Buffett and Blackstone in the News
Blackstone Group eyes German utility giant RWE
Marietta Cauchi, LBO Wire
30 May 2008
" ... Blackstone Group has been looking at German utility giant RWE, a person familiar with the situation told Dow Jones. The person was responding to market rumors that Blackstone was working with Permira and Warren Buffett on a joint bid for RWE. ... "
•••••••
Blackstone Group, Larry Silverstein, Kroll Associates, Eliot Spitzer
From: "Spitzer's Real Scandal"
http://www.nymegaphone.com/node/24
... New York real estate baron Larry Silverstein became primary lease-holder on the World Trade Center a mere six weeks before 9/11. It had never changed hands before. For a down payment, Silverstein put up only $14 million of his own money, and his friends at the powerful investment bank Blackstone Group kicked in another $111 million. After 9/11, Silverstein demanded a whopping $7 billion insurance payout, in the form of two $3.5 billion payments. He argued the two different plane crashes were two separate “occurrences” of two separate attacks.
The Megaphone has now learned that as attorney general, Spitzer got involved behind the scenes, and in the courts, filing a amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief on Silverstein’s behalf on Jan. 15, 2003. For years, this brief languished in the files of the public records room on the 17th floor of the Second Circuit Court in Manhattan, until it was discovered and brought to The New York Megaphone by NYC attorney and author Carl Person. The court ended up agreeing with Spitzer and Silverstein, over-turning the decision of a lower court. Spitzer helped mid-wife a fat compromise and an eventual $4.5 billion payout for Silverstein. The Megaphone’s multiple requests for comment from Governor Spitzer were ignored.
Attorney Carl Person told The Megaphone, “I was surprised to see that Spitzer had used his position as attorney general to support one private litigant over another. Normally, this is not done…Silverstein could well have been someone who destroyed evidence concerning the 9/11 events by apparently ordering or consenting to the tearing (pulling) down of 7 WTC and the removal of the debris from his multiple ground leased premises thereafter.”
Silverstein’s World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11 without being hit by an airplane. Thirty seven eyewitnesses working on the ground as firefighters, EMTs, and reporters, recalled being warned in advance the tower was coming down. The official story however, claims a fire ignited a fuel tank in the building, hastening its sudden collapse.
WTC 7 was the NY headquarters of CIA and the SEC office investigating Enron. 9/11 skeptics believe the building was taken down by controlled demolition. Larry Silverstein himself said in a 2002 episode of PBS’s Frontline that on 9/11 he recalled remarking, "Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it…they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." Silverstein later claimed that by “pull,” he meant removing firefighters, not pulling the building down. However, all firefighters had been “pulled” from the building three hours earlier.
The Kroll Connection
This past August, another scandal radiated from the Spitzer circle. This time it was Nixon’s arch-strategist Roger Stone leaving a threatening voice mail for Spitzer’s dad, Bernard. Stone allegedly claimed he would subpoena the elder Spitzer for the $5 million in illegal loans Spitzer senior made to his son during his 1998 Attorney General campaign. Stone denied he had made the call. To prove he did, the Spitzer family hired Kroll Associates to trace the call. Why Kroll? Spitzer has a long relationship with this powerful, cryptic security company.
Kroll’s CEO on 9/11 was one of Spitzer’s old mentors from the Manhattan DA’s office, Michael Cherkasky. Cherkasky investigated bank BCCI (which had links to both Islamic terror and the CIA), and the mysterious 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing. Cherkasky’s 2002 book Forewarned: Why the Government is Failing to Protect Us, and What We Must Do to Protect Ourselves is a confused mix of fear-mongering and insider’s analysis. He sheepishly admits that the CIA was in part culpable for the 1993 WTC bombing, since they helped pull known terrorist “Blind Sheikh” Abdel bin-Rahman into the country. Cherkasky admits the FBI had a mole inside Rahman’s 1993 WTC bombing cell, and lays blame for the bombing on the FBI.
After observing the 1993 WTC bombing as an operation penetrated by CIA and FBI, Cherkasky he became head of Kroll, the “the CIA of Wall Street.” Kroll took on the management of WTC after the 1993 bombing. Blackstone Group, the same financiers who backed the Larry Silverstein, have also been involved with Kroll, owning big chunks of Kroll stock on occasion, according to SEC reports.
Cherkasky has donated $14,500 to Eliot Spitzer's political campaigns.
The Anthrax Connection
Eliot Spitzer’s connection to key 9/11 players extends to fellow life-long Democrat, Jerome Hauer, managing director of Kroll on 9/11. Only Jerome Hauer and his former boss, Rudolph Giuliani, were indicted by the San Diego Citizens Grand Jury.
According to Bay Area News (a San Francisco-bay based publication) and Wikipedia, Jerome Hauer warned the Bush White House to go on Cipro, the anti-anthrax drug, on 9/11/01. Hauer denied this allegation to The Megaphone. The White House did go on Cipro. Six days later, the anthrax attacks started, and sent the country back into paroxysms of terror.
Government watchdog group Judicial Watch demanded to know who warned the Bush White House, but not the public, about anthrax. The White House stonewalled their Freedom of Information Act requests.
“I read that the White House did know, and they went on the anti-biotics,” says Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman. He got involved because, “African American employees at Brentwood [US Postal Facility] were basically left out there to twist in the wind when the white guys up on Capitol Hill got immediate treatment.”
Post-9/11, Jerome Hauer went on to be Coordinator of the National Institute of Health's investigation of anthrax deaths. His report blamed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. That assertion has been widely discredited, since the five deaths in 2001 were from a fine, “weaponized” form of anthrax, the “Ames Strain” that only the U.S. military and U.S. federal government possessed.
On 9/11, Jerome Hauer appeared on television with Dan Rather. Rather posited that the 9/11 attacks must have had state sponsorship. Hauer urged Rather to blame Bin Laden only. When Rather voiced suspicions about the way the buildings fell, Hauer offered that they simply came down because they were hit by a plane. Without an investigation, Hauer somehow knew two major parts of 9/11’s official story before it emerged.
Hauer is biological terrorism expert whose resume includes time at Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), a military contractor doing work in nuclear issues and psy-ops, and Bioport, manufacturer of the controversial anthrax vaccine.
Jerry Hauer and anthrax go way back. In May of 1998, he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations on the topic of "Building a 'Biobomb': Terrorist Challenge." That evening Hauer co-presented on the topic Steven Hatfill. Yes, that Steven Hatfill, the one who later became the FBI’s prime suspect in the anthrax mailings. A year after their CFR presentations, Hatfill and Hauer would become coworkers at SAIC's Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis.
Hatfill had worked at Ft. Detrick, the U.S. Army’s bio-weapons lab in Maryland. Hatfill was never convicted, nor even prosecuted, for anything. Today he’s suing reporters for defamation. On Aug. 15, a judge ruled that five top national reporters would have to reveal confidential government sources who fingered Hatfill.
In his interview with The Megaphone, Hauer repeatedly referred to the Grand Jury as “a bunch of nutjobs” and he defended Steven Hatfill. But when asked directly if Hatfill was innocent, Hauer was less than clear:
“I think that the FBI should not have said anything about Hatfill until they knew more. I do not believe Hatfill is a murderer. And I think Steve Hatfill is very passionate, but I don’t think he’s a murderer, and I don’t believe he did it.”
Hauer was not willing to conclusively say that Hatfill was uninvolved in the anthrax attacks, stating, “I’m not going to get into those details.”
Of the five people who died from anthrax exposure, one was a New Yorker. Kathy Nguyen, a hospital worker in the Bronx, was a victim of inhalation anthrax. She died alone in a hospital on October 31, 2001.
A 2004 petition gathered 100,000 signatures begging then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to investigate the real source of the 2001 attacks. A Zogby poll that year likewise found that 66 per cent of voters wanted Eliot Spitzer, to tackle these tough questions. What those poll respondents didn’t know is that Spitzer can’t investigate 9/11 or anthrax. He would have to indict his friends from Kroll, Jerry Hauer and Michael Cherkasky. That’s the real scandal.
•••••••
SCAM: BEAR STEARNS - TIMOTHY GEITHNER AND THE BLACKSTONE-BCCI SET UP
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14995
SUMMARY
The Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm tied to foreign policy influence lobbying groups such as Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft Advisors, and the Madeline Albright Group, had an affiliated spinoff company, BlackRock, a Caymans Island foreign bank associate, evaluate the “fairness” to shareholders of the JP Morgan Acquisition of Bear Stearns. The deal involved a bailout of Bear Stearns creditors directly, and indirectly through cash infusions via the Fed’s open window of lending, including lending billions to Citibank in exchange for mortgage collateral. The lead negotiator of the deal, the President of the NY Fed, Geithner, is a former employee of Kissinger Associates, a Saudi-China lobbying firm, and was appointed to the Fed by Peter Peterson of Blackstone. He also worked for Secretary Rubin at the Clinton Treasury Department. Secretary Rubin is now an executive with Citibank a major beneficiary of the bailout. Citibank has major Saudi shareholders, and as such is not an American bank, per se. Citibank has been investigated for illegal terrorist money laundering activities in the Middle East, and Geithner was an employee at Kissinger Associates when it was engaged in discussions of mergers with BCCI, which was later indicted for drug money laundering.
CHRONOLOGY
1988 Blackstone forms BlackRock as mortgage investment subsidiary. Its CEO is Peter Peterson, also CEO of the Council on Foreign Relations, for which Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Robert Rubin are officers.
1986 East Asian International economic specialist, Timothy Geithner joins Kissinger and Associates, a major Chinese Financial lobbying firm with strong ties to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. At the time both Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft are partners, as well as international economist Alan Stoga. It is not clear whether Geitner worked with Stoga at this time, but his expertise in China would be welcome in its China Joint Venture.
