Danny Schechter - Occupy Wall Street is All Over The Media: But for How Long?

By Danny Schechter

This is the first in what we hope will be a series of Mediachannel1 reports exploring the media and the Occupy Movement. Share yours with dissector@mediachannel.org

One of the oldest patterns of media coverage can be summed up this way:

First, they ignore you. Then, they ridicule you. Then, they realize you are a story and fall in love. So they build you up at first but then, all at once, tear you down 

You may not have changed, but they have, addicted as they are to keep coming up with shifting story lines, more to fight their own boredom and fear of tune out, than the validity or importance of the topic.

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Danny Schechter - WILL SHOPPING SAVE US?

By Danny Schechter 

Today’s the day. It’s “Black Friday” (“black” as in the day our business supposedly go into the black.) This may not have been such a wise use of language since the Wall Street crash of l929, ushering in the Great Depression, started on a “Black Thursday.” 

Throughout America, an advertising-dominated media is plugging all the “bargains” while shoppers, hungry to save a few bucks, in a country where more than half of our families are barely making it, are off to the malls in an annual ritual that each year barely saves the retail outlets but adds costly bills to already squeezed and debt dependent consumers. 

The easy availability of credit has created what Robert Manning calls our Credit Card Nation, where we are encouraged to shop until we drop. In the aftermath of the terror attacks of September l1, 2001, recall that President Bush made that point shamelessly when he told the American people that the best way to help in that traumatic period was to go shopping again. 

He knew, even if most Americans didn’t, that it is their non-stop consumption that drives the economy. Without it, I guess, the terrorists could have won. 

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Danny Schechter - OCCUPY THIS: POETRY SURVIVES THE TRASHING OF THE PEOPLE’S LIBRARY

By Danny Schechter

Author of The Crime of Our Time

One of the clearest indicators of a fascist mentality is its contempt for ideas it disagrees with.

The Nazis staged mass book burnings, and some religious zealots followed in their footsteps, in our country, by burning rock and roll records they considered the “Devil’s Music.” The war on Sarajevo began with the burning of its world acclaimed library by rightwing nationalists who found the city too multi-cultural for their tastes,

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Gary Null, PhD and Nancy Ashley, VMD, MS - DEADLY INJECTION: THE HIDDEN INGREDIENTS IN VACCINES

DEADLY INJECTION:  THE HIDDEN INGREDIENTS IN VACCINES

By Gary Null, PhD and Nancy Ashley, VMD, MS

For more than 100 years, Americans have lined up to take their vaccines.   We have never questioned the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, and why should we?  Vaccines are backed by the full faith and confidence of the entire scientific community, including the FDA, the CDC, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, and virtually all of the esteemed medical journals, including the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, have given their unconditional support to vaccines. Therefore, in fact, if any physician, scientist, journalist, or health activist ever challenges either the safety or efficacy of vaccines, they are immediately assaulted.  The normal arguments are:

1. There are dozens of gold standard studies proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the safety and efficacy of every vaccine and every combination of vaccines.
2. There is an independent group of scientists at the FDA and the CDC that examines the childhood vaccine schedule to make sure it is appropriate.
3. There is no scientific proof that vaccines are dangerous.
4. On rare occasions, when someone does have an adverse reaction, it in no way affects the safety and efficacy for anyone else.
5. Virtually all major scourges -- polio, smallpox, and measles -- were eliminated by our vaccine program.

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Dave Johnson - Bill Clinton's Unreality -- Tinkering With Unpassable Ideas, when Transformation is What We Need

By Dave Johnson, AlterNet

Posted on November 27, 2011, Printed on November 28, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153191/bill_clinton%27s_unreality%3A_tinkering_with_unpassable_ideas%2C_when_transformation_is_what_we_need

Former President Bill Clinton’s new book, Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy, is a book for policy wonks and politics junkies. Progressives will love his defense of government. They will be outraged by his buying in to conservative/Wall Street arguments about Social Security. We will roll our eyes at the long, detailed, brilliant arguments for and against a wide range of policy ideas. We will hate his support of trade agreements without mentioning what they have done to manufacturing jobs. And we will be sad that this book didn’t come out just a month later, so you could see if the Occupy movement changes the way he sees things. 

This book is timely and full of good ideas for helping grow the economy and create jobs. But its timeliness is also disappointing, because our political system is so dysfunctional that none of these ideas will be implemented. And while the ideas are good, they are also incremental just when we are coming to see the need for transformation. 

Right Time, Wrong Time 

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Andrew Bosworth - The Road towards a Police State in America

Defense Authorization bill allows for military detentions of American citizens in the US.

