reliable source for an objective picture of reality.

Kamarck is one of these barnacles who is permanently attached to institutions of power. She was a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where the curriculum can be summed up as How To Rule. Currently she is ensconced at the Brookings Institution, where she is the director of a thing called the “Center for Effective Public Management.” She was a “Senior Policy Advisor” to rightwing Democratic Leadership Council politician Albert Gore when he was vice president under the first (and hopefully only) Clinton regime, and also during his 2000 presidential campaign, which he and the Democratic Party allowed to be stolen by the Gang Of Plunderers (GOP).

Which reminds me of another piece of Democratic Party “history,” namely their canard that Ralph Nader cost Gore the election. Absurd bullshit in so many ways.

Clinton, whose power circle Kamarck belongs to, helped commit much evil as co-president with her husband from January 1993 to January 2001. They helped spur a massive increase in the prison population. They gutted welfare, imposing a 5-year lifetime limit on aid, among other things. When Bill Clinton's war secretary, Les Aspin, wanted to intervene to stop the genocidal ethnic cleansing being carried out by the Serbs, Hillary stopped her. Her political and personal partner Bill is responsible for three mass murders: the killing of thousands in Haiti by Fraph, a CIA-controlled terrorist organization; the deaths of thousands for lack of medicines when Clinton blew up the just-completed first and only pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, pretending it was an “Al-Qaeda biological warfare factory;” and blocking the UN from sending requested reinforcements to the peacekeepers in Rwanda just before the ensuing massacre of hundreds of thousands.

As Obama's Secretary of Sate, Clinton helped protect the Honduran military coup that overthrew the elected president Manuel Zelaya and instituted the current reign of terror, under which hundreds have been murdered, most recently two environmental activists. Clinton brags of her role in legitimizing the coup with a sham election and blocking EU interference in her recent book.

As is obvious from just this brief synopsis of her crimes, Hillary Clinton is evil, and anyone allied with her and helping her in her quest for power, is aiding and abetting evil.

1] Lyndon Johnson literally believed that the anti-war movement was the creation of Moscow, and ordered the CIA to uncover the “links” to prove it. As if millions of Americans were marching in the streets against U.S. barbarism on the command of the Kremlin! This mad conspiracy theory is never ridiculed, whereas establishment polemicists and media hacks regularly ridicule those speaking true facts about the Kennedy assassinations or the demolition of three buildings at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan on September 11 of 2001, for example.

2] “The Mind-Boggling Story Of Our Arcane And Convoluted 'Primary Politics',” NPR, “Elections.” As I said, the show is called “Fresh Air,” and is hosted by Terry Gross. The day's segment is described thusly: “Author Elaine Kamarck explains superdelegates, the difference between caucuses and primaries, what happens in a brokered convention and how the rules of primaries can sometimes change.”

Conveniently, NPR and Gross arranged things so you can buy Kamarck's book directly from a link on top of the NPR/Fresh Air program page. In case you still didn't purchase a copy, there's also a link on top of her bio page at Brookings. The book is “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.” So you don't need to think. She'll tell you “everything you need to know.”
Or rather, what she and her ilk want you to believe.

Both the book and Kamarck's and Gross' dog and pony show are junior high school civics class-style propaganda aimed at adults. Apparently one can have cushy career spushing such pablum.

The underlying gimmick of Fresh Air is typical of NPR; appearing to be “thoughtful” and “in depth” and giving off a vaguely liberal odor, while in fact often being quite reactionary. The day before, Gross had on Fred Kaplan, a reactionary who is more subtle than most U.S. reactionaries, the better to brainwash people in his hawkish ideology. Both a militarist and a supporter of police state powers, Kaplan feigns neutrality and objectivity. (Not exactly an original ploy.)

3] National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, aka The Walker Report. The commission was chaired by Milton Eisenhower, brother of former president and general Dwight David Eisenhower. Its over 200 members interviewed more than 1,400 witnesses and reviewed film and FBI documents. Here are excerpts:

“The nature of the [police response] response was unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence on many occasions, particularly at night. That violence was made all the more shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators, onlookers, and large numbers of residents who were simply passing through, or happened to live in, the areas where confrontations were occurring.”

“Newsmen and photographers were singled out for assault, and their equipment deliberately damaged. Fundamental police training was ignored; and officers, when on the scene, were often unable to control their men. As one police officer put it: “What happened didn’t have anything to do with police work.”

