Carlos Guerra, political columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, once said that he liked writing columns because he could write about anything or nothing, even the weather. But I read him all the time and even his 'even the weather' columns are about something--its effect on Texas agriculture for instance. David Brooks, on the other hand, seems to be making a specialty of writing columns that are literally about nothing. Here, for example.

Somewhere or other, Mr 'I Write Minutiae If It's Friendly to the Right' Brooks read that the birth rate is Up in 'Red States' and Down in Blue States. He uses that tiny, evanescent fact to justify a column that gushes like an oil well in a soap opera, anointing this statistical anomaly as a 'movement' he has the gall to call 'natalism'.

Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.

Doggone it, those Red Staters are just so darn saintly and self-sacrificing compared to us selfish, self-involved, self-loathing Blue Staters, ain't they? Why, they live for their kids; we, of course, send ours careening down garbage chutes and living in dumpsters so we can buy a better class of brie and a tonier wine.

In a world that often makes it hard to raise large families, many are willing to move to find places that are congenial to natalist values. The fastest-growing regions of the country tend to have the highest concentrations of children. Young families move away from what they perceive as disorder, vulgarity and danger and move to places like Douglas County in Colorado (which is the fastest-growing county in the country and has one of the highest concentrations of kids). Some people see these exurbs as sprawling, materialistic wastelands, but many natalists see them as clean, orderly and affordable places where they can nurture children.
(emphasis added)

And naturally, 'disorder, vulgarity and danger' are to be found in the Evil Cities of the Coasts where Blue Staters--those bastards--insist on living right next door to Satanic elements. Like furriners and wogs and wrong-skin-color people of all hues who actually rub elbows and--do you believe it?--DON'T THINK ANYTHING'S WRONG WITH THAT! Where they have the ungodly arrogance to think women should have the right to control their own bodies and that maybe it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the state to kill people as a way of proving that killing is a bad thing. Oh, the Horror! The Humanity!

If you wanted a one-sentence explanation for the explosive growth of far-flung suburbs, it would be that when people get money, one of the first things they do is use it to try to protect their children from bad influences.

Oh, Lord, save us from Generosity, Tolerance, and a Satanic refusal to get all bug-eyed and outraged and frightened by the semi-public exposure of those areas of the human skin which we deem Lewd and Perverted and otherwise Not Nice, and which we have decided in our Infinite Fear are Omens of the Destruction of Civilization! Spare Us, O Lord, from the Violence of Nudity--in the Name of The Children! Let us live in all-white clean exurbs where our kids have a better chance of never even seeing, let alone meeting or having to share the same breathing space with the Dark-Hued Scions of Satan, Hallmarks of the End Times. Let us never have to actually live with or face the environmental destruction we've engineered, the poverty we've created, or the msssive social disruption and disease our denial has caused. Let us run, run, RUN from the degradations of the corrupt national government we voted for, from its private armies and its wars of greed and ignorance, from its bombast and its cruelty to the weakest among us so that we may continue to pretend it isn't happening, which we can do if we don't have to look at it every day. Let us escape from the world we have made for Others to live in, and let our fantasies be perpetuated ad infinitum. All this we ask IN THE NAME OF THE CHILDREN! We're just thinking of them....

Sure you are. This, it turns out, is the latest Right Wing Meme, and Puppet Dave is simply joining the chorus, as he is expected to and has to if he wants to keep getting those Big Bucks as the NYT's supposed centrist. How do I know? Because Brooks himself says so.

You can see surprising political correlations. As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates.

In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe, "Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."

Um, Boston is a 'childless city'? That's going to come as a surprise to the taxpayers footing the bills for new schools because the old ones are over-crowded, not to mention to the strollers on the Common who wade every day through acres of kids playing hopskotch and jumping rope and trying to climb the trees.

Let's face it, campers. We're scum, and that's all there is to it. We hate America, and that's Bad. We don't hate integration, and that's even Worse. But the Worst of all is that We Hate Kids. And since we aren't running out having 6 of them like every Red-blooded Red Stater, thus ignoring the Biblical order to Multiply, we must Hate the Bible as well. No wonder Ann 'The Medusa' Coulter wants us all put up against a wall and shot. We're Evil, Evil, Evil. So sayeth the Lord.

And David Brooks, of course.

Last week I wrote that reading major newspapers was becoming an exercise in which you had to read between the lines as if they were Pravda. Somebody I read after I wrote that reminded us that there were never any censorship laws or government edicts in Soviet Russia or any of the other Communist countries whose press were uniformly pinging the govt line: they did it to themselves. They knew which side of the bread the butter was on, and they loaded it up. But the same can be said of all the media, including and maybe especially television news.

Broadcast television is a mass-market outlet, which means that catering to the LCD has always been part of the tension in its make-up. From the moment in 1925 when commercial radio moved out of the limited land of local news and found ways to do remote broadcasting so they could cover the Scopes trial in Tennessee, the American mass media has been hoisted on a petard not of its own making, really. A majority of its audience demanded that the reporting they heard reflect the views they held, but that majority itself shifted as the trial went on. Darrow's remarkable cross-examination of Bryan--the head of the prosecution team--as a 'Bible expert' turned enough of the audience around (not on whether or not they believed the Bible, but on whether or not they thought a religious belief should be enshrined in law) that by the end of the trial, a slim majority had moved to Darrow's side, including some of the people who were nevertheless convinced he was The Devil.

Newspapers--who by and large backed Darrow--were no doubt a factor, and a large one, in that change, but the impact of hearing the trial live, on the radio, was for the first time just as important to the shaping of public opinion as reading about it. What radio news learned in the process--painfully, in some cases--was that power was a 2-edged sword. Yes it turned heads, changed minds, and garnered some respectability and a vastly enlarged audience, but it also found itself caught in a trap of expectations. The Scopes trial was as polarizing then as the evolution vs creationism issue is now, and both sides expected their beliefs to be mirrored in the news. Whichever side felt slighted--and that was usually both of them--made sure to tell the owners and managers about it in no uncertain terms.