1986-1989 Kissinger Associates, Stoga and consultant ambassador Sergio Correa discuss a merger between BCCI and Kissinger Associates. Correa acts as a front man for BCCI in acquisition explorations as a paid retained consultant to both BCCI, and separately to Kissinger Associates. toga arranges contacts between BCCI Saudi linked executives Gaith Pharaon and Abol Helmy. It is not known whether Geithner worked on these transactions.
c. 1989 BCCI is indicted and Kissinger Associates ends discussions.
Geithner leaves Kissinger Associates and begins work as a civil servant in the Treasury Department. He is confirmed as Asst. Sec. for International Affairs in Treasury working for Secretary Rubin of the Clinton Administration.[Senior executive at Goldman Sachs and later Citibank a Saudi controlled foreign bank]. Rubin also serves as an officer of the CFR managed by Peter Peterson CEO of Blackstone.
1992 BlackRock is spinoff Blackstone and becomes independent.
2001 Geithner joins International Monetary Fund IMF.
2003 Blackstone CEO Peter Peterson names Geithner as President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
2007 Peterson’s Blackstone sells 3 Billion dollar stake in Blackstone to the People’s Republic of China.
2007 Rubin ‘s Citibank receives billions in bailout loans in exchange for mortgage collateral.
March 2008 Blackrock creates firm to buy distressed mortgage securities
April 3, 2008 Blackstone mentioned as advisor to Bear Stearns valuation, later amended to be Blackrock, founded by Blackstone.
REFERENCES
Bernanke Defends Fed's Role in Bear Stearns Deal http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/business/jan-june08/fed_04-03.html
BCCI AND KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, Congressional Report, 1992, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/20kiss.htm
Blackstone? BlackRock? Whoever
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/04/03/blackstone-blackrock-whoever/?mod=WSJBlog
BlackRock set to profit from Mortgage Distress Bailout, The new company has been formed by BlackRock, Highfields, and a management team of mortgage industry led by Stanford Kurland, Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company's (PennyMac) chairman and CEO. PennyMac will raise capital from private investors, acquire loans from financial institutions seeking to reduce its mortgage exposures, and seek to create value for both borrowers and investors through distinctive loan servicing. http://www.banking-business-review.com/article_news.asp?guid=17D0DB88-3917-44F6-AFF3-1D1AECC10E77
New York Fed Names Timothy F. Geithner President
Saturday, May 31, 2008
The Path to 9/11: PART 9 - The Military Forces Behind the Election-Fixing Technologists Central to the Black Tuesday Covert Operation
By Alex Constantine
(Originally The Lexington Comair Crash, part 42B)
Jesus Christ & the CIA on "The Path to 9/11"
ABC was mugged by reality and struggled to redeem its reputation in the days prior to airing "The Path to 9/11," a movie financed in large part by the Longleaf Partners Fund, aka Southeastern Assets Management (SAM) ...
Max Blumenthal, writing in The Nation on September 8, 2006, described the critical uproar preceding the broadcast of the movie as a "siege": "ABC advances the illusion that the deceptive nature of 'The Path to 9/11' is an honest mistake committed by a hardworking but admittedly fumbling team of well-intentioned Hollywood professionals who wanted nothing less than to entertain America. But this is another Big Lie. In fact, 'The Path to 9/11' is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood"
The core of this "network within the ABC network" is neo-con opinion-shaper David Horowitz, "who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by 'The Path to 9/11' director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to 'transform Hollywood' in line with its messianic vision."
Before "The Path to 9/11" went into production, Disney/ABC hired David Cunningham to direct the film. "Cunningham," writes Blumenthal, "is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth with a Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father's group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is 'dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry.'
As part of TFI's long-term strategy, Cunningham helped place interns from Youth With A Mission's global training network in film industry jobs 'so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out,' according to a YWAM report Last June, Cunningham's TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled Untitled History Project.
Cyrus Nowrasteh
"Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive Untitled film. Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like Cunningham. ... This June, while 'The Path to 9/11' was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo – both friends of Nowrasteh – announced they were "partnering" with right-wing activist David Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as "A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center." Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1992, Horowitz has labored to create a network of politically active conservatives in Hollywood.... The group's headquarters are at the offices of Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a 'think tank' bankrolled for years with millions by right-wing sugardaddies like eccentric far right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife... "328
Scaife, of course, is a veteran state propagandist, a CIA Mockingbird. He was recruited to the CIA by Frank Bennett, who once wrote, "political warfare is warfare – not public relations. It is one part persuasion and two parts deception. The aim of political warfare ... is to discredit, displace, and neutralize an opponent, to destroy a competing ideology, and to reduce the adherents to political impotence."329
Howard Ahmanason, Jr. COULDN'T, as I say, be far away. "After more than 20 years of politically oriented philanthropy," Blumenthal wrote in Salon, January 2004, "Ahmanson is now emerging as one of the major financial angels of the right, putting him in the company of Richard Mellon Scaife, the oil and banking heir who bankrolled the groundwork for much of the conservative movement's apparatus."330
Washington Post, November 6, 2003: "The Scaife and Ahmanson families are heirs to banking fortunes who have given to a range of conservative causes. Richard Mellon Scaife of Pittsburg" and the CIA "bankrolled the American Spectator magazine's $2.4 million 'Arkansas Project' to turn up dirt on President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., of Newport Beach, Calif., was among the largest donors ... to the Chalcedon Foundation, a California-based religious movement that calls for a theocratic state enforcing biblical law, [and] the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), which share headquarters space in Washington, D.C."331 The IRD is also largely financed by Scaife.
Scaife and Ahmanson, the fundamentalist-Mockingbird-Siamese-twin-from Hell-fountainheads for Jesus, are the dark beating heart of American "conservative" fundamentalist Christian extremism. Ahmanson is a major share-holder in ES&S, together with the Hunts, and the financial bridge to Diebold.
Lisa Burks, vice president of the Arkansas NOW chapter, writes that ES&S Vice President Todd Urosevich "is the brother to the Diebold President Bob Urosevich. The Urosevich [brothers] were fronted monies to start ES&S and then what is now Diebold by extreme right-wing financier Howard Ahmanson. Mr. Ahmanson ... believes that slavery is a 'biblical right.' There is a serious problem here that must be corrected immediately."332
A HOUSE of corrections might conceivably suit the occasion. All that remained was a joint venture with ChoicePoint to complete the election fraud connections to 9/11:
NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2004 /BSNewswire/ - Diebold, ChoicePoint and Sproul - In a new partnership between government and business involving unprecedented interagency cooperation between the RNC/PNAC, the Patent Office, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security - and funded in part by venture capital from Microsoft's capital-markets division - have announced plans to form a joint venture to leverage core software patents and other intellectual property for the purpose of maintaining America's strategic edge at providing 'the best democracy money can buy.'"333
This consortium of election-fixing technologists is driven by military forces central to the covert operation known as 9/11 – not the plotline involving Islamo-fascist patsies, but the domestic, Christ-loving genus:
"The mad rush to install unverifiable computer voting is DRIVEN by the Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush last year. The chief lobbying group pushing for the act was a consortium of arms dealers - those disinterested corporate citizens - including NORTHROP-GRUMMAN and LOCKHEED-MARTIN. The bill also mandates that all states adopt the computerized 'ineligible voter purges' system that Jeb used to eliminate 91,000 eligible black voters from the Florida rolls in 2000. The Republican-run private company that accomplished this electoral miracle, ChoicePoint, is bagging the lion's share of the new Bush-ordered purge contracts."334 The very idea.
This is the hub of it all in the context of 9/11 and 5191 – a clutch of military-industrialists with fantastically deep pockets ... a vicous coup disguised as an election ... 9/11 ... the drive to war with Iraq ... neo-fascist religious fronts ... the bilking of Health and Human Services ... propagandistic TV movies ...
Circumnavigate and return to the same crowd, the center of gravity
On board of General Motors, for instance – a SAM holding – you find one of the powerbrokers of military industry: Kent Kresa from Northrop Grumman. Kresa handled the most important aquisitions of Northrop Grumman. He was a force in Grumman's Logicon TASK, a step on the path to the 9/11 covert operation.
Logicon (a Northrop-Grumman subsidiary) TASK was cobbled together by Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Titan, Boeing, EDS, manufacturer of e-voting machines, Neil Armstrong's Veridian, and several other tech contractors. Logicon was a partner in the Eagle Alliance, the NSA-revamping group that included ACS, CACI, TRW, etc., led by Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).335
These, together with Raytheon and a number intelligence-related high-tech fronts, were instrumental in the 9/11 operation. In bestowing power upon them, ChoicePoint is a critical element here, of course, and CP is directed by Kenneth Langone, the Tricon/Yum! Brands (held by "The Path to 9/11" sponsor SAM) and former NY Stock Exchange director. (Yum! Brands began as Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. an independent, publicly-traded company that spun-off from PepsiCo, the Tom Kean haunt – which appeared prominently in the Lexington-Seattle, terrorist gun-running chain.)
Officers of these companies meet in herds at various think-tanks and corporate fronts, but most tellingly as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where ChoicePoint's Langone is a trustee.
