Dissent Mag

A Pentagon’s Who’s Who of Your Life
by Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch

Last Sunday, David Barstow of the New York Times revealed just how effectively the Pentagon orchestrated a propaganda campaign for “information dominance” when it came to the president’s various wars (and prisons). Pentagon officials, from the secretary of defense on down, put together a “rapid reaction force” of retired generals and other retired military officers (aka “message force multipliers” or “surrogates”).

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Project Censored

No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person”

With the approval of Congress and no outcry from corporate media, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, ushered in military commission law for US citizens and noncitizens alike.

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Published on Thursday, April 24, 2008 by the Christian Science Monitor

The 104-acre, 21-building enclave was cleared for occupancy recently and will open next month

by Howard LaFranchi

BAGHDAD - For the average American who will never see it, the new US Embassy in Baghdad may be little more than the Big Dig of the Tigris.

Like the infamous Boston highway project, the embassy is a mammoth development that is overbudget, overdue, and casts a whiff of corruption.

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Statement Initiated by Participants in the Climate Change - Social Change conference, Sydney, Australia, April 11-13, 2008

April 25, 2008 By Many Signatories
Source: MR Zine

The following statement was started by the participants in the Climate Change - Social Change conference. Anyone who agrees with it is welcome to add their signature, and an updated list of signatories will be issued on a regular basis (contact: <climateconf@greenleft.org.au>.).

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Dan Hamburg, Mirror Contributing Writer

George W. Bush is poised to order a massive aerial bombardment – possibly including tactical nuclear weapons – of up to 10,000 targets in Iran. The attack would be justified on grounds that Iran is interfering with U.S. efforts in Iraq and that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, a charge that was debunked last fall in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

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By JOHN STAUBER and SHELDON RAMPTON

David Barstow of the New York Times has written the first installment in what is already a stunning exposé of the Bush Administration’s most powerful propaganda weapon used to sell and manage the war on Iraq: the embedding of military propagandists directly into the TV networks as on-air commentators. We and others have long criticized the widespread TV network practice of hiring former military officials to serve as analysts, but even in our most cynical moments we did not anticipate how bad it was. Barstow has painstakingly documented how these analysts, most of them military industry consultants and lobbyists, were directly chosen, managed, coordinated and given their talking points by the Pentagon’s ministers of propaganda.

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José Can You See? Bush’s Trojan Taco

April 24, 2008 By Greg Palast
Source: TomPaine.com

Greg Palast’s ZSpace Page

While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in Pennsylvania, the President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the NAFTA Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.

You’re not supposed to know that - for two reasons:

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