In other words, standard U.S. police procedure in treating protesters (and bystanders) whose message the power structure despises. Something we've seen many times before and since.

4] Kamarck's bio on the Brookings Institution website presents her thusly:

'Elaine C. Kamarck is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings. ['Effective Public Management' being a euphemism for How To Rule, like 'governance.'] She is a public sector scholar with wide experience in government, academia and politics. Kamarck is an expert on government innovation and reform [sic! Anti-reform, reaction against reform more like it!] in the United States, OECD countries and developing countries. In addition, she also focuses her research on the presidential nomination system and American politics and has worked in many American presidential campaigns. Kamarck is the author of 'Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.'"

She is listed as “Founding Director” of that Center.

Senior Fellow at Brookings, Senior Policy Advisor to Al Gore, past Senior Fellow at the Progressive [sic] Policy Institute, Senior This, Senior That- are there any Junior Fellows at these joints? I've never come across one. Apparently they aren't allowed out in public. (They might upstage the Senior ones, I guess. Can't let that happen.)

Brookings is considered “liberal” in the U.S., even though it is pro-U.S. imperialism and corporatist to its core, simply because it isn't rabidly reactionary like the Heritage Foundation or numerous other propaganda mills are. The business of these propaganda mills is to traffic in “expertise” designed to influence government policy in the desired direction. They are political pressure groups disguised as centers of scholarship. (Brookings website actually uses the .edu suffix, reserved for educational institutions. How presumptuous. You ain't no school, Brookings.)

Elaine C. Kamarck

Don't worry your pretty little heads trying to figure out politics, folks. I'll tell you what to think.

Terry Gross. That's odd, she looks “liberal.”

Western Propagandists Hail Pointless Saudi “Election”

Well break out the champagne! (Actually you better not- alcohol is a crime in Saudi Arabia.)

Saudi Arabia held an “election” in which they actually let women vote!

So pay no attention to all those weekly beheadings for “sorcery,” “witchcraft,” adultery, “blasphemy,” drugs, apostasy (deciding you'd really rather not be a Muslim anymore) and daring to question the absolute power of the “King” and the fanatical dogmatist religious “authorities” who are a key bulwark of the rule of the gang of superparasites called “the royal family. See, Saudi Arabia is making “progress.”

What can one possibly “elect” in a nation ruled by an absolute hereditary dictator? Well, there were various local offices, people responsible for picking up the garbage and such.

Of course, most women didn't even know about this Great Opportunity to Make Their Voices Heard. And even if they had, some male in their family who controls their lives would have had to agree to drive them to the polls. (Women are banned, by criminal law, from driving. Oh, they also need to be accompanied by a male chaperon in public, lest they run off and copulate in an unauthorized fashion.)

But as I said, Western propagandists were quick to celebrate. The U.S. government propaganda network NPR was particularly disgusting in this regard, practically releasing party balloons in celebration of the alleged milestone. (But in fact, a crudely cynical, meaningless stunt, with the purpose of tossing some pathetically threadbare camouflage over the true nature of the regime as extremely oppressive, deeply misogynist, and absolutely autocratic.) As far as reporting on the vicious repression, such as the coming execution of teenage protesters (after beheading, the heads to be sewn on and the bodies crucified, as an object lesson to anyone else with a complaint).

The truth is, in terms of atrocities, Saudi Arabia is arguably worst than ISIS. Note the sickening hypocrisy of “the West” in terms of its attitudes towards one and the other.

The idea that “the West” has any values other than greed, materialism, and the most cynical lust for power is shown to be ludicrous by its longstanding relations with this barbaric, feudal desert hellhole.

As usual, the “West” is a major aider and abettor of repression, with training of secret police and the military, provision of weaponry and the instruments of repression. Obama just hailed the appointment of Saudi Arabia to the UN Human Rights commission, (a very sick joke indeed).

Speaking of women in Saudi Arabia, the women they import from poor countries as virtual domestic slaves are subject to all kinds of cruelties, including beheading on trumped-up charges.

You have to go to media outsiders for the facts. Or to human rights groups like Amnesty International.

Harry Shearer regularly covers Saudi awfulness on his weekly radio program Le Show. (Archived at harryshearer.com). Look for the “Le Show” tab at the top.

