Back to newsletter listDate:
Sun, December 02, 2007 11:18:59 PMFrom:
MediaChannel.org
Subject:
NEWS DISSECTOR: FEARS OF MORE BAD NEWS ON US ECONOMY; PUTIN WINS, HUGO AHEAD
NEWS DISSECTOR December 3, 2007
FEARS OF MORE BAD NEWS ON US ECONOMY; PUTIN WINS, HUGO AHEAD
PUTIN WINS, CZARS ROLL OVER IN PRAISE
CHAVEZ AHEAD AS CIA PLOTS BEHIND THE SCENES
DISSECTING MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE CREDIT CRISIS
Putin won in Russia and Chavez seemed to be winning his bid for a new Constitution and more power in Venezuela when I was writing. The exit polls showed him ahead. There is apparently some evidence for his fears of a CIA plot against him. Recall he threatened to cutt off oil to the US if the CIA undermined the election.
First there was the CNN "mistake:" as Eva Glolnger reported on the Venezuela Analyis site website:
"Last night CNN en Español aired the above image, which captions at the bottom "Who Killed him?" by "accident". The image of President Chavez with the caption about killing him below, which some could say subliminally incites to assassination, was a "production error" mistakenly made in the CNN en Español newsroom. The news anchor had been narrarating a story about the situation between Colombia and Venezuela and then switched to a story about an unsolved homicide but - oops - someone forgot to change the screen image and President Chavez was left with the killing statement below. Today they apologized and admitted it was a rather "unfortunate" and "regrettable" mistake. Yes, it was.
Latin American expert James Petras discussed a more serious disclosure:
On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007.
The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled 'Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer' and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym 'HUMINT' (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA's polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per cent abstention.
The US operatives emphasized their capacity to recruit former Chavez supporters among the social democrats (PODEMOS) and the former Minister of Defense Baduel, claiming to have reduced the 'yes' vote by 6 per cent from its original margin. Nevertheless the Embassy operatives concede that they have reached their ceiling, recognizing they cannot defeat the amendments via the electoral route.
NEWS FROM RUSSIA
AP: There is little incentive for Putin to relinquish power over Russia, which is flush with revenue from oil and natural gas and where his power arguably rivals that of many of his Soviet and czarist predecessors.
Watch: Russia Today's report (A Russian backed CNN type news channel including a report on voting by fashion Models
HERE'S ALJAZEERA'S TAKE
WASHINGTON SAYS: WE CAN KIDNAP BRITISH CITIZENS
TO/NYT: Business Lobby Presses Agenda Before '08 Vote
Robert Pear of The New York Times reports: "Business lobbyists, nervously anticipating Democratic gains in next year's elections, are racing to secure final approval for a wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules, in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor."
TO: White House Invokes Secrecy in Abramoff Lawsuits
Pete Yost, reporting for The Associated Press, says that "The Bush administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In a court filing Friday night … the Justice Department, citing a Cold War-era court ruling, declared that the contents of the 'Sensitive Security Records' cannot be publicly revealed even though they could show whether Abramoff made more visits to the White House than those already acknowledged."
CREDIT CRISIS IN THE NEWS: A MISSING DIMENSION
WHATS MISSING IN THE COVERAGE?
How great to finally see the networks jumping on the mortgage fraud issue. NBC's Lisa Meyers did a great story last night on a mortgage broker scamming homeowners in Washington DC, getting them to put up their deeds which were then promptly resold. The folks lost their their homes. I exposed a similar story in my In Deot We Trust film.
The story was then followed by a commercial for Fidelity with black customers having their money managed. Any relationship there? Of course not.
Then the lovely Trish Reagon, one of CNBC's so-called "money honeys" dropped in at 30 Rock to explain that the economy is not doing so well and that a jobs report this week is expected top show a decline. (A recent report on job gains last Spring has now being revised downwards so please take these numbers with a grain of salt. But the thrust of the story was to reinforce the pleas of investors to the Fed to cut interest rates again,
AP reports: "Wall Street's newfound confidence that interest rates are headed lower may not be enough to fuel a December rally if the economy looks like it's weakening.