As I read the history, it seems to me that newspapers at the time were mostly modeled on William Randolph Hearst's concept of 'yellow journalism', a combination of outspoken advocacy, unapologetic antogonism, and outright lies: if it will sell papers, Hearst felt, it doesn't matter if it's true. Being in the paper makes it true. (Orson Welles' depiction of Hearst in Citizen Kane, loathful as it is, was actually a lot kinder to Hearst than he deserved. The truth is even worse.) The Baltimore Sun could send an avowed atheist like HL Mencken to cover the Scopes trial without suffering threats of retaliation from its audience. Radio, on the other hand, could not. The slightest hint of favoritism or bias brought howls of outrage from listeners, even if that bias was largely in their imaginations.

And radio--like television after it--had to worry about renewing its broadcasting licenses. It was not then the automatic rubber-stamping process it is now. If enough complaints were generated, it was entirely possible that the govt would shut them down or at least refuse to renew their license to operate. Either way, pissing off the public could result in the loss of your business, so pissing off the public was very early on considered a Bad Idea--the opposite of Hearst's contention that pissing off the public was a good way to increase a newspaper's circulation. Of course, Hearst didn't have to worry about the govt pulling his license to operate newspapers.

The Hauptmann circus trial a few years later tended to confirm the lesson of the Scopes trial. Public opinion had convicted Bruno Hauptmann of the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's infant son as soon as his arrest was announced. Newspapers that didn't fall into line behind that overwhelming public sentiment paid the price: blistering letters published in rival papers, canceled ads, boycotts, pickets outside their editorial offices, and falling circulation. The whole country, it seemed, was focused on making sure Hauptmann was hanged, and 'evidence' played zero part in their decision. They wanted somebody to pay for what had been done to their hero, and that somebody was Bruno Hauptmann: the police had arrested him, therefore he must be guilty. It was really as simple as that. The LCD had spoken.

Radio avoided the costs associated with taking an unpopular stand by, at first, taking no stand at all. They concentrated on simply reporting developments and, when the trial started, they even largely ceased doing that since virtually everyone with a radio was listening to the trial live. They learned a valuable lesson: stay out of the controversy, pander to the audience, and let the live broadcasts speak for themselves. Newspapers didn't have that option--news was in some way filtered just because it had to be written down, inserting a writer between the audience and the experience itself. Newspapers were vicarious experience; radio was direct experience: you heard it live, unedited, just as it happened. You Were There. That immediacy could do all the work; no one could blame the radio for anything the defense attorneys tried to say--it was just an instrument, like a camera, and it recorded what happened.

Pioneer radio broadcasters like Edward R Murrow and owners like General Sarnoff took the message to heart: mass market media did better when it tried to be objective and stayed the hell out of the heated fray of controversy. But if it had to get involved, to make sure it was involved on the side of the LCD, not opposing it. Of course, Murrow and Sarnoff represented two entirely different motivations; however much they might agree about the desirability of 'objectivity' as a fundamental principle, their reasons were completely different and often in opposition to each other. Where Sarnoff was worried about keeping his advertisers and audiences happy, Murrow was worried about intangible values like truth and accuracy in reporting, and the obligation of the press in a free country to inform the people and let the chips fall where they may.

As a democratic country, we got lucky: Murrow's side won the argument at first, and for the thirty years between the heavy onset of the Depression and the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 which galvanized conservatives into deciding to take over the 'liberal' media which consistently backed Johnson--in their eyes--by not condemning him, we had a reasonably objective press. Especially when the first real challenge to journalistic independence, the rise of Joe McCarthy, had its back broken in the 50's by none other than Murrow, and on prime-time tv, at that. There was a brief Golden Age before Watergate enraged conservatives even more--or at least as much--as the Civil Rights Bill and opposition to the Viet Nam War, and then it was over.

Reagan inspired all the mothering instincts of a disappointed, angry class who saw its privileges--and therefore its power--slipping away. He was the Messiah who was going to give it all back, and 'they' would have to destroy him to stop it. The DAC wasn't going to allow that, wasn't going to allow the 'media' to bring down the Great White Hope of ultra-conservative agitators desperately trying to take us back to the future--all the way back to the 19th century, if they could manage it. They could. And they did.

Which may help to begin to explain a little how we got here.

TV remains by far the most prevalent source of news for Americans. We need honest information to help us navigate, not bunkum skewed to flatter one segment of the country, whatever that segment might be. Yet here's how Jeff Zucker, the NBC president, summed up the attributes of Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw's successor, to Peter Johnson of USA Today: "No one understands this Nascar nation more than Brian." Mr. Zucker was in sync with his boss, Bob Wright, the NBC Universal chairman, who described America as a "red state world" on the eve of Mr. Brokaw's retirement. Though it may come as news to those running NBC, we actually live in a red-and-blue-state country, in a world that increasingly hates all our states without regard to our provincial obsession with their hues.

---

[T]he networks were often cautious about challenging government propaganda even before the election. (Follow-ups to the original Abu Ghraib story quickly fell off TV's radar screen.) As far back as last spring Ted Koppel's roll-call of the American dead on "Nightline," in which the only images were beatific headshots, was condemned as a shocking breach of decorum by the mostly red-state ABC affiliates that refused to broadcast it. If full-scale Nascarization is what's coming next, there will soon be no pictures but those promising a mission accomplished, no news but good news. And that's good news only if you believe America has something to gain by fighting a war in the dark.

The tension between the Murrow belief in accurate reporting and damn the consequences and Sarnoff's belief in the LCD pandering that generates profits has at last been resolved, and the new Ed Murrow is--Brian Williams.

And the 'values' of bleed/lead-think/stink local news in the hands of a standard pretty-boy come to the Big Top.

I don't have a tv, but if I did, I think I'd probably stop watching it.

I have been busy putting together the next Blog Tower. Below are several really excellent posts I won't be able to include, but I wouldn't want you to miss them.

• Kathy at RTOP has been on fire this week, especially yesterday. She has at least four posts that are Must-Reads:
  
  
  1. The New Law of the Land - We Can Do Anything We Want To

     Lawyers for detainees at Guantanamo Bay are in court trying to make the case that the military tribunals set up in response to the Supreme Court's judgment that detainees can challenge their status do not meet the requirements of the law.
     
     The government's case seems to be an "all is fair in times of war" argument. They say that they have to be able to detain anyone, anywhere, any time, with any connections to terrorism.
     