Abby Martin devoted one of her new program's episodes to the vicious nature of Saudi Arabia and the history of U.S. cohabitation in a shared political bed. [“Inside Saudi Arabia: Butchery, Slavery & History of Revolt // Empire_File005.”]

Check it out. It's worse than you think.

The Incredible Invisible Repression of Protest At the Climate Change “Summit”

We've just had two weeks of daily “coverage” of the big bosses (aka “world leaders”) holding a hot air “summit” in Paris to once again go through the motions of trying to agree to do something about the global warming being caused by the emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels (mainly oil and coal). They ultimately birthed a statement, after much labor, setting a “goal” of limiting global warming to 2 degrees centigrade, or maybe 1.5. 196 nations signed the non-binding, unenforceable “agreement.” In other words, they agreed to fine sentiments, as if they all got together to sign a Get Well Soon card to the earth.

Thanks.

For this, they heartily congratulated themselves (self-congratulations echoed in government propaganda media such as NPR- U.S. and BBC- UK).

But the saturation media coverage somehow missed the repression of protest, which was banned at the conference. Using the excuse of the recent terrorist attacks weeks earlier, the French state upheld the much-ballyhooed “values” of “the West” by acting worse than Putin or the Chinese rulers. Only at the very end did several thousand gather miles away from the conference to vent by marching in the streets.

Not only was the total repression of protest not fit for a story in the establishment propaganda system, it wasn't even fit for passing mention. Truly, the “West” has the most effective and efficient repressive apparatuses in the world. Because the repression itself is repressed. That is, it is seemingly invisible, allowing the oppressors to pretend it is nonexistent.

Yogi Berra Is Dead. Endearing Baseball Figure A Factor In American Sentimentality Towards the Sport

Former New York Yankee catcher and manager Berra was 90. He was inducted into the baseball industry's “Hall of Fame.” He was also a part of ten so-called World Series Championships won by the team. (Only U.S. teams that are part of the cartel named Major League Baseball are actually allowed to compete for the series, so “World” is simply false.)

Who couldn't like Yogi Berra? A charming clown who was catnip for sportswriters, Berra, a former catcher and later manager in baseball, was given to utterances that amused by being blindingly obvious or displaying a fractured logic.

Let's revisit some of Berra's funny utterances that were made into memorable sayings by media repetition:

“You can observe a lot by just watching.” -Can't argue with that.

“If you come to a folk in the road, take it.” -Uhh, could you be more specific?

“We made too many wrong mistakes.” -And not enough right ones, apparently.

“Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.” -Well, math wasn't his strong point. Let's grant that.

“You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.” -Okay, ratios are confusing to the math-challenged.

“I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four.” -Like I said, weak on math. On basic arithmetic, come to think of it.

“We have deep depth.” -That's the best kind of depth, too.

“You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there.” -Kinda true, in a Mobius-strip-logic sort of way.

“Pair up in threes.” -He did have his own concept of math, remember.

“You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you.” -Unarguably true.

“Even Napoleon had his Watergate.” -Indeed. Funny thing, that.

“I don't know (if they were men or women fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads.” -He shoulda tooken* his own advice and just watched them to observe a lot. (*Yeah, I channeled a bit of Yogi's penchant for grammatical malapropism there.)

“Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel.” -I don't see anything wrong with that one, actually. If by “good” one means overpriced brand-name luggage.

“It's like déjà vu all over again.” -No list of Yogisms is complete without that masterpiece of redundancy. Or complete until it's finished. But what if the déjà vu you experienced was of a previous episode of déjà vu? A mental roomful of mirrors? It'd be like you're seeing yourself seeing yourself, if you get what I mean. You can't look in a mirror without a mirror.

And then there's the ever-useful- “It ain't over 'till it's over.” -Actually a good thing to remember in some situations.

But this next one makes me wonder if our oh-so-trustworthy establishment media might have made up a few of “Yogi's” utterances, or at least “perfected” them: 

“I never said most of the things I said.” -Clearly he was grammatically challenged. Read that as “the things attributed to me,” and it makes perfect sense, of course. [ESPN has posted a video with a talking head insisting that Berra did so say the things he denied saying. Is this a case of the media protesting too much?]