Not mentioned in NBC's story is that any rate cut will also mean more inflation which is a way of stealing peoples money with rising prices even as investors cash in. NBC left that out. In their mortgage fraud expose, they mentioned that the fraudsters would finagle people out of their deeds and resell them Ok, Lester Holt, who bought them and how much money did they make.
This is at the heart of the sub crime story because it was Wall Street firms that snatched up the mortgage paper and turned it in part a pool of securities in the process called securitization. (My new book SQUEEZED gets into this more)
The problem is that the scammers in the ghettos are the small fry who exploited their own communities; the scammers on Wall Street were exploiting each other and the whole economy. Ben Stein, not my favorite eonomic columnist for reasons I will explain, at least put his finger on the deeper problem in the Sunday Times Business pages—typically at the end of his column. (I keep telling you, read the Times from the bottom up.)
"HERE is a query, as we used to say in law school: Should Henry M. Paulson Jr., who formerly ran a firm that engaged in this kind of conduct (ie. was deeply involved in the subprime ponzi scheme) , be serving as Treasury secretary? Should there not be some inquiry into what the invisible government of Goldman (and the rest of Wall Street) did to create this disaster, which has caught up with some Wall Street firms but not the nimble Goldman?"
Well thank you Ben for columnizing on this especially since this same Business section ran a big feature two weeks ago lauding GoldmanSachs to the sky and not asking tough questions or showing Goldman's complicity in all this.
Ben's piece only turns critical at the very end. His lengthy diatribe was mostly devoted to discrediting an analyzis from a top economist at Goldman, Dr. Jan Hazins. Hazins predicts that the damage to our economy is going to be much greater.
That is Stein's central message: the economy is doing good and Goldman's analyst is just wrong, wrong, wrong. At the same time, it should cop to its complicity in the scandal. Unmentioned in all of his flip cleverness is the fact that he scoffed months ago warnings of a subprime collapse. It was all too negative for this market worshipper/ Whatever happens, Stein will be remain a high profile pundit able to speaking confidently on every side of every issue.
Many of his projections have been off base and spoofed on the itulip.com website. Check that out.
Meanwhile we have yet to see a major investigaton or any prosecution of the people who profited off the misery of homeowners who may be out in the streets. Efforts by the Fed to cut rates or the Treasury Department to freeze mortgage interest may be too little and too late.
THINK I AM EXAGGERATING?
This is from the Times of London, a Murdoch paper:
Suddenly the mood has darkened. Just when bankers and investors were hoping the worst was over, a second devastating wave of writedowns from major banks has rocked confidence. In recent weeks, Citi announced it would write down a further $6.4 billion in losses related to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Merrill has also revealed more losses, while HSBC last week said it would take $45 billion back onto its balance sheet by rescuing two structured-investment vehicles. Last month Barclays wrote off $1.3 billion.
More pain looks inevitable. Analysts expect Citi to be hit with a further $15 billion of writedowns. Investors will be nervously scrutinising a Royal Bank of Scotland trading statement this Thursday when the bank is expected to reveal sub-prime-related losses of more than £1 billion. Goldman Sachs analysts have estimated that the total sub-prime-linked losses could reach a whopping $500 billion - far higher than Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's initial estimate of $50 billion, later revised to $150 billion.
To add to the gloom there are mounting fears that the problems could engulf other types of American debt - credit cards, car finance and unsecured loans.
FALLING HOME PRICES WILL BREAK THE BACK OF THE U.S. ECONOMY
NAACP CRITICISES HOUSE PREDATORY LENDING BILL
Dissector Daily Forum: We Party Hardy
Great story on This American Life on NPR yesteday about how a local news station exploited and distorted the story of a registered sex offender working at an ice rink. It showed the human costs of tabloidiaztion and the way media can do great harm. It also told the story of a local news person with a conscience who wouldn't do what she was told.
Go Ira Glass and team!