     Who might fall into the government's broad sweep? A little old lady in Sweden writing a check to a charity that she doesn't know supports terrorism. A teacher who has students with Taliban connections. A man who doesn't report suspicions that his cousin may be an al Qaeda leader, a reporter who in protecting a source doesn't report the location of a terrorist leader.
     
     We aren't talking about people in the war zone. We're talking about anyone anywhere in the world. "The boundaries of a war on terrorism are unlimited", says the government attorney.

  
  
  2. A Pseudo-Theocracy in the Making

     I'm beginning to develop the seeds of what could be a persistent and deeply rooted conspiracy theory that we really are at risk of becoming a pseudo-theocracy. I've been reading up on the politicized religious right, trying to understand who they are, what they want, how they work, who they know, and how far their reach extends. The short answer is that they work through a broad network including churches, non-profits, and media outlets, they want a Christian nation in which God's law (their interpretation) supercedes man's law, they know the people in power and their reach extends into most areas of government.

  
  
  3. Tax Reform I: Are You Ready to Pay More?

     We didn't hear a lot about it in the campaign, but one of Bush's top domestic agenda items is tax reform. Bush wants to cut and possibly even eliminate taxes on investment income - interest, dividends, and capital gains. But how to pay for those cuts? The administration is considering eliminating a few tax deductions.
     
     First, there's the individual deduction of state and local taxes off federal income tax. According to the administration, allowing us to deduct those taxes - especiallly property tax - ultimately lowers the price of local public services and gives an unfair advantage to local government over private companies providing comparable services.
     
     If I understand this correctly, the argument is that by allowing this deduction, we pay our local government less to do things like pave roads and maintain fire departments - that we're charged less by the government than we would be by private companes. That's unfair competition.

  
  
  4. Tax Reform II: Ready to Lose Your Health Insurance?

     n an effort to fund the elimination of taxes on investment and savings - interest, capital gains, dividend taxes - the Bush team is looking at eliminating the deduction businesses take on the cost of health insurance for their employees.
     
     When I worked for a major corporation, I paid about $20/week for health insurance for myself - about $80/month. My company picked up the tab for the rest of the premium - around $200/month. The company paid signficantly more for folks who insured their whole families through the company policy. To make it simple, let's assume that the average monthly premium for an employee was $300 for a yearly cost of $3600. My company had 15,000 employees so they paid out $54 million every year for health benefits. And they get to deduct that - I'm fairly certain they get to deduct the entire amount. Even if I'm wrong and they only get to deduct 50%, that's still $27m. No business takes a $27m increase in costs lightly.
     
     The Bush administration would eliminate that deduction, which will cost my former employer up to $54 million. How many of you think that the company will simply reduce their profits by $54m? No.Instead, they'll pass the costs on to employees. They'll still provide some coverage, higher level staff will get their premiums subsidized at a high rate. Next level down will get subsidies but perhaps have to pick up the cost of covering their spouses and dependents. Low level staff will have to pay the entire premium. Small businesses will probably cut all payments for health insurance - simply making it available for employees to pay the whole thing themselves. They're already struggling to provide coverage - even with the deduction. Self-employed individuals will probably drop their coverage altogether.
     
     But hey, you won't have to pay taxes on your dividends.

  
  
  
  And I have a feeling she's not done with the tax issue. Stay on top of this--it's the clearest writing I've seen on exactly what we can expect, and it's from a perspective most of us can relate to.
  


• cul heath at ratboy's anvil has a few words to say about the Methodists recent 'conviction' of a minister for the crime of lesbianism.

  The Methodist church has a Supreme Court? Quite the method. Its really obvious that Christians have got to rid themselves of the Bible inerrancy addiction that is squashing all the love out of the idea of what it means to be a Christian. For one thing they seem to completely misunderstand that the whole point of the New Testament is to overturn the archaic rules and the absurdities that were part of the former covenent of the Old Testament.
  
  If they are going to nitpick about Leviticus when the take on the idea of homosexuality, then they have to start stoning people for the other stupid stuff like wearing two types of cloth at the same time, etc etc etc. Otherwise, they should shut the fuck up and stop judging people in a way that is completely contrary to what Jesus said about things.


Amen.


• David Neiwert at Orcinus lays out the truth about the Matthew Shepard case and puts paid to ABC's recent report.

  [T]he entire thrust of ABC's "revelations" -- that it was all a drug binge, not a hate crime -- reveals how little the reporters who worked on this understand not just bias crimes but criminal law generally. One factor, such as drug use, does not cancel out another, such as a bias motive. They often in fact appear together and work in conjunction.
  
  There's an even more significant problem with the 20/20 report, however: It is signficantly factually flawed.
  
  The flaw is not so much in what it reports, but what it intentionally omits.

Those should keep your brain humming over the weekend.

Yesterday, on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, the BBC reported that a Union Carbide spokesman said that the company had accepted full responsibility for the disaster and was offering a $12BIL settlement to the survivors.

"Today I am very, very happy to announce that today, for the first time Dow is accepting full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. This is a momentous occasion," he said in the live interview.

The world has been waiting to hear that for twenty years. Unfortunately it was have to wait a bit longer. The apology was a hoax.

The BBC's worldwide reputation for accuracy took a blow yesterday after it broadcast an interview with a hoaxer who claimed to offer a $12bn settlement to the 120,000 surviving victims of the Bhopal disaster.

Hopes were raised in India when the BBC's international news channel, BBC World, interviewed a man identified as a representative of Dow Chemical, which now runs the Bhopal plant after taking over Union Carbide.

He said Dow accepted full responsibility for the world's worst industrial disaster, which has claimed the lives of 20,000 people over the past 20 years, and left many more with chronic health problems.

But it soon emerged that Jude Finisterra was a hoaxer who has targeted Dow Chemical in the past. His interview, which was picked up and reported internationally, was shown twice on BBC World, and on BBC television and radio in Britain, before it was pulled.