NOTES
328.) Max Blumenthal column, September 8, 2006.
http://maxblumenthal.blogspot.com/2006/09/discover-secret-right-wing-network.html
329.) Andrew J. Weaver & Nicole Seibert, "Church & Scaife," Media Transparency Project, August 2, 2004.
http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=42
330.) Max Blumenthal, "Avenging angel of the religious right," Salon, January 6, 2004.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/01/06/ahmanson/index.html
331.) "F.C. Episcopal Withholding $ From Virginia Diocese," Falls Church News-Press, November 6, 2003.
http://www.fcnp.com/335/story4.htm
332.) Lisa Burks, "One Person Can Make a Huge Difference," Fair Elections web site, undated.
http://www.fairelections.us/article.php?id=104
333.) Reprinted at:
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_rigorousintuition_archive.html
334.) "George W. Bush – Terrorist in the White House – Election Fraud."
http://www.nogw.com/electionfraud.html
335.) Nico Haupt, "9/11: The lost War drill? (Chapter 10)," GlobalFreePress mirror, June 18, 2004.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/06/290960.shtml
(Originally The Lexington Comair Crash, part 42B)
Jesus Christ & the CIA on "The Path to 9/11"
ABC was mugged by reality and struggled to redeem its reputation in the days prior to airing "The Path to 9/11," a movie financed in large part by the Longleaf Partners Fund, aka Southeastern Assets Management (SAM) ...Max Blumenthal, writing in The Nation on September 8, 2006, described the critical uproar preceding the broadcast of the movie as a "siege": "ABC advances the illusion that the deceptive nature of 'The Path to 9/11' is an honest mistake committed by a hardworking but admittedly fumbling team of well-intentioned Hollywood professionals who wanted nothing less than to entertain America. But this is another Big Lie. In fact, 'The Path to 9/11' is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood"
The core of this "network within the ABC network" is neo-con opinion-shaper David Horowitz, "who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by 'The Path to 9/11' director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to 'transform Hollywood' in line with its messianic vision."
Before "The Path to 9/11" went into production, Disney/ABC hired David Cunningham to direct the film. "Cunningham," writes Blumenthal, "is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth with a Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father's group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is 'dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry.' As part of TFI's long-term strategy, Cunningham helped place interns from Youth With A Mission's global training network in film industry jobs 'so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out,' according to a YWAM report Last June, Cunningham's TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled Untitled History Project.
Cyrus Nowrasteh"Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive Untitled film. Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like Cunningham. ... This June, while 'The Path to 9/11' was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo – both friends of Nowrasteh – announced they were "partnering" with right-wing activist David Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as "A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center." Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1992, Horowitz has labored to create a network of politically active conservatives in Hollywood.... The group's headquarters are at the offices of Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a 'think tank' bankrolled for years with millions by right-wing sugardaddies like eccentric far right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife... "328
Scaife, of course, is a veteran state propagandist, a CIA Mockingbird. He was recruited to the CIA by Frank Bennett, who once wrote, "political warfare is warfare – not public relations. It is one part persuasion and two parts deception. The aim of political warfare ... is to discredit, displace, and neutralize an opponent, to destroy a competing ideology, and to reduce the adherents to political impotence."329
Howard Ahmanason, Jr. COULDN'T, as I say, be far away. "After more than 20 years of politically oriented philanthropy," Blumenthal wrote in Salon, January 2004, "Ahmanson is now emerging as one of the major financial angels of the right, putting him in the company of Richard Mellon Scaife, the oil and banking heir who bankrolled the groundwork for much of the conservative movement's apparatus."330Washington Post, November 6, 2003: "The Scaife and Ahmanson families are heirs to banking fortunes who have given to a range of conservative causes. Richard Mellon Scaife of Pittsburg" and the CIA "bankrolled the American Spectator magazine's $2.4 million 'Arkansas Project' to turn up dirt on President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., of Newport Beach, Calif., was among the largest donors ... to the Chalcedon Foundation, a California-based religious movement that calls for a theocratic state enforcing biblical law, [and] the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), which share headquarters space in Washington, D.C."331 The IRD is also largely financed by Scaife.
Scaife and Ahmanson, the fundamentalist-Mockingbird-Siamese-twin-from Hell-fountainheads for Jesus, are the dark beating heart of American "conservative" fundamentalist Christian extremism. Ahmanson is a major share-holder in ES&S, together with the Hunts, and the financial bridge to Diebold. Lisa Burks, vice president of the Arkansas NOW chapter, writes that ES&S Vice President Todd Urosevich "is the brother to the Diebold President Bob Urosevich. The Urosevich [brothers] were fronted monies to start ES&S and then what is now Diebold by extreme right-wing financier Howard Ahmanson. Mr. Ahmanson ... believes that slavery is a 'biblical right.' There is a serious problem here that must be corrected immediately."332
A HOUSE of corrections might conceivably suit the occasion. All that remained was a joint venture with ChoicePoint to complete the election fraud connections to 9/11:
NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2004 /BSNewswire/ - Diebold, ChoicePoint and Sproul - In a new partnership between government and business involving unprecedented interagency cooperation between the RNC/PNAC, the Patent Office, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security - and funded in part by venture capital from Microsoft's capital-markets division - have announced plans to form a joint venture to leverage core software patents and other intellectual property for the purpose of maintaining America's strategic edge at providing 'the best democracy money can buy.'"333
This consortium of election-fixing technologists is driven by military forces central to the covert operation known as 9/11 – not the plotline involving Islamo-fascist patsies, but the domestic, Christ-loving genus:
"The mad rush to install unverifiable computer voting is DRIVEN by the Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush last year. The chief lobbying group pushing for the act was a consortium of arms dealers - those disinterested corporate citizens - including NORTHROP-GRUMMAN and LOCKHEED-MARTIN. The bill also mandates that all states adopt the computerized 'ineligible voter purges' system that Jeb used to eliminate 91,000 eligible black voters from the Florida rolls in 2000. The Republican-run private company that accomplished this electoral miracle, ChoicePoint, is bagging the lion's share of the new Bush-ordered purge contracts."334 The very idea.
This is the hub of it all in the context of 9/11 and 5191 – a clutch of military-industrialists with fantastically deep pockets ... a vicous coup disguised as an election ... 9/11 ... the drive to war with Iraq ... neo-fascist religious fronts ... the bilking of Health and Human Services ... propagandistic TV movies ... Circumnavigate and return to the same crowd, the center of gravity
On board of General Motors, for instance – a SAM holding – you find one of the powerbrokers of military industry: Kent Kresa from Northrop Grumman. Kresa handled the most important aquisitions of Northrop Grumman. He was a force in Grumman's Logicon TASK, a step on the path to the 9/11 covert operation.
Logicon (a Northrop-Grumman subsidiary) TASK was cobbled together by Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Titan, Boeing, EDS, manufacturer of e-voting machines, Neil Armstrong's Veridian, and several other tech contractors. Logicon was a partner in the Eagle Alliance, the NSA-revamping group that included ACS, CACI, TRW, etc., led by Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).335
These, together with Raytheon and a number intelligence-related high-tech fronts, were instrumental in the 9/11 operation. In bestowing power upon them, ChoicePoint is a critical element here, of course, and CP is directed by Kenneth Langone, the Tricon/Yum! Brands (held by "The Path to 9/11" sponsor SAM) and former NY Stock Exchange director. (Yum! Brands began as Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. an independent, publicly-traded company that spun-off from PepsiCo, the Tom Kean haunt – which appeared prominently in the Lexington-Seattle, terrorist gun-running chain.)Officers of these companies meet in herds at various think-tanks and corporate fronts, but most tellingly as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where ChoicePoint's Langone is a trustee.
NOTES
328.) Max Blumenthal column, September 8, 2006.
http://maxblumenthal.blogspot.com/2006/09/discover-secret-right-wing-network.html
329.) Andrew J. Weaver & Nicole Seibert, "Church & Scaife," Media Transparency Project, August 2, 2004.
http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=42
330.) Max Blumenthal, "Avenging angel of the religious right," Salon, January 6, 2004.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/01/06/ahmanson/index.html
331.) "F.C. Episcopal Withholding $ From Virginia Diocese," Falls Church News-Press, November 6, 2003.
http://www.fcnp.com/335/story4.htm
332.) Lisa Burks, "One Person Can Make a Huge Difference," Fair Elections web site, undated.
http://www.fairelections.us/article.php?id=104
333.) Reprinted at:
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_rigorousintuition_archive.html
334.) "George W. Bush – Terrorist in the White House – Election Fraud."
http://www.nogw.com/electionfraud.html
335.) Nico Haupt, "9/11: The lost War drill? (Chapter 10)," GlobalFreePress mirror, June 18, 2004.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/06/290960.shtml
Friday, May 30, 2008
Daniel Hopsicker's Past at NBC - 9/11 and Fake News
Exclusive! - For Hopsicker fans:
Take a look at the first part of "The Path to 9/11" (separate parts are posted below). It concerns General Electric.
GE is a major force in 9/11-Condor.
GE owns NBC.
Where did Mr. Hopsicker come from? NBC ... and the revolution will not be televised.
What did Hopsicker do at NBC?
FAKE news* (see attached PR releases & my comments).
I discovered this years ago. Daniel has a valid response?
Not at all.
He claimed that I'm a "criminal" for asking about it.
Daniel produced a show called Global Business 2000 for NBC. ("Daniel Hopsicker is the producer of a business news television show airing internationally on NBC called Global Business 2000.")
You've never seen it. It aired in Asia and was only for corporate clients of NBC.
But NBC Corporate has no file on Daniel. I checked with executives who called Daniel a "liar" for suggesting that he has worked for NBC.
The employment office came up with nothing on him after four hours of searching their records.
Anyone can verify this by calling NBC in Los Angeles.
Daniel was an NBC contractor, and signed with MediaLink, notoriously known for the Great Iraq Incubator Hoax.
Daniel's program was composed of corporate, pre-fab "fake news" stories, sent to Daniel, who stitched them together and called himself a "producer."
He writes, speaks, tells Dave (Untamed-Genius) Emory on Pacifica that M. Atta was a "kingpin." True?
Bin Laden and Saudis and Atta behind the homicidal mess in NY ... while CIA smuggling drugs is somehow related. Okay ...
What do drugs have to do with 9/11?
Do you clever fans into "deep politics" really believe that Atta was the "kingpin?"
If so, you've been hopsuckered.
- AC
•••••••
Copyright 1996 Haymarket Publishing Services Ltd
PR Week
January 26, 1996
LENGTH: 131 words
HEADLINE: Media: Medialink wins NBC exclusive
BODY: Medialink has been appointed as the exclusive provider of video news releases to Global Business 2000, the business television show which
launches this month on NBC's satellite services covering Asia and Europe.
The deal, struck with the show's US-based production company Economic
Television, will see Medialink provide the programme with any appropriate
VNRs' suitable for the show's business audience, said Medialink's vice
chairman David Davis.