By Dr. Andrew Bosworth 

Global Research, November 28, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27907

Preparing for the Final Takedown?

There is a shocking piece of legislation working its way through Congress. A Defense Authorization bill for 2012 allows for military detentions of American citizens on American soil. These can be indefinite detentions, with no trial.

The American Civil Liberties Union statement (more of an alert) on November 23, 2011 deserves special attention:

“The U.S. Senate is considering the unthinkable: changing detention laws to imprison people — including Americans living in the United States itself — indefinitely and without charge.”

“The Defense Authorization bill — a “must-pass” piece of legislation — is headed to the Senate floor with troubling provisions that would give the President — and all future presidents — the authority to indefinitely imprison people, without charge or trial, both abroad and inside the United States.”

“If enacted, sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA would:

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HEATHER SMITH - Slouching toward a bananapocalypse?

BY HEATHER SMITH

GRIST.ORG  11 NOV 2011 1:00 PM 

http://www.grist.org/food/2011-11-11-slouching-toward-a-bananapocolypse 

For years journalists have warned of imminent banana extinction. "Get bananas while you still can," wrote New Scientist over five years ago. "The world's most popular fruit ... is in deep trouble," it went on to say, adding that the banana would probably be out of supermarkets by 2013, and would soon exist only in backyard gardens and other places the Panama Race IV, a pathogen taking out plantations in Southeast Asia, couldn't reach.

But today -- just a few years from the banana's supposed demise -- one can walk down the street and find bananas in the nearest corner store, hanging out between the cash register and the lottery tickets. What gives? Are we still heading toward bananapocalypse? Or has it been cancelled? And what can the banana tell us about the evolution of our global food supply?

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John Phillip - Omega-3 fats reduce systemic inflammation and lower feelings of anxiety

by John Phillip

http://www.naturalnews.com/034256_omega-3_inflammation.html

(NaturalNews) The Omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA continue to garner well deserved attention as essential components of human health. Researchers publishing in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity show that the long-chain fat duo significantly lowers elevated levels of systemic inflammation, the metabolic flame that promotes most chronic conditions from heart disease and cancer to dementia and diabetes. The study authors found that consuming more fish or supplementing with omega-3 fish oil reduced both anxiety and inflammation among a group of young healthy individuals. Many health-minded children and adults alike will want to ensure adequate fish consumption from diet or supplementation with fish oil to lower dangerous cellular inflammation and reduce the underlying effects of anxiety.

A team of researchers from Ohio State University set out to determine the science behind more than thirty years of data that suggests a link between psychological stress and immunity. Omega-3 fats including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) are known to be critical nutrients required for early development and health maintenance in the human diet. Earlier research suggested that the long-chain fatty compounds might play a role in reducing the level of inflammatory metabolites in the body known to promote inflammation and even reduce depression.

Science Daily - Support for Climate Policy Linked to People's Perceptions About Scientific Agreement Regarding Global Warming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121115102.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) — People who believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about global warming tend to be less certain that global warming is happening and less supportive of climate policy, researchers at George Mason, San Diego State, and Yale Universities report in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.

This new George Mason University study, however, using results from a national survey of the American public, finds that many Americans believe that most climate scientists actually disagree about the subject.

In the national survey conducted in June 2010, two-thirds of respondents said they either believed there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening (45 percent), that most scientists think it is not happening (5 percent), or that they did not know enough to say (16 percent.) These respondents were less likely to support climate change policies and to view climate change as a lower priority.

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Paul Harris - New York's Ardour for Michael Bloomberg Cools

Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by The Observer/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/27/michael-bloomberg-mayor-occupy-wall-street-new-york

Mayor has turned police on Occupy protesters, opposes a $10 an hour minimum wage and says bankers are patriotic

by Paul Harris in New York

The rally last week at Manhattan's Riverside church was packed. Several thousand people crammed into the famous hall where Martin Luther King once gave a 1967 speech against the Vietnam war and for a fight against poverty.

The gathering was part of the Living Wage New York campaign, which aims to force companies who receive large grants of public money for private projects to pay workers in the jobs they create a minimum wage of around $10 (£6.47) an hour. It does not sound a controversial plan or one to create major unrest.

But the mood beneath the church's soaring vault was angry. Most of it was directed at one man, New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who wants to veto the proposal.

Council member Jumaane Williams could not contain his fury. "This is about greed," he fumed to the crowd before turning his ire on Bloomberg and his vast fortune. "Ten dollars is not a lot of money! If Mayor Bloomberg woke up making 10 dollars an hour, he would faint!" he thundered, adding that the mayor ran New York like a "coward dictator".

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