Finisterra is a member of The Yes Men, an activist group that specializes in hoaxing global corporations and is most famous for penetrating the WTO posing as actual representatives. Two years ago, on the 18th anniversary, Finisterra sent out this press release from a website with the address Dow-Chemical.com purporting to come from the company:

December 3, 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact press@dow-chemical.com

DOW ADDRESSES BHOPAL OUTRAGE, EXPLAINS POSITION
Company responds to activist concerns with concrete action points

In response to growing public outrage over its handling of the Bhopal disaster's legacy, Dow Chemical (http//www.dow-chemical.com) has issued a statement explaining why it is unable to more actively address the problem.

"We are being portrayed as a heartless giant which doesn't care about the 20,000 lives lost due to Bhopal over the years," said Dow President and CEO Michael D. Parker. "But this just isn't true. Many individuals within Dow feel tremendous sorrow about the Bhopal disaster, and many individuals within Dow would like the corporation to admit its responsibility, so that the public can then decide on the best course of action, as is appropriate in any democracy. "Unfortunately, we have responsibilities to our shareholders and our industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible. And being clear about this has been a very big step."

On December 3, 1984, Union Carbide--now part of Dow--accidentally killed 5,000 residents of Bhopal, India, when its pesticide plant sprung a leak. It abandoned the plant without cleaning it up, and since then, an estimated 15,000 more people have died from complications, most resulting from chemicals released into the groundwater.

Although legal investigations have consistently pinpointed Union Carbide as culprit, both Union Carbide and Dow have had to publicly deny these findings. After the accident, Union Carbide compensated victims' families between US$300 and US$500 per victim. "We understand the anger and hurt," said Dow Spokesperson Bob Questra. "But Dow does not and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If we did, not only would we be required to expend many billions of dollars on cleanup and compensation--much worse, the public could then point to Dow as a precedent in other big cases. 'They took responsibility; why can't you?' Amoco, BP, Shell, and Exxon all have ongoing problems that would just get much worse. We are unable to set this precedent for ourselves and the industry, much as we would like to see the issue resolved in a humane and satisfying way."

Shareholders reacted to the Dow statement with enthusiasm. "I'm happy that Dow is being clear about its aims," said Panaline Boneril, who owns 10,000 shares, "because Bhopal is a recurrent problem that's clogging our value chain and ultimately keeping the share price from expressing its full potential. Although a real solution is not immediately possible because of Dow's commitments to the larger industry issues, there is new hope in management's exceptional new clarity on the matter."

"It's a slow process," said Questra. "We must learn bit by bit to meet this challenge head-on. For now, this means acknowledging that much as it pains us, our prime responsibilities are to the people who own Dow shares, and to the industry as a whole. We simply cannot do anything at this moment for the people of Bhopal."

Dow Chemical is a chemical products and services company devoted to bringing its customers a wide range of chemicals. It furnishes solutions for the agriculture, electronics, manufacturing, and oil and gas industries, including well-known products like Styrofoam, DDT, and Agent Orange, as well as lesser-known brands like Inspire, Retain, Eliminator, Quash, and Woodstalk. For more on the Bhopal catastrophe, please visit Dow at http//www.dow-chemical.com/.

Needless to say, the press release was also a hoax. The Yes Men claim that they are merely attempting to counteract corporate hoaxing like this:

On November 29 last year, two researchers at the University of California, Berkeley published a paper in Nature magazine, which claimed that native maize in Mexico had been contaminated, across vast distances, by GM pollen. The paper was a disaster for the biotech companies seeking to persuade Mexico, Brazil and the European Union to lift their embargos on GM crops.

Even before publication, the researchers knew their work was hazardous. One of them, Ignacio Chapela, was approached by the director of a Mexican corporation, who first offered him a glittering research post if he withheld his paper, then told him that he knew where to find his children. In the US, Chapela's opponents have chosen a different form of assassination.

On the day the paper was published, messages started to appear on a biotechnology listserver used by more than 3,000 scientists, called AgBioWorld. The first came from a correspondent named "Mary Murphy". Chapela is on the board of directors of the Pesticide Action Network, and therefore, she claimed, "not exactly what you'd call an unbiased writer". Her posting was followed by a message from an "Andura Smetacek", claiming, falsely, that Chapela's paper had not been peer-reviewed, that he was "first and foremost an activist" and that the research had been published in collusion with environmentalists. The next day, another email from "Smetacek" asked "how much money does Chapela take in speaking fees, travel reimbursements and other donations... for his help in misleading fear-based marketing campaigns?"

The messages from Murphy and Smetacek stimulated hundreds of others, some of which repeated or embellished the accusations they had made. Senior biotechnologists called for Chapela to be sacked from Berkeley. AgBioWorld launched a petition pointing to the paper's "fundamental flaws".

In fact, 'Mary Murphy' and 'Andura Smetacek' didn't exist. They were the inventions of a PR firm called The Bivings Group that had been hired by Monsanto to discredit Chapela's paper. Bivings specializes in 'internet marketing'.

An article on its website, entitled Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World, warns that "there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly involved... it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such as this, it is important to first 'listen' to what is being said online... Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party... Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously." A senior executive from Monsanto is quoted on the Bivings site thanking the PR firm for its "outstanding work".

The Yes Men are fighting fire with fire, or in this case, corporate manipulation with anti-corporate manipulation. Speaking for myself, I wish them well. Corporate hoaxes are becoming commonplace, a standard operating tool for businesses in trouble for shoddy products, inhuman practices, over-arching greed, illegal labor practices, and a raft of other depredations that increase their profits at everybody else's expense, including the planet's. Take the 'fake parade' technique, for instance.

"Carrying his placard the man in front of me was clearly one of the poorest of the poor. His shoes were not only threadbare, they were tattered, merely rags barely being held together."

So begins a graphic description of a demonstration that took place at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.. The protesters were "mainly poor, virtually all black, and mostly women... street traders and farmers" with an unpalatable message. As an article in a South African periodical put it, "Surely this must have been the environmentalists' worst nightmare. Real poor people marching in the streets and demanding development while opposing the eco-agenda of the Green Left."

And seldom can the views of the poor, in this case a few hundred demonstrators, have been paid so much attention. Articles highlighting the Johannesburg march popped up the world over, in Africa, North America, India, Australia and Israel. In Britain even The Times ran a commentary, under the heading, "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me".