The show's launch is part of NBC's revamp of its international programme
service and the formal launch of NBC Asia on 15 January.
NBC, which is already available in Europe through NBC Super Channel, has
launched both an entertainment station and a 24-hour news and business
station under the NBC Asia banner.
Copyright 1996 M2 Communications Ltd.
M2 PRESSWIRE
April 10, 1996
LENGTH: 209 words
HEADLINE: ECONOMIC TELEVISION
Millions view "WebCruise" on TV news as "JumpCity!" launches
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, CA
HIGHLIGHT:
New primetime TV show about the Internet to debut
BODY:
Millions of consumers this weekend watched a first-ever three minute
feature news segment called "WebCruise!" which showcased three popular sites on the World Wide Web, bringing pictures of the wired revolution to watchers of network news.
"WebCruise was our way of testing the waters with TV news directors, who
really have a finger on the pulse of what people want. They jumped on this
story, and it really reinforces our belief that this is THE time to launch
our Primetime reality-based entertainment series about the Internet," stated
"JumpCity!" producer Daniel Hopsicker.
"We think the Internet's the biggest consumer phenomenon since the hula
hoop, and it clearly deserves a show conveying the gleeful fun and sheer joy
of 'cyberpilots' worldwide."
"WebCruise" will be a weekly feature, both going to satellite as news, and
playing as a segment on Global Business 2000, which airs on NBC internationally, as well as inflight on flagship carriers like United and USAir. Its designer to help consumers learn of great sites to access, and allow marketers to generate more traffic to their World Wide Web sites.
CONTACT: Daniel Hopsicker, Economic Television
Tel: +1-800-264-0920
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*****************************************************************
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 22:33:08 -0800
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Medialink has been appointed as the exclusive provider of video news
releases to [Daniel Hopsicker's] Global Business 2000..."
Now that we have one show verified, at least, I can look into it,
and that's what I wanted to do originally, so let's get to it...
Who provided Hopsicker with his material? A fucking PR firm with heavy
propaganda ties.
- AC
Medialink wins NBC exclusive
Medialink has been appointed as the exclusive provider of video news
releases to [Daniel Hopsicker's] Global Business 2000...
--------------------
"Public diplomacy." Public relations.
FORMER BBC BROADCASTER LUCY HADFIELD TAKES HELM OF
MEDIALINK LONDON OFFICE
PR Agency Veteran Jones Joins Medialink Management Team As Vice Chairman
For more information:
Mary C. Buhay Matt Burgess
Senior Vice President Group Marketing Manager
Corporate Communications Medialink Worldwide
Medialink Worldwide Incorporated Tel: +44 (0)20 7554 2787
Tel: (212) 682-8300 Mob: 07971 790 297
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
LONDON, December 1, 2003 - Former BBC broadcaster Lucy Hadfield has been appointed Managing Director of the international operations of Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (Nasdaq: MDLK), a global leader in providing news and media services for professional communicators, it was announced today. Joining Ms. Hadfield on the management team of Medialink in London is Bill Jones who was named Vice Chairman, a non-executive role.
The formation of a new management team represents a key step in the
implementation of Medialink's strategy to position itself for the growth of
its international business.
Ms. Hadfield, 42, brings a wide range of broadcast media and corporate
communications experience to her new role. After starting her professional
career with advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi in London, she moved into
the broadcasting industry by joining RTHK in Hong Kong. A BBC-trained
producer and presenter, she ascended to the position of Senior Program
Officer for BBC World Service and Radio Television Hong Kong, where she
supervised the quality of production, editorial content and commissioning of
primetime English language talk features. She held responsibilities in front
of and behind the cameras, producing and presenting investigative radio and
television programs for international syndication.
Following her broadcast career, Ms. Hadfield established TVCI, an
international brand experience company based in London, which designed and produced many of Europe's most successful millennium exhibitions for high profile clients including EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS, HSBC and the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION. She was most recently head of business development with CROWN Business Communications, a leading London-based integrated communications company providing live events, video and internet-based solutions for FTSE 250 companies. ...
A MADCOW'S FAKE NEWS
"Groups like MEDIALINK (www.medialink.com/vnr.htm) prepare television
versions of corporate press releases and produce them in broadcast news
style
http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=25
MEDIA JUNGLE
James Elford
VNR takes all
If you thought The Onion or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart were your best
sources of fake news, think again: the Bush administration is giving them
some tough competition, thanks to a "video news release" (VNR) in support of
its new medicare law that many critics say blurs the boundary between
advertising and propaganda.
The VNR, distributed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
puts what some might call a biased spin on the Bush administration's medical
plan. Sample scenes include a crowd cheering while Bush signs the law into
effect, and another where an elderly customer is told by a pharmacist that
the new law "helps you better afford your medications." "It sounds like a
good idea," says the customer, to which the pharmacist replies, "A very good
idea."
But this kind of blatant drum beating wouldn't be so bad, or unexpected, if
it weren't for the way it was packaged. Instead of being clearly marked as
an advertisement from the government, the piece was not only designed to
look like a news story, but the government even got the company that made
the video, Home Front Communications, to hire someone to portray a
journalist.
Karen Ryan, a freelance reporter/actor/public relations professional (her
title varies depending upon who you ask) read the script prepared by the
government and signs off at end of the video without indicating that the VNR
is anything but a legitimate news story. Even if they don't acknowledge it,
the creators of the piece likely knew that there is a substantial difference
between what people heard ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting") and a
properly identified VNR ("I'm Karen Ryan reporting from the U.S. Department
of health and Human Services in Washington, D.C."). There's even a
Spanish-language version aimed at Latino voters featuring correspondent
"Alberto Garcia."
The ethical breach gets even stickier when you find out that the government
also prepared scripts for news anchors to use as they introduced the video,
featuring phrases like "Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details"
that seem designed to further its resemblance to real news. (While the video
itself has aired in a number of states, including Louisiana, it's unclear if
any newscasts elected to use this prepared script.)
The General Accounting Office (GAO), the nonpartisan body that functions as
Congress's investigative arm, has decided to investigate the matter because
of a concern that the VNRs might violate a prohibition on using funds for
"covert propaganda" and other government materials that are misleading about
their origin. This prohibition came about after the U.S. State Department
under the Reagan administration was discovered to be hiring consultants to
author op-ed pieces and articles in support of their Central American policy
back in 1987.
This incident is the latest in a long line of deceptions that the Bushites
seem almost addicted to. They've ranged from minor and relatively innocuous
episodes like George W. presenting troops with a fake turkey for a staged
Thanksgiving photo op to far more serious allegations about justifications
for the invasion of Iraq. This reliance on fakery extends beyond turkeys and
journalists to the use of fake firefighters
deemed exploitative. (It should be noted, by the way, that the International
Association of Fire Fighters has endorsed John Kerry for president.)
As for VNRs, they've been around since at least the 1980s and are used
widely by both government and business as sort of video press releases. The
American Dental Association uses them, and even has their own, presumably
fake "reporters" presenting them.Groups like Medialink
(www.medialink.com/vnr.htm) prepare television versions of corporate press
releases and produce them in broadcast news stylenewscasts, and a convenient resource for producers struggling to fill air
time, especially at small stations without the resources to produce enough
of their own quality news. Sometimes clearly identified as a message from
whatever interest group is releasing it and sometimes not, VNRs tread an
ethical grey area. Airing a VNR without proper identification is like
printing a press release as your own story.
VNRs have also been used in Europe but, at least in Britain, there has been
some action taken to restrict their use following an emotional Greenpeace
video about their efforts to prevent the dumping of Shell's Brent Spar oil
platform, which led to what editors at BBC and ITN later admitted was biased
coverage of the issue. Guidelines were drawn up to label VNRs as
such
In the U.S., while a coalition of prominent journalism organizations
including the Society of Professional Journalists have released a joint
letter of protest against VNRs, the Radio-Television News Directors
Association chose to simply clarify their guidelines on the use of VNRs in
newscasts. Hardly a muscular response to such an entrenched problem, and
certainly open to criticism. In their battle for the hearts and minds of
citizens in a democracy, governments and corporations can't be entirely
trusted to show all sides of a debate with any objectivity. The onus rests
with the journalists
*****************************************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:30:31 -0800
Subject: HOPSICKER AND MEDIALINK'S "BLATANT PROPAGANDA"
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Mr. Hopsicker has claimed he did a business show for NBC.
Is this any way to describe corporate commercials and "public diplomacy"
in the name of globalism?
---------------
http://users.actweb.net/~eye/propaganda/articles/corporate_news.htm
"Perhaps the only bigger distributor of video "news"
releases than Medialink is the Pentagon. ..."
blatant propaganda home > propaganda index > here
blatant propaganda article:
CORPORATE SPONSORED NEWS?
Increasingly, what TV news stations pass off as news are actually video news
releases: expensive and professional videos prepared by advertising firms
and paid for by large corporations.
Groups like Medialink beam these video news releases, or VNRs, via satellite
to television news editors. These editors, lured by the polished product
available at no cost, run these press releases as news, much like the print
media do with the VNRs written counterparts.
The result?
Corporate-sponsored ad agencies are subtly changing and controlling the news
we see on the tube.
Their use is widespread. For example, 81.2 million people saw a "news"
report on dolphin-safe tuna fishing methods on t.v. last year. Reporters did
not dig up this story. It was fed to them by Starkist Seafood Co., who hired
Chicago-based Edelman Public Relations Worldwide to produce it. Ad
executives sailed on fishing boats to promote Starkist's product. News
directors, undoubtedly impressed by the artfully shot and edited scenes of
playful dolphins, fierce seas, and rugged yet environmentally sensitive
boathands, ate it up. The question: Is dolphin-safe tuna newsworthy without
easily available PR material about it? If so, why not assign reporters to
the story instead of relying on the advertising people? If not, why run it
on the news at all? The answer, of course, is money. Assigning reporters and
camera crews to an all-day or even all-week fishing expedition is an expense
that most news stations cannot afford, or at least wish to avoid. But
Starkist can afford it. In fact, faced with a nationwide boycott of their
tuna, StarKist can't afford not to.