Berra could almost seem like a wise fool. Another character whose existence as a media character, Casey Stengel, another media-concocted character, similarly came across as an offbeat player/baseball figure who was innately likable and charmingly idiosyncratic. [Stengel had some things to say about Berra, such as "He'd fall in a sewer and come up with a gold watch." Sounds like a comment that speaks volumes about Berra's favor with the Gods of Social Good Fortune.]

These characters, real people who were also creations of the baseball business and collaborating sportswriters and broadcasters, helped create and perpetuate the sentimental feelings people have towards the game. Along with “baseball lore” and sports pieces “recalling” decades-old games and characters and “legends” (perhaps literally legend), all this has created a cloud of sentimentality around professional baseball, which attracts people, cements fan loyalty, and manufactures an ersatz community. Hence you see people wearing baseball caps on city streets to proclaim their local loyalty and give themselves a feeling of belonging, even though they actually exist in a state of alienation in an atomized urban environment. (I have been observing this first-hand for decades, just by watching. You can see a lot that way.) But all they're really doing is consuming an entertainment product (while politicians pick our pockets to buy billion dollar stadiums for billionaire team owners).

And distracting yourself from the important business of politics and economics and the structure of the society you live in.

But hey, go ahead and kick back and watch a game. Nothing wrong with entertainment and leisure, in moderation. Promoting obsession with sports- that is, not with playing or genuinely participating, but with voyeuristic spectating- is the business of ESPN, “sports” radio yak shows, the sports sections of newspapers and sports mags like Sports Illustrated. There's a huge and profitable industry around sports in general, which also serves a political function of distraction and neutralization of a large part of the populace.

“A lot of guys go, 'Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism.' I tell 'em, 'I don't know any.' They want me to make one up. I don't make 'em up. I don't even know when I say it. They're the truth. And it is the truth. I don't know.”

So long, Yogi. You'll live on in our hearts forever. (That's not really true. We're all gonna be dead someday. Just like you. But you'll “live on” as long as there's a U.S. media and it chooses to flog “your memory”- actually their maudlin rehashings of the legend they created around you. Assuming there's a buck to be made.)

I checked three sites for quotes, and all had the same 50 ones, only in different orders. Which adds to evidence that “Yogi Berra” wasn't just an actual person, but also a media concoction.

There isn't even consensus on how tall he was- a basic fact. A commentator who's “met him a million times” says he was 5'7”. Elsewhere his height is cited as 5'8”.

Keep in mind that much sports commentary and lore is literally legendary, that is, apocryphal or mythical- plus U.S. media is generally unreliable.

The simplest list is at “Yogi Berra's 50 greatest quotes,” Detroit Free Press.

For the same quotes and career overview, there's “Yogi Berra quotes: ESPN.com celebrates the wit, wisdom of a baseball legend.”

The rightwing tabloid rag New York Daily News, owned by Canadian Jewish real estate billionaire and ardent Zionist propagandist Mortimer B. Zuckerman grouped the quotes by topic, and has a timeline of Berra's life and career. “Yogi Berra's most famous quotes: The wit and wisdom of the late Yankees legend.”

For the same (but fewer) quotes, with the addition of quotes by other ballplayers about Berra, see “Yogi Berra Quotes,” Baseball Almanac.

Ben Carson's "Me-Too-ism!" Islamophobia

Exemplary role-model-black Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon with reactionary politics who thinks he'd make a good president and is running for the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) nomination for president, has wasted no time in tailing after Donald Trump's rank demagogic demonization of Muslims. Three days after Trump egged on a demented Muslim-hater at a rally in New Hampshire, the hitherto obscure Carson (as with so many reactionaries, the corporate media is working diligently to build up his public profile) was invited onto one of the Sunday morning political propaganda shows (NBC's Meet the Press) and delivered unto us his mild-mannered version of Muslim-bashing. He opined that no Muslim should be president because Islam is "incompatible with the Constitution." He didn't bother to explain why Islam (and not, say, Christianity, or Hinduism, or Buddhism) is "incompatible." The NBC propagandist hack doing a burlesque of a journalist, Chuck Todd, saw no reason to ask the rather obvious question, "How is it incompatible?" Off the top of my head, I can't think of a reason.

[Other obscure reactionaries the U.S. media has built up and made (in)famous include the crackpot sleazeball Dinesh D'Souza, a convicted criminal; fascist harridan and vicious provocateur Ann Coulter; and bizarre far-rightwing crazed former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, one of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives who was singled out for constant television appearances.]