With the summit's passing, the Johannesburg march, far from fading from view, has taken on a still deeper significance. In the November issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, Val Giddings, the President of the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO), argues that the event marked "something new, something very big" that will make us "look back on Johannesburg as something of a watershed event—a turning point." What made the march so pivotal, he said, was that for the very first time, "real, live, developing-world farmers" were "speaking for themselves" and challenging the "empty arguments of the self-appointed individuals who have professed to speak on their behalf."

To help give them a voice, Giddings singles out the statement of one of the marchers, Chengal Reddy, leader of the Indian Farmers Federation. "Traditional organic farming...," Reddy says, "led to mass starvation in India for centuries... Indian farmers need access to new technologies and especially to biotechnologies."

Giddings also notes that the farmers expressed their contempt for the "empty arguments" of many of the Earth Summiteers by honoring them with a "Bullshit Award" made from two varnished piles of cow dung. The award was given, in particular, to the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, for her role in "advancing policies that perpetuate poverty and hunger"

A powerful rebuke, no doubt. But if anyone deserves the cow dung, it is the President of BIO, for almost every element of the spectacle he describes has been carefully contrived and orchestrated. Take, for instance, Chengal Reddy, the "farmer" that Giddings quotes. Reddy is not a poor farmer, nor even the representative of poor farmers. Indeed, there is precious little to suggest he is even well-disposed towards the poor. The "Indian Farmers Federation" that he leads is a lobby of big commercial farmers in Andhra Pradesh. On occasion Reddy has admitted to knowing very little about farming, having never farmed in his life. He is, in reality, a politician and businessman whose family are a prominent right-wing political force in Andhra Pradesh—his father having coined the saying, "There is only one thing Dalits (members of the untouchable caste) are good for, and that is being kicked".

In fact, the 'march' was the brainchild of yet another conservative think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who staged the whole thing in a deliberate attempt to use one of the few tools the poor have to call attention to their plight, the demonstration, against them. It was then organized by one Kendra Okonski, who turns out to be...

...the daughter of a US lumber industrialist who has worked for various right wing anti-regulatory NGOs—all funded and directed, needless to say, by "whites". These include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based "think tank" whose multi-million dollar budget comes from major US corporations, among them BIO member Dow Chemicals. Okonski also runs the website Counterprotest.net, where her specialty is helping right wing lobbyists take to the streets in mimicry of popular protesters.

And the 'Bullshit Award'? Surely that was real.

Nope.

Giddings' "Bullshit Award" was far from, as he suggests, the imaginative riposte of impoverished farmers to India's most celebrated environmentalist. It was, in fact, the creation of another right-wing pressure group—the Liberty Institute—based in New Delhi and well known for its fervent support of deregulation, GM crops and Big Tobacco.

The Liberty Institute is part of the same network that organized the rally: the deceptively-named "Sustainable Development Network." In London, the SDN shares offices, along with many of its key personnel—including Okonski—with the International Policy Network, a group whose Washington address just happens to be that of the CEI. The SDN is run by Julian Morris, its ubiquitous director, who also claims the title of Environment and Technology Programme Director for the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank that has advocated, amongst other interesting ideas, that African countries be sold off to multinational corporations in the interests of "good government".

These guys are just loaded with good ideas--and good will. They're good-willing to buy resource-rich countries (which they would, of course, exploit for 'everyone's benefit') in the purely altruistic hope of bringing 'good government' (and we'd like to hear how they'd define that particular term) to the masses downtrodden by govts with an insufficient understanding that the way to peace and harmony is for the corporations to own everything. Including whole nations. What's a little hoax compared to such lofty goals? It's justified by a 'greater good'.

Profits.

So to The Yes Men and anybody else who wants to take these suckers on, I say: 'Go, bro, with my blessing.'

A short commercial by the UCC--the United Church of Christ, about as mainstream a Christian group as you're likely to find--was refused by both CBS and NBC, apparently because it was about inclusivity. What's wrong with that? Everything if you're 'including' the wrong people. Then it's a 'controversy', and the corporate media doesn't do 'controversy', at least not when that 'controversy' swirls around selling generosity of spirit and tolerance for differences. Those are unacceptable values.

WASHINGTON — The CBS and NBC television networks have rejected an advertisement for the United Church of Christ that shows two bouncers turning away a gay couple, a Latino woman and a disabled man outside a church.

Officials of the Cleveland-based denomination said the 30-second ad is intended to emphasize its inclusiveness. "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we," the ad says.

The ad then shows a multiracial gathering of people young and old, including two smiling women arm in arm. A narrator says, "The United Church of Christ. No matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here."

In a written explanation to the church's ad agency, CBS linked the ad to the issue of same-sex marriage and said it does not accept advertising "on one side of a current controversial issue of public importance."

That excuse is as bogus as a $3 bill. The ad says NOTHING about same-sex marriage. The ad implies nothing about same-sex marriage. All it does suggest is that gays and lesbians are welcomed by the UCC, an idea that scared the bejesus right out of the corporate networks, not because the network execs thought there was anything wrong with it but because Jerry Falwell thinks there's something wrong with it and they're scared of Jerry. Scared that he might boycott them, scared that he might attack them, and mostly scared that he might use his 'friendship' with Michael Powell to harass and intimidate them, maybe even threaten their licenses.

The argument that showing two gay men without then stoning them proves one's support of gay marriage and what Jerry likes to call in ringing, stentorian tones, 'The Homosexual Agenda', is, after all, an argument that comes from the whacko Xtian Right. It's depressing to see major corporate media outlets like NBC and CBS spouting talking points from Right-wing fundie fringe groups like Focus on the Family and the Culture and Family Institute, but more than that, it suggests how far fear of these groups' political power in the new Bush govt has gone. It's beginning to look like the only people who can get away with showcasing a liberal attitude toward anything , just like Nixon going to China, are conservatives who are doing it for the money.

Like Rupert, for example, who is causing the usually hypocrisy-friendly Xtian Right a stomach ache by producing a film they see as glorifying the sexual revolution and the man they blame for starting it, Alfred Kinsey.

Conservative Christian groups across the country are protesting a film about the life of sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey, calling it a Hollywood whitewash of the man they hold largely responsible for the sexual revolution and a panoply of related ills, from high divorce rates to AIDS and child abuse.