Edelman also produced a VNR for the Nutrasweet Company about fat substitutes
which was run as "news" and seen by 54.1 million people. No doubt this VNR
featured scientists talking about health hazards, maybe even an animated
segment showing fat cells clogging up arteries and killing folks. Then an
interview with a Nutrasweet technician reporting objectively on alternatives
to fatty foods.
Other examples: 21.8 million people watched Soviets line up at the new
Moscow McDonald's to enjoy a hamburger. McDonald's Corporation paid
Patterson-Parkington First International of Toronto to create the news. Here
we have Americans watching a Canadian-made film of Russians eating Central
American Beef. First International, indeed.
And 18.6 million people learned about the "International Rotten Sneaker
Contest" from their trusty news anchors. Odor-Eaters paid Combe Inc. of
White Plains, New York to create that "news".
All of these examples are amusing in a disgusting sort of way.
But some video news releases are deadly.
For instance, 61.4 million people saw a VNR on Iraq's (1990) invasion of
Kuwait. 35.3 milllion saw a later YNR depicting human rights abuses
perpetrated by the Iraqis against the Kuwaitis. Reporters were not involved
in these two particular news accounts. Hill and Knowlton of Washington, DC
crated this news, commissioned by a group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait.
This group, rumored to be working with five million petrodollars belonging
to the Emir (of Kuwait) himself, also hired a PR firm to mass produce "Free
Kuwait" T-Shirts, flags, bumper stickers, and assorted Desert Shield/Storm
souvenirs. The group's task was to put a positive spin on the Emir's
repressive regime so that Americans could feel good about killing and dying
to restore Kuwait's legitimate dictator.
Perhaps the only bigger distributor of video "news" releases than Medialink
is the Pentagon. What name other than VNR could you call the footage of
smart bombs dropping through Iraqi chimneys? The networks salivated over
that video clip, and hundreds of others like it, supplied by the military,
designed to put a positive spin on what the United Nations now calls "near
apocalyptic" allied bombing which has taken Iraq back to a pre-industrial
age.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The above article was taken from NEXUS Magazine. It was originally taken by
Nexus from an article entitled 'Advertising Invades the Newsroom' by Carl
Hammarskjold which appeared in a November 1991 issue of the "Anderson Valley
Advertiser", (Booneville, CA, USA).
Blatant Propaganda
PO Box 1327 Woden 2606 Australia
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To join the Blatant Propaganda e-mail list,
please enter your details below.
At present we send news once every 3 months or so.
*****************************************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:39:19 -0800
Subject: HOPSICKER, MIND CONTROL AND "'GLOBAL BUSINESS 2000"
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
More on Hopsicker's "news" feed supplier - AC
http://keyholepublishing.com/Getting%20Inside%20Your%20Head.htm
Getting Inside Your Head:
Media, Mind Control,
and Marginalization of UFOs
by Richard M. Dolan
Reclaiming Our Freedom
According to Medialink study from 2001, 90% of TV newsrooms now rely on VNRs
and B-roll provided by outside sources as a regular part of their newscasts.
Much of this is simply self-serving corporate or GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA.
------------------
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Video_news_releases
--------------
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_102403_news.html
this week archive station guide Meet OTM The Nightly News Sell
October 24, 2003
BOB GARFIELD: Well, that's morning chat. At least viewers can rest assured
that stories they see on the local news are journalistically pure. Or can
they? The convergence of public relations ingenuity and broadcast stations'
budgetary exigencies has yielded another dubious hybrid: the Video News
Release -- a P.R. bonanza, and the news business's dirty little secret.
Here's an example. [TAPE PLAYS]
...
LARRY MOSCOWITZ: We determined prima facie and scientifically and
electronically that every television station in America with a newscast has
used and probably uses regularly this material from corporations and
organizations that we provide as VNRs or B-Roll or other terminology we may use.
BOB GARFIELD: Not all VNRs run whole. Most often they are mined for a clip
of background footage here, an interview fragment there. But producers
estimate that as many as one in three appear uncut, unedited and un-examined for balance or even basic accuracy. And why? Because they are there, tempting budget-battered news directors. And because they are free.
DEBORAH POTTER: VNRs are enabling devices.
BOB GARFIELD: Former CBS correspondent Deborah Potter is director of the
News Lab, the Washington, D.C. nonprofit dedicated to quality local
television.
DEBORAH POTTER: They allow newsrooms to do less of their own work without fear of running out of material before the end of the hour. It's a concern, and it ought to be a concern, frankly, for viewers if much of the material that they're starting to get on the news isn't news.
BOB GARFIELD: As long as there has been a press, there has been a symbiotic relationship between journalism and P.R. -- and not necessarily an insidious one. Publicists and politicians looking to promote their agendas can serve those interests, and the media's as well, by calling attention to news or even fluff of interest to the public. It then becomes the media's job to establish the broader context and to separate the newsworthy wheat from the gratuitously promotional chaff -- and to be clear about the source of
PR-furnished material. For instance, the Tropicana excerpt you heard at the
top of this piece we found in a documentary based on John Stauber's book.
Deborah Potter.
DEBORAH POTTER: I feel very strongly that if stations are going to use VNR
material they need to tell where it came from. It makes a difference if the
whaling video you're using came from Greenpeace or from the Coalition to
Support Whaling.
BOB GARFIELD: Barbara Cochrane, president of the Radio and Television News Directors Association says she believes most stations and networks do
routinely identify the source of outside video, as per the ethical
guidelines of her organization. But those within the VNR industry roll their
eyes at that assertion. Doug Simon of VNR producer D.S. Simon Productions
says disclosure is the exception -not the rule.
DOUG SIMON: From what we see, there's a very small percentage - perhaps less than 5% - that actually is identified what the source of the video is.
BOB GARFIELD: That makes him uneasy, but VNR producers can't do such
disclosure themselves. Each station uses a different on-screen typeface to
identify video, so the onus is on those airing the material, and dependent
as they are on the illusion of a far-flung newsgathering operation, with
tentacles throughout the community and beyond, there's little motivation to
do so.
LARRY MOSCOWITZ: Can I say that local television stations have been lax?
Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: MediaLink's Moscowitz acknowledges that stations are less than scrupulous about identifying the source of the footage he supplies. He does not believe, however, that the sin is particularly grave -- at least
compared to other forms of journalism.
LARRY MOSCOWITZ: There is more unexpurgated, unedited and unredacted press information that shows up in the average daily newspaper in America, and certainly in the average weekly newspaper, probably by a 5 to 1 factor over the P.R. material that shows up in television. So you might be going after the wrong goat here.
BOB GARFIELD: The two wrongs make a right argument isn't the only one in
favor of the video news release. Candace White, marketing professor at the
University of Tennessee at Knoxville and co-author of a 2001 study about
VNRs, says the same self-interest that encourages news directors to use VNRs dictates that the material is used responsibly.
CANDACE WHITE: See, I trust news producers to be able to weed out true news value; I give them credit for being able to recognize blatant sales pitches. Our study found that the corporate videos were used the least, and the ones about health and safety were used the most.
BOB GARFIELD: But it's not necessarily the blatant sales pitches that are so
dangerous. It is the subtle sales pitches, and the implication of independent journalistic approval conferred on a company or organization and its point of view, which is why her study's co-author, journalism professor Mark Harmon, sees VNRs as (quote) "insidious devices by corporate America to control the American agenda." Nor is the problem restricted to the local
news. Not only do major networks use VNR footage. At least one, CBS, has a
division which produces and distributes them. This gets back to the disdain
and fear voiced by author and consumer advocate John Stauber.
JOHN STAUBER: All public relations is not sinister or evil or bad. But I
think the important thing to understand is that indeed all public relations
is propaganda.
BOB GARFIELD: So whether it's images of a NASA space walk or a
self-congratulatory sound bite from your Congressman or swell health news
about delicious calcium-fortified Tropicana orange juice, the message for TV
news consumption is as ever: Let the viewer beware. While TV runs into
problems when it fails to separate advertising from programming, it
certainly can't do without advertising all together, and sponsors aren't
picking up the programming tab out of the goodness of their hearts. They
need an audience to watch the commercials. And the steady shrinking of
network audiences is creating a gathering terror. The latest shocker from
the A.C. Nielsen Company, a report that since last season alone, 750,000
men, aged 18 to 34 --advertisers' most coveted demographic -- have simply stopped watching TV. Joining me now to discuss this bombshell is David Poltrack, executive vice president of research and planning at CBS. Dave, welcome to On the Media.
DAVID POLTRACK: Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, 750,000 human souls vanishing, just disappearing.
What's going on?
DAVID POLTRACK: Well I wish I had the answer to that question. This is one
of these anomalies that turns up in the audience measurement system
occasionally, and would just be sort of a idle curiosity if it didn't mean
so much economically.
BOB GARFIELD: Fine. It may be an anomaly, or it may just be some sort of
blip that will be self-correcting. But what if it isn't? Is it possible that
this is, as someone put it, the canary in the mineshaft?
DAVID POLTRACK: Advertisers are not going to abandon network television to any significant degree unless they can find something better, and the
fragmentation in the television marketplace has impacted the television
network audiences significantly, but it hasn't really created any new
alternative. The fact that the networks have maintained their pricing is
really a function of the fact that the top 20 shows have had significantly
less erosion than the balance of the shows. So the premium product of
network television has relatively held up. And in this particular case, of
course, it's not just the network audiences going down. It's the overall
audience that's going down. So there will be no relative winner in this, if
it continues, which means that there's not an alternative out there that's
getting stronger as a result of this, so it'll probably have very little
effect in terms of the supply and demand mechanics of the marketplace.
