SubscribeFor example, on the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and I was asked, say, "Do you think Kadhafi is a terrorist?" I could say, "Yeah, Kadhafi is a terrorist." I don't need any evidence. Suppose I said, "George Bush is a terrorist." Well, then I would be expected to provide evidence, "Why would you say that?"Judging by many of the comments raised above, a lot of you haven't gotten a clue about mechanisms like this.
So that you aren't cut off right there.
In fact, the structure of the news production system is, you can't produce evidence. There's even a name for it -- I learned it from the producer of Nightline, Jeff Greenfield. It's called "concision." He was asked in an interview somewhere why they didn't have me on Nightline, and his answer was -- two answers. First of all, he says, "Well, he talks Turkish, and nobody understands it." But the other answer was, "He lacks concision." Which is correct, I agree with him. The kinds of things that I would say on Nightline, you can't say in one sentence because they depart from standard religion. If you want to repeat the religion, you can get away with it between two commercials. If you want to say something that questions the religion, you're expected to give evidence, and that you can't do between two commercials. So therefore you lack concision, so therefore you can't talk.
I think that's a terrific technique of propaganda. To impose concision is a way of virtually guaranteeing that the party line gets repeated over and over again, and that nothing else is heard.
source: a conversation with history
...what Congress should have done is add to Bush's blank check with comprehensive regulation to prevent this; criminal prosecution resources for the culprits on Wall Street; more power to the shareholders to control their company and restrain their bosses' excesses, real taxpayer equity, with good conditions and, finally, making them pay for it.cheers!
If you make the speculators pay for their own bailout, then there's a relief throughout America that there's some fairness coming out of Washington.
A 0.1 percent tax on security derivative transactions in one year -- it's going to be $500 trillion of transactions in one year -- is $500 billion. So that alone would make a sense of equity. And you wouldn't put it on the backs of the taxpayer.
England has that kind of tax, by the way, for years. FDR had it. We helped finance the Civil War with it. But after World War II, it was scrapped.
So people go into a store in all your areas where your show shows, and they buy necessities of life, and they pay 6 percent or 7 percent sales tax. Tomorrow, someone in Wall Street can buy a billion dollars of Exxon derivatives, pay no sales tax. That's where the fairness has to go...
You re-install comprehensive regulation. It was Clinton's deregulation, with the Republican support in 1999-2000, opened this huge speculative excess, number one.
And, number two, shareholders are stripped of any authority. It's a violation of capitalist principles for people who own their companies to have no control over their bosses. And their bosses go wild with self-enrichment schemes that the mainstream press has written about constantly. That's second.
And then, third -- this is very, very important -- that there's got to be justice. People are crying out against this gross unfairness, where these bosses on Wall Street tank their own companies, un-employ hundreds of thousands of workers, and jump ship into a golden lifeboat.
And then their companies demand that socialism in Washington -- think of the irony -- has to bail out corporate capitalism in Wall Street.
The only place left for capitalism in this country is small business, because they're free to go bankrupt. They don't get bailed out.
...more soldiers in Afghanistan and the Pakistan border is going to destabilize Pakistan. The National Intelligence Estimate of Mr. Bush just came out with a statement saying there's never been more violence and chaos in Afghanistan since 9/11.
So we have to look to wise people, like Ashraf Ghani, who is the finance minister for Karzai, the president, and who is a professor here in this country, a native Afghani, who says you've got to connect with the tribal leaders and give them and their people jobs, public works, security, and that will be the buffer against the people who just want chaos...
You know, give them the time. I'd have to ask people to contact our Web site for more details, VoteNader.org, where we have this elaborated -- we invite volunteers. We invite donations. We take no money from commercial interests.
But I know this area. My parents came from Lebanon at age 19. We know the language. We know the authority of the religious leaders, the tribal leaders is still intact. And that's what we have to do to it.
Any diminution of violence in recent months in Iraq have been due to realignments between these authority figures. And that's what we have to support, not more preferring one sectarian group over another, wheeling and dealing $100 bills, and the intrigue, and the revenge killings.
And, also, there's no way to knock the bottom out of the insurgency, which will ebb and rise, according to circumstances, than to eliminate the occupation of their country and give Iraq back to the Iraqis and their oil back.
And it would help if the U.S. government would support the peace movements in Israel and Palestine, which have worked out a two-state solution, which was somehow prohibited from appearing in Congress. They're off-limits to the two- party campaigns, Obama and McCain.
And it's disgracefully cowardly for these two people who are smart. I know them. They know what it takes to make peace between the Israelis and Palestine people.
A majority of Jewish-Americans, Arab-Americans want a two-state solution. So do the majority of the Israelis and the Palestinians. And, instead, both major candidates support the hard-liners.
You don't make peace by supporting the militaristic repression, occupation and colonization of Palestine.
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Maybe if we're lucky at the end of this election.
I must disagree with Chomsky. There is a gigantic difference between the two parties in this country. Chomsky interprets the absence of anyone agreeing with him to be a problem. Not so. Chomsky's done.
Nader spoke to an audience of 8 in New Hampshire the other day.
Just imagine if he hadn't run in 2000.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:12 PM on October 14, 2008