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POPSTen Ways to Make Sure That Peace Stays Dead Too many people on each side see the other as wholly culpable. Too many people on each side see themselves as wholly innocent, wholly victimized, ill-served by the well-meaning, abandoned by former allies, betrayed by the media, misunderstood by people who should know better, forgotten by the world. Too many people on each side see only the suffering that has been caused them. Too many people have learned to wall themselves off from the suffering that they have caused.
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POPSIran: You Suck At Photoshop. Here's the caption on the NYT illustration above: In the four-missile version of the image released Wednesday by Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, two major sections (encircled in red) appear to closely replicate other sections (encircled in orange).
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POPSU.S. Ranked 36th Freest Press in the World 
Who Controls the U.S. Media? For the most part, the media spreads a lot of misinformation and corporate propaganda. This is not at all surprising considering that Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, Viacom (formerly CBS) and General Electric's NBC are the top owners of the entire media industry, which includes everything you read and hear in newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. In the last 15 years alone, your sources for news have shrunk drastically. Whereas in 1983, 50 corporations ruled the U.S. news media, by 2004 this number decreased to a minuscule six corporations! As you might imagine, with just six corporations deciding what’s worthy of news and what’s not, you end up with sensationalized tragedies, celebrity features, and anything else that will capture people’s attention. There is virtually no competition in the media market today whatsoever, and this s
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POPSRemedial Fascism for Confused Conservatives Hitler said Germany had collapsed because of loose morals, religious tolerance, the liberal media and all the usual boogeymen that we hear about today from conservatives. What we see with Jonah Goldberg and his entourage of pseudointellectuals is an effort to destroy the meaning of the word "Fascism" and to reduce Hitler to a buffoonish anti-Semite, rather than a devious master propagandist.
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POPSThe Four Reasons the Mainstream Media are Worthless Dan Rather said, regarding American media, "What you have is a miniature version of what you have in totalitarian states". Indeed, former military analyst and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11. An expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations. Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful journalists. I could only clip whole paragraphs for some reason, so the clip isn't as I would have liked it to be, but the whole article is well worth the read. Please go to the source for the full story.
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POPSIs social media an illusion? What i get out of social media is access to information and ideas that i otherwise wouldn't find myself. Quite honestly, my social media attention is primarily allocated to Clipmarks and Amplify because these two sites provide the type of experience i'm looking for - the abilty to understand the world better by seeing it through other people's eyes. I genuinely believe i am a smarter, more well rounded person because i've had the opportunity to see what other people are reading and what they have to say about it.
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POPSChomsky: If US was a true Democracy!
On all these topics, White House policy is completely at odds with what public opinion wants. But the media rarely publish the polls that highlight this persistent public opposition. Not only are citizens excluded from political power, they are also kept in a state of ignorance as to the true state of public opinion. There is growing international concern about the massive US double deficit affecting trade and the budget. But both are closely linked to a third deficit, the democratic deficit that is constantly growing, not only in the US but all over the western world. The US press sometimes publishes even my work, and the US is not a totalitarian country. But anyone who fails to fulfil certain minimum requirements does not stand a chance of becoming an established commentator. One of the big differences between the propaganda system of a totalitarian state and democratic societies go about things. Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state decides the official li
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POPSAhmadinejad accepts Israel's right to exist Iran's president finally opens himself to the possibility of recognizing Israel's right to exist, and no one reports on it. I am no fan of this bastard, but when he makes threatening statements about Israel, his words make headlines. But when he starts to soften his stance, his words are ignored. Is this because the media is afraid to report anything positive about this man? And who are they afraid of upsetting?
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POPSCheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran
MORE; The issuance of orders for Neo-Con mass media arms to push for an assault on Iran also puts the U.S. on red alert for a terror attack, whether real or manufactured, which Dick Cheney has already promised will immediately be blamed on Iran no matter who the real culprits are. On August 1st, 2005 the American Conservative reported that Cheney had tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan involved a massive air strike on Iran which included the use of nuclear weapons. The publication reported that, "The response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States," meaning that any such attack will immediately be blamed on Iran and any evidence to the contrary will be buried. The London Times reported on Sunday that the Pentagon had finalized plans for a 3 day blitz designed t
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POPSWhy The Media Should Apologize To Sarah She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul. Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”
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POPSDear Republicans: An angry but heartfelt rant More: I'm sick of your rewriting of history. You've bleated so loud and long that Reagan was a great president, that the New Deal didn't work, that cutting taxes increases revenues, that you actually have the people believing this bullshit… I'm sick of your dragging the center ever further to the right. How many whackjob fringe ideas have you dragged into the mainstream? …you push these ideas through your corporate media and you do it so long and loud that they become part of the accepted political landscape and because it is easier to tell a lie than to debunk one, we never get away from this rancid shit… I'm sick of your casual criminality…all I've heard from my rightist friends for days is Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick. Your fucking golden boy raped the Constitution…and you bastards are obsessed with a fucking accident a Democrat had decades ago? Plus much more, too long to clip.
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POPSNPR is kicking ass because they "get it" I clipped this from a really compreshensive post on mashable.com that discusses how NPR has been defying the rest of the traditional media industry by steadily growing its audience. After reading it, it seems to me that the key here is that they have a CEO who is embracing the changing media landscape instead resisting/ignoring/denying its impact. It seems like such an obvious approach, but one that so many media companies seem unable or unwilling to take.