BOB GARFIELD: I want to ask you for a moment to at least consider taking off the rose-colored glasses. Recently you were quoted responding to a
projection that the use of personal video recording devices like TiVo was
going to quintuple by the year 2007, which will in effect dramatically
reduce the number of people actually watching commercials broadcast on over the air television.
You were quoted as kind of shrugging, saying, well you know, we lose a certain percentage of our audience every year to cable, and yet the model continues to be going strong. Is it possible that between the growth of the internet, between the introduction of such devices as TiVo and other PVR technology, and the overall fragmentation of the audience that networks are close to losing the critical mass of gigantic audiences that enable them to sustain this model, and that there's a death watch on for the goose that lays the golden egg? Is that one of the possibilities?
DAVID POLTRACK: Well these are all changes that we have to adapt to. We
recognize that we can't count on just our distribution system to keep us on
top, and we have to look at cross-platform types of arrangements,
re-purposing, all of the different things that are going to be very much a
function of an environment where the viewer has more control. We have a
challenge ahead of us. There's no question about it. I mean that's why
we're, you know, we're pushing so hard for the FCC relaxation on the
ownership limits, because the economics of local television station
ownership support the finances and the programming investments of the
television networks. The more stations we own, the more stable the
advertiser model is for us, and there are a lot of pressures on that model.
There's no question about it. You know, we're not being complacent or blase
about the fact that it's just going to continue to go on.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, David, thank you very much.
DAVID POLTRACK: Okay.
BOB GARFIELD: David Poltrack is executive vice president of research and
planning at CBS. He joined us from his office at Black Rock. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, a documentation of terror using the terrorists' own
video. This is On the Media, from NPR. [FUNDING CREDITS]
copyright 2003 WNYC Radio
---------
*****************************************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 12:10:27 -0800
Subject: MediaLink
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title�diaLink
MediaLink
From Disinfopedia
MediaLink (http://www.medialink.com//_aboutuscorp.htm) is a GLOBAL
LEADER in corporate communications services, connecting corporate clients
with news industry producers. MediaLink boasts proprietary databases used
in audience research, while a PARTNERSHIP with the Associated Press puts the
PROPAGANDA of MediaLink clients on the desks of most United States'
television news editors. MediaLink claims credit for having pioneered video
news releases
*****************************************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 19:45:49 -0800
Subject: SAIC/MediaLink/Gulf War Propaganda
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.medialink.com/pressreleases2003/042203.htm
... Personal thoughts about the release of prisoners of war and the training
received to prepare them for the eventuality were shared by one male and
three female pilots in interviews transmitted via satellite from Doha. Two
of the women refuel planes in flight and the third is a weapons systems
officer, one of only a few U.S. Air Force females assigned to this role in
her squadron.
The two groups of satellite interviews were the second and third projects in
as many weeks delivered by Medialink for Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC) on behalf of the U.S. Air Force. Earlier, SAIC tapped
Medialink to manage a similar live broadcast originating from a studio in
Washington, D.C., which garnered 22 television bookings in major markets.
"We are continuing to see demand from local TV stations for live satellite
interviews and taped video segments concerning war-related topics, as well
as relevant consumer news," said Lidj Lewis, Vice President of Media
Relations, Medialink. "Our strong relationships with broadcasters in the
United States and around the world have enabled us to provide our clients
with the timely strategic counsel that is critical in this swiftly-changing
news environment."...
*****************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 22:53:21 -0800
Subject: MediaLink & Iraq Incubator Hoax
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
MediaLink & Iraq Incubator Hoax
http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2�d9710a&L(R)jmc&F�� 281
THE VIDEO NEWS RELEASE
Before reviewing my pilot studies, it is important to understand why VNRs
can be so misleading. The VNR that triggered the greatest shock was created by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton, on October 10, 1992. This was one month after U.S. troops had been sent to Kuwait to stop Iraqi
aggressions, and before Congress had actually approved the Gulf War.
Nayirah, a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl, gave public testimony in front of
the congressional human rights caucus. With tears in her eyes, and at times
barely able to continue, she told of armed Iraqi soldiers storming hospitals
in Kuwait, snatching premature babies out of their incubators, and leaving
them on the floor to die...Nayirah's story was recorded by a camera crew
hired by Hill and Knowlton, and the film was used to produce a video news
release. Portions of the film were aired that night on NBC's Nightly News.
The VNR was also sent to MEDIALINK, eventually reaching a total audience of
about 35 million...President Bush evoked Nayirah's story six times in one
month while explaining the need to go to war...No fewer than seven senators referred to the babies as justification for their support of the January 12, 1991 resolution authorizing war....What members of Congress did not know was that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. She had been coached by Hill and Knowlton before giving testimony....The PR company was working for a group...being financed almost entirely by the Kuwaiti royal family.[14]
Take a look at the first part of "The Path to 9/11" (separate parts are posted below). It concerns General Electric.
GE is a major force in 9/11-Condor.
GE owns NBC.
Where did Mr. Hopsicker come from? NBC ... and the revolution will not be televised.
What did Hopsicker do at NBC?
FAKE news* (see attached PR releases & my comments).
I discovered this years ago. Daniel has a valid response?
Not at all.
He claimed that I'm a "criminal" for asking about it.
Daniel produced a show called Global Business 2000 for NBC. ("Daniel Hopsicker is the producer of a business news television show airing internationally on NBC called Global Business 2000.")
You've never seen it. It aired in Asia and was only for corporate clients of NBC.
But NBC Corporate has no file on Daniel. I checked with executives who called Daniel a "liar" for suggesting that he has worked for NBC.
The employment office came up with nothing on him after four hours of searching their records.
Anyone can verify this by calling NBC in Los Angeles.
Daniel was an NBC contractor, and signed with MediaLink, notoriously known for the Great Iraq Incubator Hoax.
Daniel's program was composed of corporate, pre-fab "fake news" stories, sent to Daniel, who stitched them together and called himself a "producer."
He writes, speaks, tells Dave (Untamed-Genius) Emory on Pacifica that M. Atta was a "kingpin." True?
Bin Laden and Saudis and Atta behind the homicidal mess in NY ... while CIA smuggling drugs is somehow related. Okay ...
What do drugs have to do with 9/11?
Do you clever fans into "deep politics" really believe that Atta was the "kingpin?"
If so, you've been hopsuckered.
- AC
•••••••
Copyright 1996 Haymarket Publishing Services Ltd
PR Week
January 26, 1996
LENGTH: 131 words
HEADLINE: Media: Medialink wins NBC exclusive
BODY: Medialink has been appointed as the exclusive provider of video news releases to Global Business 2000, the business television show which
launches this month on NBC's satellite services covering Asia and Europe.
The deal, struck with the show's US-based production company Economic
Television, will see Medialink provide the programme with any appropriate
VNRs' suitable for the show's business audience, said Medialink's vice
chairman David Davis.
The show's launch is part of NBC's revamp of its international programme
service and the formal launch of NBC Asia on 15 January.
NBC, which is already available in Europe through NBC Super Channel, has
launched both an entertainment station and a 24-hour news and business
station under the NBC Asia banner.
Copyright 1996 M2 Communications Ltd.
M2 PRESSWIRE
April 10, 1996
LENGTH: 209 words
HEADLINE: ECONOMIC TELEVISION
Millions view "WebCruise" on TV news as "JumpCity!" launches
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, CA
HIGHLIGHT:
New primetime TV show about the Internet to debut
BODY:
Millions of consumers this weekend watched a first-ever three minute
feature news segment called "WebCruise!" which showcased three popular sites on the World Wide Web, bringing pictures of the wired revolution to watchers of network news.
"WebCruise was our way of testing the waters with TV news directors, who
really have a finger on the pulse of what people want. They jumped on this
story, and it really reinforces our belief that this is THE time to launch
our Primetime reality-based entertainment series about the Internet," stated
"JumpCity!" producer Daniel Hopsicker.
"We think the Internet's the biggest consumer phenomenon since the hula
hoop, and it clearly deserves a show conveying the gleeful fun and sheer joy
of 'cyberpilots' worldwide."
"WebCruise" will be a weekly feature, both going to satellite as news, and
playing as a segment on Global Business 2000, which airs on NBC internationally, as well as inflight on flagship carriers like United and USAir. Its designer to help consumers learn of great sites to access, and allow marketers to generate more traffic to their World Wide Web sites.
CONTACT: Daniel Hopsicker, Economic Television
Tel: +1-800-264-0920
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*****************************************************************
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 22:33:08 -0800
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Medialink has been appointed as the exclusive provider of video news
releases to [Daniel Hopsicker's] Global Business 2000..."
Now that we have one show verified, at least, I can look into it,
and that's what I wanted to do originally, so let's get to it...
Who provided Hopsicker with his material? A fucking PR firm with heavy
propaganda ties.
- AC
Medialink wins NBC exclusive
Medialink has been appointed as the exclusive provider of video news
releases to [Daniel Hopsicker's] Global Business 2000...
--------------------
"Public diplomacy." Public relations.
FORMER BBC BROADCASTER LUCY HADFIELD TAKES HELM OF
MEDIALINK LONDON OFFICE
PR Agency Veteran Jones Joins Medialink Management Team As Vice Chairman
For more information:
Mary C. Buhay Matt Burgess
Senior Vice President Group Marketing Manager
Corporate Communications Medialink Worldwide
Medialink Worldwide Incorporated Tel: +44 (0)20 7554 2787
Tel: (212) 682-8300 Mob: 07971 790 297
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
LONDON, December 1, 2003 - Former BBC broadcaster Lucy Hadfield has been appointed Managing Director of the international operations of Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (Nasdaq: MDLK), a global leader in providing news and media services for professional communicators, it was announced today. Joining Ms. Hadfield on the management team of Medialink in London is Bill Jones who was named Vice Chairman, a non-executive role.
The formation of a new management team represents a key step in the
implementation of Medialink's strategy to position itself for the growth of
its international business.