Let us now compare the anti-Muslim invective of the Trump event to the "kinder and gentler" Carson echo of that Islamophobia.

Here's a transcript from the audio of the New Hampshire "town hall" meeting September 17th. (Emphases are speakers.')

Trump: "And we're gonna have some fun now because instead of making the speech which I've been doing over and over and over" [he's going to take questions instead.]

Trump: “Okay this man I like this guy,” pointing to the very first questioner.

Deranged Islamophobe: “[Inaudible] from White Plains. Amen. Okay. We have a problem in this country, it's called Muslims. We know our, current [he spits the word "current" with contempt] president is one. You know he’s not even an American.”

Trump: “We need this question.”

Deranged Islamophobe: “Birth certificate [inaudible]. But anyway, we have training camps, growing, where they want to kill us."
  
Trump: "Hmm-hmm."

Deranged Islamophobe: "That’s my question: When can we get rid of them.” [Like Hitler "got rid of" "the Jews"? Deportation and...?]


Trump: "We're gonna be looking at a lot of different things. And you know a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying, that bad things are happening out there we're gonna be looking at that and plenty of other things."

Notice Trump's vague threat at the end. Plenty of  WHAT "things"?  [Audio clip here.]

When I did an Internet search for the details of the incident at the "town hall" meeting with the racist reactionary xenophobe and Trump, many headlines on numerous major corporate media stories were exactly the same, the anodyne "Trump declines to correct man who says Obama is Muslim."

Well, that's certainly putting it mildly. He also "declined to correct" the man that Obama IS American, and that "Muslims" do NOT have terrorist training camps in the U.S. from which they are preparing to "kill us." Those characterizations of the "encounter," an encounter in which Trump didn't merely passively "decline to correct" the man, but enthusiastically egged him on ("I like this guy," "we need this," etc.) and then acted as if he agreed and promised to do something (unspecified as usual with Trump) about the deadly Muslims (all of them want to kill us according to the deranged hater, who said "Muslims" are the "problem" "we" have in America)- those media characterizations are so watered down and so minimize the violent derangement of the man (who obviously is a public menace and may well bomb or shoot Muslims or Sikhs- his ilk can't tell the difference and in fact have killed some American Sikhs already- and may well have already vandalized "Muslim" targets) that they verge on a cover-up.

Trump is a dangerous demagogue who incites and encourages violently delusional emotions among the xenophobes, racists, anti-Muslim bigots, white supremacists (who have been endorsing them on their websites) and American fascists. Whose numbers are constantly inflated by the corporate media, that always tries to give the impression that the majority of Americans are "conservative" (meaning reactionary). This is a manipulative play on people's naturally conformist tendencies in order to drive the public ever farther to the right. People are told year after year how everyone else is "conservative," and they unconsciously conform their own attitudes to what the propaganda is telling them. This is how the corporate media has eliminated abortion in 90% of U.S. counties, and why the abortion-haters are on the verge of driving a stake into the heart of legal abortion in most of the U.S. (Of course, abortion itself will never be eliminated. It will just revert to the butchery of illegal abortion.)

U.S. corporate media constantly inflate the size and influence of the reactionary grass roots. For example, Trump is polling at about 29% support among Republican voters. Now Republicans are about 20% of U.S. registered voters. So Trump is backed by less than a third of 20%- around SIX percent of the voters. But the impression the media gives is that there's a huge groundswell behind Trump.

It just ain't so.

But he can still win GOP primaries, of course, and/or amass enough delegates to either get the GOP nomination or exact a steep price from the party. (He's a fantastic dealmaker, you know. He even says so himself! In fact, he wrote a book, The Art of the Deal, in order to boast about- I mean, to share his secrets of dealmaking with you.)

While inflating their numbers, major media has also always minimized the deranged, delusional, dangerous, and violent mindset of these indigenous fascists in order to legitimize them.  Instead of marginalizing, or even criticizing rightwing and racist fanatics, (much less demonizing, as they do with leftists, black militants, "terrorists," "communists," "criminals," "welfare cheats," "drug pushers," "sex offenders," or whatever group- homosexuals used to be one of the groups targeted for hatred-incitement), the corporate propaganda system treats them as a respectable part of the political spectrum, whose deranged ideas are legitimate.