TRUTH TO TELL: WE NEED MORE RADIO SHOWS LIKE THIS ALSO
TRUTH TO TELL: Wednesday, DEC. 5 at 11AM
KFAI 90.3FM Minneapolis/106.7 St. Paul - Streaming @ KFAI.org:
THE LOCAL MEDIA CRISIS: How the 10 O'clock News has Not-so-Gently Shoved Us Away from Citizenship
In this next edition of TTT's occasional discussions on the media, Andy Driscoll and Lynnell Mickelsen talk with local media observers about the damage broadcast and print media have done to drive citizens away from real news and knowledge of their communities and governments creating instead a consumer culture of celebrity and distraction - away from of civic affairs.
Thomas Nagy writes:
Thought your money about debt was right on, and everyone should see it. Should be used as a campaign ad for one of the presidential hopefuls. (I believe that Bill Richardson is the logical choice. New Mexico is the only state to comply with Kyoto under his leadership, tax credits and incentives to take us into the Solar Age are essential).
But, the real meat that we need to chew on is a challenge, and I believe you can do do it, but I'll tell you there is risk.
DOCUMENT in one of your films the biographies of key players in the German National Socialist movement "the Nazis," who were brought into the US at the end of WWII. You will find that most of these 10,000+ Nazis were given high-paying jobs in the American corporations that became multi-national, they became the core of the Republican party, they established the Military Industrial Complex that Ike warned us about, they brought us Richard Nixon and the War in Viet Nam (through a common friendship of the Dulles Brothers and Cardinal Spellman), they made the political career of Bush I and Bush II, and of course, among those names you will find "Roverer," whose son shortened the name to Rove.
That is just the beginning, and the depths that you might dig into this line might be limited. I once read a story that related the deaths of two prominent reporters, one in Philadelphia and the other New York-Washington D.C. (2002, following up on 9-11-01) to inquiries, through the Freedom of Information Act, about the same list of 10,000 Nazis to prominent Republicans.
A simpler story along the same lines would be a documentary comparing the Brownshirts of 1929-1934 with Blackwater of today. There is a storm coming.
ITEM FROM BETTS:
——————-
CNN: Corrupt News Network
——————-
A self-serving agenda was set for the Republican presidential debates.
Tim Rutten
Regarding Media
December 1 2007
THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/business/newsletter/la-et-rutten1dec01,1,2183723.column
20th Anniversary
We will stop hocking you with information about Globalvision's 20th anniversary but I do want to thank Alden James and the National Arts Club for hosting our packed celebration Friday night. Many former and current Globalvisoneers were there along with a former UN ambassador, Croatian rock singer, independent film makers and at least one major airline pilot.
I showed my own little film about my life and times ("Putting the Me Back In Media)" that recaps a a life as a media rebel, and our work over the years along with a trailer for a work in progress on children working in the films directed by U Roberto Romano and my partner Rory O'Connor. The response was encouraging.
Rory O'Connor and I had a picture taken in front of a picture we took together back in the days when we were just starting out.. I don't think I am any older except for a change in hair color, do you? Hey? Photo By Hugh Chatfield.
Was this event the start of another wave or work or our last hurrah. As they say, Time will tell. Thanks to all of you who responded to my pitch for support. Self-promotional, not really. Shameless, I guess so. Necessary? Unfortunately.
Thanks for checking in. Its cold outside. Brrrr.
Your comments welcome to dissector@mediachannel.org
|
Make a tax-deductible donation today. You can send a check made out to our fiscal sponsor: or If you have ideas or suggestions, please write to Dissector@mediachannel.org REMEMBER: THE SITE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN. Thank you! |
Spread The Word: Please forward this to interested friends and colleagues >>
----------------------------------------------
Become a Member | Send a News Tip | Subscribe to Other MC Emails | ***
You are subscribed as ralrusu@gmail.com.
To modify your preferences, visit the subscription management page.
Concerned about the media? TELL A FRIEND!
© 2007 MediaChannel.org