Ms. Hadfield, 42, brings a wide range of broadcast media and corporate
communications experience to her new role. After starting her professional
career with advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi in London, she moved into
the broadcasting industry by joining RTHK in Hong Kong. A BBC-trained
producer and presenter, she ascended to the position of Senior Program
Officer for BBC World Service and Radio Television Hong Kong, where she
supervised the quality of production, editorial content and commissioning of
primetime English language talk features. She held responsibilities in front
of and behind the cameras, producing and presenting investigative radio and
television programs for international syndication.
Following her broadcast career, Ms. Hadfield established TVCI, an
international brand experience company based in London, which designed and produced many of Europe's most successful millennium exhibitions for high profile clients including EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS, HSBC and the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION. She was most recently head of business development with CROWN Business Communications, a leading London-based integrated communications company providing live events, video and internet-based solutions for FTSE 250 companies. ...
A MADCOW'S FAKE NEWS
"Groups like MEDIALINK (www.medialink.com/vnr.htm) prepare television
versions of corporate press releases and produce them in broadcast news
style
http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=25
MEDIA JUNGLE
James Elford
VNR takes all
If you thought The Onion or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart were your best
sources of fake news, think again: the Bush administration is giving them
some tough competition, thanks to a "video news release" (VNR) in support of
its new medicare law that many critics say blurs the boundary between
advertising and propaganda.
The VNR, distributed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
puts what some might call a biased spin on the Bush administration's medical
plan. Sample scenes include a crowd cheering while Bush signs the law into
effect, and another where an elderly customer is told by a pharmacist that
the new law "helps you better afford your medications." "It sounds like a
good idea," says the customer, to which the pharmacist replies, "A very good
idea."
But this kind of blatant drum beating wouldn't be so bad, or unexpected, if
it weren't for the way it was packaged. Instead of being clearly marked as
an advertisement from the government, the piece was not only designed to
look like a news story, but the government even got the company that made
the video, Home Front Communications, to hire someone to portray a
journalist.
Karen Ryan, a freelance reporter/actor/public relations professional (her
title varies depending upon who you ask) read the script prepared by the
government and signs off at end of the video without indicating that the VNR
is anything but a legitimate news story. Even if they don't acknowledge it,
the creators of the piece likely knew that there is a substantial difference
between what people heard ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting") and a
properly identified VNR ("I'm Karen Ryan reporting from the U.S. Department
of health and Human Services in Washington, D.C."). There's even a
Spanish-language version aimed at Latino voters featuring correspondent
"Alberto Garcia."
The ethical breach gets even stickier when you find out that the government
also prepared scripts for news anchors to use as they introduced the video,
featuring phrases like "Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details"
that seem designed to further its resemblance to real news. (While the video
itself has aired in a number of states, including Louisiana, it's unclear if
any newscasts elected to use this prepared script.)
The General Accounting Office (GAO), the nonpartisan body that functions as
Congress's investigative arm, has decided to investigate the matter because
of a concern that the VNRs might violate a prohibition on using funds for
"covert propaganda" and other government materials that are misleading about
their origin. This prohibition came about after the U.S. State Department
under the Reagan administration was discovered to be hiring consultants to
author op-ed pieces and articles in support of their Central American policy
back in 1987.
This incident is the latest in a long line of deceptions that the Bushites
seem almost addicted to. They've ranged from minor and relatively innocuous
episodes like George W. presenting troops with a fake turkey for a staged
Thanksgiving photo op to far more serious allegations about justifications
for the invasion of Iraq. This reliance on fakery extends beyond turkeys and
journalists to the use of fake firefighters
deemed exploitative. (It should be noted, by the way, that the International
Association of Fire Fighters has endorsed John Kerry for president.)
As for VNRs, they've been around since at least the 1980s and are used
widely by both government and business as sort of video press releases. The
American Dental Association uses them, and even has their own, presumably
fake "reporters" presenting them.Groups like Medialink
(www.medialink.com/vnr.htm) prepare television versions of corporate press
releases and produce them in broadcast news stylenewscasts, and a convenient resource for producers struggling to fill air
time, especially at small stations without the resources to produce enough
of their own quality news. Sometimes clearly identified as a message from
whatever interest group is releasing it and sometimes not, VNRs tread an
ethical grey area. Airing a VNR without proper identification is like
printing a press release as your own story.
VNRs have also been used in Europe but, at least in Britain, there has been
some action taken to restrict their use following an emotional Greenpeace
video about their efforts to prevent the dumping of Shell's Brent Spar oil
platform, which led to what editors at BBC and ITN later admitted was biased
coverage of the issue. Guidelines were drawn up to label VNRs as
such
In the U.S., while a coalition of prominent journalism organizations
including the Society of Professional Journalists have released a joint
letter of protest against VNRs, the Radio-Television News Directors
Association chose to simply clarify their guidelines on the use of VNRs in
newscasts. Hardly a muscular response to such an entrenched problem, and
certainly open to criticism. In their battle for the hearts and minds of
citizens in a democracy, governments and corporations can't be entirely
trusted to show all sides of a debate with any objectivity. The onus rests
with the journalists
*****************************************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:30:31 -0800
Subject: HOPSICKER AND MEDIALINK'S "BLATANT PROPAGANDA"
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Mr. Hopsicker has claimed he did a business show for NBC.
Is this any way to describe corporate commercials and "public diplomacy"
in the name of globalism?
---------------
http://users.actweb.net/~eye/propaganda/articles/corporate_news.htm
"Perhaps the only bigger distributor of video "news"
releases than Medialink is the Pentagon. ..."
blatant propaganda home > propaganda index > here
blatant propaganda article:
CORPORATE SPONSORED NEWS?
Increasingly, what TV news stations pass off as news are actually video news
releases: expensive and professional videos prepared by advertising firms
and paid for by large corporations.
Groups like Medialink beam these video news releases, or VNRs, via satellite
to television news editors. These editors, lured by the polished product
available at no cost, run these press releases as news, much like the print
media do with the VNRs written counterparts.
The result?
Corporate-sponsored ad agencies are subtly changing and controlling the news
we see on the tube.
Their use is widespread. For example, 81.2 million people saw a "news"
report on dolphin-safe tuna fishing methods on t.v. last year. Reporters did
not dig up this story. It was fed to them by Starkist Seafood Co., who hired
Chicago-based Edelman Public Relations Worldwide to produce it. Ad
executives sailed on fishing boats to promote Starkist's product. News
directors, undoubtedly impressed by the artfully shot and edited scenes of
playful dolphins, fierce seas, and rugged yet environmentally sensitive
boathands, ate it up. The question: Is dolphin-safe tuna newsworthy without
easily available PR material about it? If so, why not assign reporters to
the story instead of relying on the advertising people? If not, why run it
on the news at all? The answer, of course, is money. Assigning reporters and
camera crews to an all-day or even all-week fishing expedition is an expense
that most news stations cannot afford, or at least wish to avoid. But
Starkist can afford it. In fact, faced with a nationwide boycott of their
tuna, StarKist can't afford not to.
Edelman also produced a VNR for the Nutrasweet Company about fat substitutes
which was run as "news" and seen by 54.1 million people. No doubt this VNR
featured scientists talking about health hazards, maybe even an animated
segment showing fat cells clogging up arteries and killing folks. Then an
interview with a Nutrasweet technician reporting objectively on alternatives
to fatty foods.
Other examples: 21.8 million people watched Soviets line up at the new
Moscow McDonald's to enjoy a hamburger. McDonald's Corporation paid
Patterson-Parkington First International of Toronto to create the news. Here
we have Americans watching a Canadian-made film of Russians eating Central
American Beef. First International, indeed.
And 18.6 million people learned about the "International Rotten Sneaker
Contest" from their trusty news anchors. Odor-Eaters paid Combe Inc. of
White Plains, New York to create that "news".
All of these examples are amusing in a disgusting sort of way.
But some video news releases are deadly.
For instance, 61.4 million people saw a VNR on Iraq's (1990) invasion of
Kuwait. 35.3 milllion saw a later YNR depicting human rights abuses
perpetrated by the Iraqis against the Kuwaitis. Reporters were not involved
in these two particular news accounts. Hill and Knowlton of Washington, DC
crated this news, commissioned by a group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait.
This group, rumored to be working with five million petrodollars belonging
to the Emir (of Kuwait) himself, also hired a PR firm to mass produce "Free
Kuwait" T-Shirts, flags, bumper stickers, and assorted Desert Shield/Storm
souvenirs. The group's task was to put a positive spin on the Emir's
repressive regime so that Americans could feel good about killing and dying
to restore Kuwait's legitimate dictator.
Perhaps the only bigger distributor of video "news" releases than Medialink
is the Pentagon. What name other than VNR could you call the footage of
smart bombs dropping through Iraqi chimneys? The networks salivated over
that video clip, and hundreds of others like it, supplied by the military,
designed to put a positive spin on what the United Nations now calls "near
apocalyptic" allied bombing which has taken Iraq back to a pre-industrial
age.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The above article was taken from NEXUS Magazine. It was originally taken by
Nexus from an article entitled 'Advertising Invades the Newsroom' by Carl
Hammarskjold which appeared in a November 1991 issue of the "Anderson Valley
Advertiser", (Booneville, CA, USA).
Blatant Propaganda
PO Box 1327 Woden 2606 Australia
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To join the Blatant Propaganda e-mail list,
please enter your details below.
At present we send news once every 3 months or so.
*****************************************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:39:19 -0800
Subject: HOPSICKER, MIND CONTROL AND "'GLOBAL BUSINESS 2000"
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
More on Hopsicker's "news" feed supplier - AC
http://keyholepublishing.com/Getting%20Inside%20Your%20Head.htm
Getting Inside Your Head:
Media, Mind Control,
and Marginalization of UFOs
by Richard M. Dolan
Reclaiming Our Freedom
According to Medialink study from 2001, 90% of TV newsrooms now rely on VNRs
and B-roll provided by outside sources as a regular part of their newscasts.