This is part of the long-term policy of that media in pushing the U.S. and public opinion to the right.

And as part of filtering out anyone with progressive impulses from attaining the presidency, "the" media has decreed that the first hurdle- barrier, actually- to anyone being a "serious" candidate for president is to win or do well in two very small, virtually all-white, reactionary and unrepresentative states, Iowa and New Hampshire. FIRST you must pass muster with a bunch of white reactionaries to be a "credible" candidate.

I have long been frustrated that this very obvious fact is ignored by those who should be loudly denouncing it- namely alleged progressives and leftists. That's true of The Nation magazine, which marks the left side boundary of the establishment political spectrum and acts as a get-out-the-vote auxiliary for the Democratic Party. (They really made that obvious by their hysterical attacks on Ralph Nader for daring to run for president. The Nation's plan for political change is to preserve the two-party corporate dictatorship in perpetuity and always force us into the Hobbesian choice of voting for the allegedly "lesser" evil- which has brought us to where we are today, a total police state which has written into law the "right" to imprison  its citizens indefinitely in military detention with charges or trial, signed by the Great Redeemer Barack Obama.) It is true of the "alternative" media. There should be a hammering away every four years on this scam. Instead the sheep are left undisturbed in their slumber.

The idea that two tiny, white, reactionary states have near-veto power over who can run for president should be loudly mocked at every opportunity. But maybe some people who pretend to want "change" really don't want to shake up or even challenge the system. I suggest they stop faking it then. Defrauding the public is unethical.

“Don't worry, this Islamophobia I'm injecting into the body politic won't hurt a bit.”

 

Why, if you closed your eyes, you'd think you were listening to a white racist! Fancy that!

Murdoch Brings Back Into the Fold The Woman He Wishes Was His Daughter

Rupert Murdoch, the ruthless, ethics-free, arch-reactionary global media baron and political kingmaker (and breaker), has apparently hired back his political hitwoman Rebekah Brooks. 

Brooks used to run Murdoch's United Kingdom print propaganda operations as chief executive of "News International," a role she was forced to step down from after being criminally indicted in the massive phone-hacking and police bribery scandal of Murdoch's Minions in "Great" Britain.

Now, according to the UK's Financial Times (cited by Reuters), Brooks will be back in her old executive chair, as boss of all of Murdoch's British “news”papers. There she will resume her former duties of overseeing the poisoning of the British public mind with neo-fascist agitprop, political slander and vituperation directed at opponents of Murdoch and at any public figure with the slightest evidence of a progressive tendency; tawdry sexual titillation and innuendo (often with hypocritical puritanical denunciation included); and celebrity and “royals” tittle-tattle and trivia to distract the moronic masses, plus combinations of the above. [1]

No doubt Brooks will be handsomely remunerated. Murdoch previously gave her a going-away present of 16.1 million British pounds when she resigned her post in Murdoch's empire. (At the exchange rate on the date she resigned, July 15, 2011, of around $1.615 per pound, that's about $26 million. Of course she didn't get the money on that exact date. On top of that, Murdoch paid her lawyers fees, probably over a million pounds. Not bad for doing your boss' dirty work.)

It's been widely reported that Murdoch has a paternal affection for Brooks. He has stood staunchly behind her through the years-long scandal as she twisted and turned like a greased eel and ultimately succeeded in lying her way out of a jam. (Lower-ranked minions of Murdoch weren't so fortunate, some going to prison for short stints.) [2]

Murdoch's actual biological daughter, Elisabeth, apparently has some ethical standards (thus indicating that morality is not genetic) and has even offered some veiled criticism of her father's media practices in public. She has kept a greater distance from the Great Man than has his sons. Murdoch's mother is also named Elisabeth, so presumably he named his daughter after his Mum. 

But with Brooks, the years of closeness, the fact that they have matching personalities (completely ruthless, and free of the burden of a pesky conscience) and amoral-reactionary politics, and the great trust Murdoch places in her, plus the tremendous support he has provided her rather than treating her as expendable as he did his other underlings caught in scandal, whom he unsentimentally threw overboard, and adding the descriptions of people in a position to observe the relationship, leads one reasonably to the conclusion that Rebekah is The Daughter Rupert wishes he had had.

Rebekah and Rupert, Together Again at Last.