---

[Robert Knight, director of the conservative Culture and Family Institute in Washington] acknowledged, however, that some opponents of the Kinsey film may be reluctant to try to punish its distributor, Fox Searchlight, owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

"Fox has a schizophrenic personality. Conservatives appreciate Fox news channel for bringing balance, but the Fox entertainment network, on the other hand, has clearly been the leader in driving TV into the sewer with its non-stop sexual emphasis," he said.

Mr Knight, who also allowed as how the fanatic Xtian Right is finished putting up with this continual flouting of its dogma and intends to exact revenge to force its views on everyone ('[P]ro-family organizations are not content to protest the latest outrage anymore, but will seek legislation and will punish sponsors of lewd entertainment'), and others in the newly-militant crackpot Xtian Right are in a dreadful quandary. It's one thing to gleefully punish your Satanic enemies--like, say, anybody who refuses to believe that W is 'God's Man' or can't see the spiritual grace in murdering doctors and dragging gays behind your pickup truck until they're dead in order to teach them them the virtues of extreme fundamentalism--but it's a whole other thing to find yourself in the position of having to smite the evils of an otherwise powerful supporter. That's going to cause a bit of head-scratching, particularly since their views on the Evil Wrought By Kinsey aren't exactly wishy-washy. Mr Knight again (the guy gets around; ever get the feeling the networks are hitting the same damn dry well way too often?):

Although the film portrays Kinsey as a flawed adulterer, conservative critics nonetheless contend it is too admiring. They argue that it omits unflattering details about Kinsey's interest in pedophilia and exaggerates the accuracy of the findings in his groundbreaking sex-behavior studies of 1948 and 1953.

"Instead of being lionized, Kinsey's proper place is with Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele or your average Hollywood horror flick mad scientist," said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women of America's Culture & Family Institute.
(emphasis added)

Conservatives who are quick to flay the asses of any liberal who dares to make a comparison of, say, the similarities between the propaganda techniques of Karl Rove and Little Joey Goebbels, will no doubt be eager to condemn Mr Knight for equating the man who dared to ask people if they masturbated with a legendary mass murderer.

No? Oh.

Right-wing Xtian fundie positions are so loaded with hypocrisy that it was inevitable that they'd bump their heads against it sooner or later. That Rupert was the one who generated this soul-searing confusion seems only fair and balanced. However, there is one way out of this dilemma which has never yet failed the fundies.

Denial.

It will no doubt serve them well again.

Adam Lipscomb of a violently executed blog has had the unmitigated effrontery to design a test about himself. Can you imagine that? But worse, he lied when he gave the answers.

This cannot stand. After virtually months (or minutes) of intense (or superficial) research, I am now in a position to state the truth. But in order to understand just how insidious this transparent attempt to simulate normality is, you must first read the test and then Adam's ridiculous answers. I'll wait.

Dum-dum-te-de-dum--

Ready?

Actually--and I say this with love--the only question on the test that matters is #15. The REAL answer is: 33rd degree Mason. This test is actually disinformation designed to hide Adam's true identity behind a facade of normality. But I have ferreted out the truth (from sources I am sworn not to reveal) and the REAL answers are these:

1. Deep in the land of Shambala, the end product of centuries of scientific breeding
2. In a top-secret ILLUMINATI lab, taught by alien/human organic hybrid computers.
3. Mount Ararat School for Cephalopods, Geek Division
4. Electrolytic Taupe
5. 744 BC--he was in the Original Cast
6. Yes, all the time, but it's not his fault--he was genetically engineered for it.
7. Fulcanelli
8. Stevie Ray Strangberb of Ur, who had a mean way of making the strings of his cametar scream like a chicken being strangled (in fact, the word 'strangle' is derived from Stevie Ray's name for that reason). A 'cametar' is a sort of guitar made by hanging (primarily) G-strings between the humps of a live camel. Strippers were sacrificed to its creation
9. This answer is actually correct, altho I think he's selling David Boreanaz short.
10. Vomit-flavored, with the little pieces of bubble gum in it
11. The records have been lost but my sources estimate that the earth had barely cooled
12. Atlantean Creole--very spicy
13. N/A
14. Chain-mail longies
15. As stated, although there are rumors he is slated to be the first 36th degree Mason ever invested. As such, he will have the power of life and death over Ashton Kutcher
16. Dr Moreau (who is actually real--he's retired now and living as a polar bear named Mindy at the San Diego Zoo)
17. Not under his real name. He was booked as 'Robert Downey, Jr', whom he resembles remarkably, especially around the eyebrows
18 & 19: Who cares?
20: The Amarna period of Ancient Egypt. He had a 'thing' with Nefertiti but it didn't end well and he doesn't like to talk about it. Something to do with the destruction of civilization and the birth of bad hair

I probably shouldn't be revealing all this, but I was in a mood. So sue me.

The weakest part of the Intelligence Community, and I don't care which branch you're talking about, is psy-ops--psychological operations. Psy-ops includes, among other things, the responsibility for spreading disinformation and propaganda. Radio Marti, for instance, began on the CIA payroll as a way to channel anti-Castro material inside Cuba. Along with other daffy initiatives, these are the geniuses who thought it would be useful to spend millions of dollars dropping leaflets--in English, by the way--over the Vietnamese countryside demanding that the VC surrender; who believed they could bring Castro down by spreading the rumor in the Cuban community in the 80's that he was secretly gay and dying of AIDs; whose attempts to influence Russian opinion in the Soviet era were so inept, so clumsy, so off-point that Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents were convinced their stories had been planted by the KGB.

The problem with psy-ops in the IC is the same as the problem with profiling in the law enforcment community: the techniques rarely work, and even when they do the backlash tends to be more severe--by far--than whatever small good they might have done. In the same way that profiling has destroyed tens of thousands of investigations by sending them off on useless wild goose chases for every investigation it helped narrow the field for, psy-ops eats up money and time to no conceivable purpose while producing marginally useful information. The hard-line propagandists in the Company used to defend psy-ops by insisting that if it was responsible for so much as a single Soviet defection then every penny it cost was worth it.

Well, it wasn't. In fact there isn't one significant or even insignificant intelligence goal that has ever been satisfactorily met by any psy-op. They have been failures almost without exception, yet the IC's blind faith in their efficacy has never wavered, not once in 50 years. Such loyalty is touching but severely misplaced.