Another person who privately stood foursquare behind Brooks during her period of tribulation (and apparently has a soft-spot for her) is the current Prime Minister of Britain, the Tory toff David Cameron, a social friend of Brooks. The two met at least several dozen times over a period of several years, and apparently exchanged numerous emails and texts- most of them kept hidden by Cameron and his accomplices. Obviously both share reactionary politics also. [3] 

 

“I don't want them to see what I'm hiding behind my back.” British

ruling class toff and prime minister David Cameron.

Brooks is a woman who had wormed her way into the British elite, socially and politically. Her precise social standing currently is opaque to his outsider and not-close observer of British society. I will leave that to others to analyze.

Murdoch waited a decent interval, about one year, after Brooks' unjust acquittal in her trial to openly bring her back on board his pirate vessel. (The evidence of her guilt is overwhelming. Andy Coulson, one of her former underlings and a co-defendant at trial, who was formerly the top Murdoch editor at News [sic] of the World, and later chief propagandist for Tory Prime Minister David Cameron- yes, him again- was not so lucky.) [Footnote 2.]

 Coppers can't lay a hand on her.

Speaking of Crime and No Punishment, throughout his career as a global propaganda czar, Murdoch has personally been above the law, as his enterprises mostly have been.

In the UK scandal, Murdoch's U.S. parent corporation was in blatant violation of U.S. law against bribing foreign officials. Also his minions hacked some victims' phones on U.S. soil.
Yet, with utter predictability, the Obama regime refused to prosecute “News” Corp. for the very blatant violation of the Federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which criminalizes US companies from even attempting to bribe foreign officials, let alone succeeding. (British police officials were regular recipients of Murdoch bribes.)

In typical smarmy fashion, the Obama regime kept the news as quiet as possible (it came out in a corporate filing by Murdoch's “News” Corp. in the U.S.), reneging on a promise to keep his stateside victims apprised of the progress of the “investigation.” [4]

Contrast that with Obama's and Holder's (Loretta Lynch going forward) targeting of journalists and persecution of whistleblowers. There's the secret indictment of Julian Assange, the lawless attacks on the finances of Wikileaks, the mass tapping of the Associated Press's telephones, the targeting of a Fox News (irony there) reporter in a criminal “investigation,” the persecution of government whistleblowers, and most recently, the adoption of a new Pentagon policy of assassinating journalists they don't like, labeling them “unprivileged belligerents” in official military doctrine. [5] 

 

And then there was the assassination of Michael Hastings.

Other examples of Murdochian lawbreaking with impunity was his illegal ownership of TV stations when his corporation was still Australian, before he incorporated in the U.S.; his illegal ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same cities; one of his companies hacking into the computers of a rival company, a much more serious crime than what the U.S. wanted to send Aaron Swartz away for 30 years over; his companies "non-profit" and thus non-taxable status in New York State; and probably a lot lot more.

But the Federal government has more important things to do- like locking up marijuana sellers. (And under Obama, locking up medical marijuana clinic owners too. Thanks, President Choom Gang! Great to see you on the job!) 

Reason to be Cheerful: Look Ma, I'm Above the Law!

But Hold the presses! Murdoch's criminal legal troubles in Britain may have another chapter or few to run. See “Phone hacking: CPS may bring corporate charges against Murdoch publisher- Metropolitan police hands over file of evidence on Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm to Crown Prosecution Service,” Guardian, 28 August, 2015.

Let's hope.

“That's right, reactionary plutocrats like me should rightly rule the world! What of it!”

1] “UPDATE 3-Rebekah Brooks returning to News Corp as UK chief – FT,” Reuters, August 28, 2015. In March it was reported that Brooks was being set up in a U.S. position by Murdoch. Possibly that was a trial balloon surreptitiously floated by Murdoch himself, either by him making a “casual” comment to someone through whom he knew it would get into the media, or by his minions “leaking.” See "Rebekah Brooks about to be rehired by Rupert Murdoch for US operation, "Guardian (UK), 1 March, 2015.