Why am I even talking about this? Because the Bush Admin--specifically Rumsfeld's Pentagon--is planning to take psy-ops in entirely new directions. As Jim Lobe reported in the Asia Times last week, the Defence Science Board just issued a report which is scathing in its indictment of the typically clumsy and incompetent attempts by the BA to sway opinion in Iraq using the same intimidation, spin, and manipulation of information it uses on the US press corps while refusing to acknowledge the differences between our culture and Iraq's--or anybody else's, for that matter.

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaeda and radical Islamists are winning the propaganda war against the United States, says a high-level Pentagon panel, which concluded that President George W Bush's administration's policies in the Middle East, its fundamental failure to understand the Muslim world and a lack of imagination in using new communications technologies are responsible.

In a report concluded in September but only released last week, the Defense Science Board (DSB) called for a major overhaul of Washington's "public diplomacy" and "strategic communication" apparatus that would include much more money and the creation of a new independent agency to enlist the support of the private sector, researchers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to promote US messages to an increasingly hostile Islamic world.

"Strategic communication is a vital component of US national security," stresses the 111-page report. "It is in crisis, and it must be transformed with a strength of purpose that matches our commitment to diplomacy, defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security ... Collaboration between government and the private sector on an unprecedented scale is imperative."

The document also calls on US policymakers to spend more time "listening" to their intended audience and use messages that "should seek to reduce, not increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism and double standards".

The problem here is that none of their suggestions will make a dime's worth of difference in the execution of the war or in turning the attitude of the Arab populations in our favor. The fanatical belief of BushCo that perception is reality only works when reality can be kept at a safe distance. In a war zone, propaganda is clinical evidence of insanity. There's a fundamental flaw in the whole concept: IT DOESN'T WORK. It has never worked. Ever. Tokyo Rose didn't work, and neither will Baghdad Bob.

But now BushCo wants to take their 'arrogance, opportunism and double standards' in the direction of 'strategic influence', meaning they want to use psy-ops as part of a combat plan. Like this:

WASHINGTON — On the evening of Oct. 14, a young Marine spokesman near Fallouja appeared on CNN and made a dramatic announcement.

"Troops crossed the line of departure," 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert declared, using a common military expression signaling the start of a major campaign. "It's going to be a long night." CNN, which had been alerted to expect a major news development, reported that the long-awaited offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Fallouja had begun.

In fact, the Fallouja offensive would not kick off for another three weeks. Gilbert's carefully worded announcement was an elaborate psychological operation — or "psy-op" — intended to dupe insurgents in Fallouja and allow U.S. commanders to see how guerrillas would react if they believed U.S. troops were entering the city, according to several Pentagon officials.

And what exactly did they learn from this exercise? They're not saying, of course, but judging from past experience with similar attempts, the answer is most likely NOTHING. Although we won't find that out until the report on it is leaked a couple of years from now.

Post-modernism is usually defined as the attempt to break down the barriers that used to separate cultural genres and synthesize everything into a single organic whole. In that sense, George W Bush is the first post-modern president. Looked at from a wide perspective, the over-arching theme of radical conservatism as practiced by the BA is to break down barriers--between church and state, for example--and meld the culture into a forced reactionary mold in which diversity is homogenized and dissent is invisible. Like the Joes before him (Goebbels and Stalin), Bush is setting up a propaganda mechanism designed to erase the barriers between the disinformation aimed at an enemy and the disinformation aimed at the US public.

The Pentagon in 2002 was forced to shutter its controversial Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), which was opened shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, after reports that the office intended to plant false news stories in the international media. But officials say that much of OSI's mission — using information as a tool of war — has been assumed by other offices throughout the U.S. government.

Although most of the work remains classified, officials say that some of the ongoing efforts include having U.S. military spokesmen play a greater role in psychological operations in Iraq, as well as planting information with sources used by Arabic TV channels such as Al Jazeera to help influence the portrayal of the United States.

Other specific examples were not known, although U.S. national security officials said an emphasis had been placed on influencing how foreign media depict the United States.

These efforts have set off a fight inside the Pentagon over the proper use of information in wartime. Several top officials see a danger of blurring what are supposed to be well-defined lines between the stated mission of military public affairs — disseminating truthful, accurate information to the media and the American public — and psychological and information operations, the use of often-misleading information and propaganda to influence the outcome of a campaign or battle.

That's not a 'danger', guys. That's the whole point. As eRobin continues to demonstrate with her series of surgically accurate posts unveiling the underlying pro-Bush propaganda in the NYT, Karl Rove is successfully turning the largest and most influential news outlets in the country into American versions of Pravda where the truth has to be gleaned from between the lines because it will never--or rarely--be found in the lines. They are now moving to internationalize their propaganda effort by using the Second Gulf War as an excuse to synthesize civilian and military disinformation tactics into a single, harmonious (if totalitarian) whole. The proof is in the pudding:

• Item 1: The least credible Pentagon spokesman in history, Larry di Rita, a man with a track record of Orwellian lies longer than your arm if you're not a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, says it's not true and it isn't happening and even if it is, nobody actually ever suggested any such thing.

  Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said he recognized the concern of many inside the Defense Department, but that "everybody understands that there's a very important distinction between information operations and public affairs. Nobody has offered serious proposals that would blur the distinction between these two functions."
  
  Di Rita said he had asked his staff for more information about how the Oct. 14 incident on CNN came about.

  I particularly like the head-spinning implication that Larry, like Sgt Schultz, knew nothing--NOTHING--about deliberately tricking CNN into telling lies, but the important part is his insistence that there are no 'serious proposals' mixing civilian and military propaganda efforts. Given his propensity for claiming firmly and with a straight face that up is down and black is white and there are too WMD's in Iraq, di Rita's flat claim that nothing of the sort is going on may be considered virtual proof that, indeed, it is.


• Item 2: The recent creation in the Pentagon of a 'strategic communications' office.