2] Andy Coulson, who admitted to listening to stolen voicemails of David Blunkett to his mistress, only has to serve less than 9 months in jail. The former top editor of the Murdoch Sunday rag News [sic] of the World, where thousands of private messages of other people were surreptitiously stolen, was sentenced to 18 months, less than the 2 year maximum, and since he's a “non-violent” offender, he automatically only has to serve half, with additional reductions. Blunkett was a cabinet minister, the “Home Secretary,” similar to an Interior Minister or the U.S. Attorney General, that is, a guy in charge of internal security/domestic repression. The voicemails were publicized and used by Murdoch's minions to force Blunkett from office. Numerous subordinate editors and reporters were also mildly sentenced. Most pled guilty. For the various sentences, see e.g. “Andy Coulson jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones,” Guardian, 4 July, 2014, an inaccurate title since the article reports he'll only have to serve under 9 momths; “Andy Coulson sentenced for 18 months in phone hacking trial,” UK Telegraph, 4 July, 2014; “Jules Stenson admits phone hacking at News of the World,” Telegraph, 12 December, 2014.

3] See e.g. "David Cameron put on the spot by cosy texts to Rebekah Brooks: Messages about horse riding and conference speech from cache of texts and emails handed over to Leveson inquiry," Guardian, 3 November, 2012.
This was only a fraction of Cameron's texts exchanged with Brooks, as he kept the rest hidden on the Leveson inquiry commission set up to ostensibly get to the bottom of the Murdoch empire scandal, which involved deep and numerous ties with the top echelons of British power and with the police at various levels, including bribery and police coverups of the crimes of Murdoch's minions. See “David Cameron acknowledges there may be more Rebekah Brooks texts,” Guardian, 4 November, 2012.

4] “News Corp won't be prosecuted in US in relation to phone hacking,” Guardian, 2 February, 2015.

5] For an overview of some of the Obama regime's depredations against actual journalists, see “Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America,” Committee to Protect Journalists, October 10, 2013. 
 
For the Pentagon's new “kill reporters who don't toe our line” policy, see “Bush Created 'Enemy Combatants.' Now Obama Has Invented 'Unprivileged Belligerents, Formerly Known as Journalists,” August 11, 2015, and “From The Horse's Mouth: Pentagon Lawyer Confirms Targeting of Journalists,” August 16, 2015

From The Horse's Mouth: Pentagon Lawyer Confirms Targeting of Journalists

"The term 'unprivileged belligerent is pretty much the same as 'unlawful enemy combatant,'" says Charles A. Allen, the Pentagon's "deputy general counsel for international affairs," in an interview on "On the Media" conducted by host Bob Garfield, an advertising industry veteran. [1]

But not to worry. The U.S. military is only going to kill journalists who have "abandoned" their status as journalists and become spies, enemies. There would be "research" before murdering a journalist, to make sure he/she wasn't entitled to be called a journalist but rather "a member of enemy forces."

Like the four times they bombed Al-Jazeera offices. And shelled the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. And murdered various journalists.

And they and/or the CIA assassinated Michael Hastings. Hastings was considered an enemy by the military after his Rolling Stone article on general Stanley McChrystal exposed the deep contempt McChrystal and his officer staff had for their nominal civilian commanders, the president and vice president of the United States. [2]

The U.S. military has regarded the media generally as "enemies" ever since the Vietnam War. Cadets at West Point are even inculcated with hatred for the media, according to a female instructor there.
The interview consisted of a lot of bland-sounding blather and verbiage from Allen, delivered in a low-key tone, designed to pacify and disarm. Garfield wasn't able to effectively pierce this cotton candy rhetorical shield.

Just as torture isn't torture, it's "enhanced interrogation techniques," journalists aren't journalists when the U.S. military decides to kill them, they're "unprivileged belligerents" and "members of enemy forces," another term Allen used.

Naturally Allen had to feed us some whoppers, like the military's "strong cooperation with the media." Translation: cheerleading flagwaving media nationalistic shills get fed Pentagon propaganda, which they duly broadcast at top volume.

1] "When A Journalist Becomes An 'Unprivileged Belligerent,'" On The Media, August 14, 2015. On The Media is a weekly radio program hosted by NPR affiliate WNYC.

Here's a link to the podcast:
http://www.onthemedia.org/feeds/tags/department_of_defense

See also: Bush Created "Enemy Combatants." Now Obama Has Invented "Unprivileged Belligerents," Formerly Known as Journalists, August 11, and Obama Regime Codifies Policy of Murdering Journalists U.S. Doesn't Like, August 10.

2] "The Runaway General," by Michael Hastings. Rolling Stone, June 22, 2010.