  One recent development critics point to is the decision by commanders in Iraq in mid-September to combine public affairs, psychological operations and information operations into a "strategic communications" office. An organizational chart of the newly created office was obtained by The Times. The strategic communications office, which began operations Sept. 15, is run by Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, who answers directly to Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
  
  Partly out of concern about this new office, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, distributed a letter Sept. 27 to the Joint Chiefs and U.S. combat commanders in the field warning of the dangers of having military public affairs (PA) too closely aligned with information operations (IO).
  
  "Although both PA and IO conduct planning, message development and media analysis, the efforts differ with respect to audience, scope and intent, and must remain separate," Myers wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Times.
  
  Pentagon officials say Myers is worried that U.S. efforts in Iraq and in the broader campaign against terrorism could suffer if world audiences begin to question the honesty of statements from U.S. commanders and spokespeople.

Sorry, General, but that train done left the station 3 years ago and it ain't coming back anytime soon.

The upshot of all this is that psy-ops techniques that don't work in uncontrolled environments like a war zone or a foreign country are being grafted onto a civilian base. The good news is that psy-ops manipulation does work in one area: it fools a lot of your own people who deeply desire to be protected from 'bad news'. Most Russians chose to believe Pravda despite the evidence of their own eyes. Most Americans choose to believe Fox and CNN and the NYT despite the evidence--and even their admission--that they've been used, been sloppy, been too cozy with govt sources and therefore often 'inaccurate'.

We are about to find out what it felt like to live under the Soviet regime when news was rigidly controlled, the difference between news and propaganda virtually undetectable, at least that's the way it looks from here.

A high school principal in Athens, Georgia, apologized for reading a pro-prayer-in-school poem over the intercom. He claims it was meant 'to provoke thought and discussion' but what it mostly does is whine bitterly about modern society and complain about how unfair it is to keep Christianity out of classrooms. Here's the poem:

The New School Prayer

Now I sit me down in school

Where praying is against the rule

For this great nation under God

Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,

It violates the Bill of Rights.

And anytime my head I bow

Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,

That's no offense; it's a freedom scene.

The law is specific, the law is precise.

Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall

Might offend someone with no faith at all.

In silence alone we must meditate,

God's name is prohibited by the state.

We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,

And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.

They've outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.

To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,

And the "unwed daddy," our Senior King.

It's "inappropriate" to teach right from wrong,

We're taught that such "judgments" do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,

Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.

But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,

No word of God must reach this crowd.

It's scary here I must confess,

When chaos reigns the school's a mess.

So, Lord, this silent plea I make:

Should I be shot, my soul please take!

I particularly like the deft touch of the last two lines wherein chaos only reigns because students aren't allowed to pray in school, and the lack of a posted Ten Commandments in every school room leads to students being shot, I suppose by somebody who forgot the Fifth because it wasn't emblazoned over his head every day.

There's something of the 'magical reality' school of thought in fundie Xtianity, as if having monuments dedicated to 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' will somehow deter people from doing it, and the simple act of praying in school will make them safer despite rampant poverty and an inbred gun culture. An...unlikely...hypothesis, to say the least. Fortunately, as in the case of the attempt to force religious dogma into the Georgia science curriculum, there were some parents who weren't about to stand for a principal pushing his religious beliefs on an entire school.

Some parents have complained to both Craft and Clarke County School Superintendent Lewis Holloway.

"Basically, I found the poem offensive, but even if I didn't, I still would believe it crossed the line between church and state," said Ginger Smith, whose daughter is a junior at Cedar Shoals.

Smith also objected to misrepresentations in the poem. She said, for example, that students are allowed to wear crosses or other religious items, to wear clothing with religious messages and to pray in school in some circumstances.

Holloway said the district had received "several calls" from people who were upset about the poem.

Somebody should raise a monument to them for protecting the Constitution.

Two unions representing government employees in the Homeland Security Dept have gone public with the disclosure statements Tom Ridge wants them to sign in order to work for HSD. The statements, usually pledges not to disclose secrets, are so much broader than standard ones that they may be unConstitutional.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The Homeland Security Department is requiring employees to sign a nondisclosure agreement so restrictive that it might be unconstitutional, two unions for thousands of border workers said Monday.

The agreement, which was introduced in May, prohibits department employees from giving the public "sensitive but unclassified" information. It also says the government "may conduct inspections at any time or place" to ensure that the agreement is obeyed.

The two unions, the National Treasury Employees Union and the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement that the agreement gave the government "unprecedented leeway to search employee homes and personal belongings in violation of the Fourth Amendment." The unions, which together represent about 35,000 Homeland Security Department employees, include a large number of Customs and border workers.

This month, lawyers for the unions wrote to the general counsel of the department, Joe D. Whitley, asking that the agreement no longer be distributed and that a directive that outlines the policy for identifying and safeguarding sensitive but unclassified information be withdrawn. The letter also says that the directive gives officials a device "to suppress and cover up evidence of their own misconduct or malfeasance by stamping documents 'for official use only.' "

A spokesman for the department, Brian Roehrkasse, said in a telephone interview, "The notion that this would be used to cover up evidence of wrongdoing is baseless."

Sure it is. Nobody in the Bush Administration would ever 'cover up' incompetence or malfeasance. Ever. Right? They would never NEVER stamp documents 'ultra super secret' just to keep politically embarrassing material hidden. Would they?

Nah.

In the name of 'security', Tom Ridge has just declared war on potential whistleblowers.

A lawyer for the American Federation of Government Employees, Mark Roth, said the policies would discourage employees from talking to the public and Congress about "matters of public concern." Mr. Roth said he was also worried that the government would use the agreement to pick out and discipline outspoken workers.

"I think, sadly, it will probably be used to keep information that the public needs to know out of the public's hands until we challenge it in court," he said.

And maybe then. The disclosure agreements could also function as a major red herring, focusing litigation on whether the employee violated an oath rather than on the thornier issue of incompetent management. It always works out better for the employer if they can claim the issue the employee is reporting is irrelevant and the real issue is the reporting itself. It takes all the legal and PR heat and puts it on the employee. The Red Lion Foods case showed all employers--even the government, apparently--that you can successfully undermine discovery of a crime you've committed if you can find a way to blame the one who discovered it. The disclosure agreements not only give them the tools to hassle suspected whistleblowers, they give them the opportunity ignore the message and shoot the messenger.

Which is the way Junior likes to do business, after all.

Mark Fiore tries really really hard to look on the bright side....