Much of this is simply self-serving corporate or GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA.
------------------
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Video_news_releases
--------------
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_102403_news.html
this week archive station guide Meet OTM The Nightly News Sell
October 24, 2003
BOB GARFIELD: Well, that's morning chat. At least viewers can rest assured
that stories they see on the local news are journalistically pure. Or can
they? The convergence of public relations ingenuity and broadcast stations'
budgetary exigencies has yielded another dubious hybrid: the Video News
Release -- a P.R. bonanza, and the news business's dirty little secret.
Here's an example. [TAPE PLAYS]
...
LARRY MOSCOWITZ: We determined prima facie and scientifically and
electronically that every television station in America with a newscast has
used and probably uses regularly this material from corporations and
organizations that we provide as VNRs or B-Roll or other terminology we may use.
BOB GARFIELD: Not all VNRs run whole. Most often they are mined for a clip
of background footage here, an interview fragment there. But producers
estimate that as many as one in three appear uncut, unedited and un-examined for balance or even basic accuracy. And why? Because they are there, tempting budget-battered news directors. And because they are free.
DEBORAH POTTER: VNRs are enabling devices.
BOB GARFIELD: Former CBS correspondent Deborah Potter is director of the
News Lab, the Washington, D.C. nonprofit dedicated to quality local
television.
DEBORAH POTTER: They allow newsrooms to do less of their own work without fear of running out of material before the end of the hour. It's a concern, and it ought to be a concern, frankly, for viewers if much of the material that they're starting to get on the news isn't news.
BOB GARFIELD: As long as there has been a press, there has been a symbiotic relationship between journalism and P.R. -- and not necessarily an insidious one. Publicists and politicians looking to promote their agendas can serve those interests, and the media's as well, by calling attention to news or even fluff of interest to the public. It then becomes the media's job to establish the broader context and to separate the newsworthy wheat from the gratuitously promotional chaff -- and to be clear about the source of
PR-furnished material. For instance, the Tropicana excerpt you heard at the
top of this piece we found in a documentary based on John Stauber's book.
Deborah Potter.
DEBORAH POTTER: I feel very strongly that if stations are going to use VNR
material they need to tell where it came from. It makes a difference if the
whaling video you're using came from Greenpeace or from the Coalition to
Support Whaling.
BOB GARFIELD: Barbara Cochrane, president of the Radio and Television News Directors Association says she believes most stations and networks do
routinely identify the source of outside video, as per the ethical
guidelines of her organization. But those within the VNR industry roll their
eyes at that assertion. Doug Simon of VNR producer D.S. Simon Productions
says disclosure is the exception -not the rule.
DOUG SIMON: From what we see, there's a very small percentage - perhaps less than 5% - that actually is identified what the source of the video is.
BOB GARFIELD: That makes him uneasy, but VNR producers can't do such
disclosure themselves. Each station uses a different on-screen typeface to
identify video, so the onus is on those airing the material, and dependent
as they are on the illusion of a far-flung newsgathering operation, with
tentacles throughout the community and beyond, there's little motivation to
do so.
LARRY MOSCOWITZ: Can I say that local television stations have been lax?
Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: MediaLink's Moscowitz acknowledges that stations are less than scrupulous about identifying the source of the footage he supplies. He does not believe, however, that the sin is particularly grave -- at least
compared to other forms of journalism.
LARRY MOSCOWITZ: There is more unexpurgated, unedited and unredacted press information that shows up in the average daily newspaper in America, and certainly in the average weekly newspaper, probably by a 5 to 1 factor over the P.R. material that shows up in television. So you might be going after the wrong goat here.
BOB GARFIELD: The two wrongs make a right argument isn't the only one in
favor of the video news release. Candace White, marketing professor at the
University of Tennessee at Knoxville and co-author of a 2001 study about
VNRs, says the same self-interest that encourages news directors to use VNRs dictates that the material is used responsibly.
CANDACE WHITE: See, I trust news producers to be able to weed out true news value; I give them credit for being able to recognize blatant sales pitches. Our study found that the corporate videos were used the least, and the ones about health and safety were used the most.
BOB GARFIELD: But it's not necessarily the blatant sales pitches that are so
dangerous. It is the subtle sales pitches, and the implication of independent journalistic approval conferred on a company or organization and its point of view, which is why her study's co-author, journalism professor Mark Harmon, sees VNRs as (quote) "insidious devices by corporate America to control the American agenda." Nor is the problem restricted to the local
news. Not only do major networks use VNR footage. At least one, CBS, has a
division which produces and distributes them. This gets back to the disdain
and fear voiced by author and consumer advocate John Stauber.
JOHN STAUBER: All public relations is not sinister or evil or bad. But I
think the important thing to understand is that indeed all public relations
is propaganda.
BOB GARFIELD: So whether it's images of a NASA space walk or a
self-congratulatory sound bite from your Congressman or swell health news
about delicious calcium-fortified Tropicana orange juice, the message for TV
news consumption is as ever: Let the viewer beware. While TV runs into
problems when it fails to separate advertising from programming, it
certainly can't do without advertising all together, and sponsors aren't
picking up the programming tab out of the goodness of their hearts. They
need an audience to watch the commercials. And the steady shrinking of
network audiences is creating a gathering terror. The latest shocker from
the A.C. Nielsen Company, a report that since last season alone, 750,000
men, aged 18 to 34 --advertisers' most coveted demographic -- have simply stopped watching TV. Joining me now to discuss this bombshell is David Poltrack, executive vice president of research and planning at CBS. Dave, welcome to On the Media.
DAVID POLTRACK: Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, 750,000 human souls vanishing, just disappearing.
What's going on?
DAVID POLTRACK: Well I wish I had the answer to that question. This is one
of these anomalies that turns up in the audience measurement system
occasionally, and would just be sort of a idle curiosity if it didn't mean
so much economically.
BOB GARFIELD: Fine. It may be an anomaly, or it may just be some sort of
blip that will be self-correcting. But what if it isn't? Is it possible that
this is, as someone put it, the canary in the mineshaft?
DAVID POLTRACK: Advertisers are not going to abandon network television to any significant degree unless they can find something better, and the
fragmentation in the television marketplace has impacted the television
network audiences significantly, but it hasn't really created any new
alternative. The fact that the networks have maintained their pricing is
really a function of the fact that the top 20 shows have had significantly
less erosion than the balance of the shows. So the premium product of
network television has relatively held up. And in this particular case, of
course, it's not just the network audiences going down. It's the overall
audience that's going down. So there will be no relative winner in this, if
it continues, which means that there's not an alternative out there that's
getting stronger as a result of this, so it'll probably have very little
effect in terms of the supply and demand mechanics of the marketplace.
BOB GARFIELD: I want to ask you for a moment to at least consider taking off the rose-colored glasses. Recently you were quoted responding to a
projection that the use of personal video recording devices like TiVo was
going to quintuple by the year 2007, which will in effect dramatically
reduce the number of people actually watching commercials broadcast on over the air television.
You were quoted as kind of shrugging, saying, well you know, we lose a certain percentage of our audience every year to cable, and yet the model continues to be going strong. Is it possible that between the growth of the internet, between the introduction of such devices as TiVo and other PVR technology, and the overall fragmentation of the audience that networks are close to losing the critical mass of gigantic audiences that enable them to sustain this model, and that there's a death watch on for the goose that lays the golden egg? Is that one of the possibilities?
DAVID POLTRACK: Well these are all changes that we have to adapt to. We
recognize that we can't count on just our distribution system to keep us on
top, and we have to look at cross-platform types of arrangements,
re-purposing, all of the different things that are going to be very much a
function of an environment where the viewer has more control. We have a
challenge ahead of us. There's no question about it. I mean that's why
we're, you know, we're pushing so hard for the FCC relaxation on the
ownership limits, because the economics of local television station
ownership support the finances and the programming investments of the
television networks. The more stations we own, the more stable the
advertiser model is for us, and there are a lot of pressures on that model.
There's no question about it. You know, we're not being complacent or blase
about the fact that it's just going to continue to go on.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, David, thank you very much.
DAVID POLTRACK: Okay.
BOB GARFIELD: David Poltrack is executive vice president of research and
planning at CBS. He joined us from his office at Black Rock. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, a documentation of terror using the terrorists' own
video. This is On the Media, from NPR. [FUNDING CREDITS]
copyright 2003 WNYC Radio
---------
*****************************************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 12:10:27 -0800
Subject: MediaLink
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title�diaLink
MediaLink
From Disinfopedia
MediaLink (http://www.medialink.com//_aboutuscorp.htm) is a GLOBAL
LEADER in corporate communications services, connecting corporate clients
with news industry producers. MediaLink boasts proprietary databases used
in audience research, while a PARTNERSHIP with the Associated Press puts the
PROPAGANDA of MediaLink clients on the desks of most United States'
television news editors. MediaLink claims credit for having pioneered video
news releases
*****************************************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 19:45:49 -0800
Subject: SAIC/MediaLink/Gulf War Propaganda
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.medialink.com/pressreleases2003/042203.htm
... Personal thoughts about the release of prisoners of war and the training
received to prepare them for the eventuality were shared by one male and
three female pilots in interviews transmitted via satellite from Doha. Two
of the women refuel planes in flight and the third is a weapons systems
officer, one of only a few U.S. Air Force females assigned to this role in
her squadron.
The two groups of satellite interviews were the second and third projects in
as many weeks delivered by Medialink for Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC) on behalf of the U.S. Air Force. Earlier, SAIC tapped
Medialink to manage a similar live broadcast originating from a studio in
Washington, D.C., which garnered 22 television bookings in major markets.
"We are continuing to see demand from local TV stations for live satellite
interviews and taped video segments concerning war-related topics, as well
as relevant consumer news," said Lidj Lewis, Vice President of Media
Relations, Medialink. "Our strong relationships with broadcasters in the
United States and around the world have enabled us to provide our clients
with the timely strategic counsel that is critical in this swiftly-changing
news environment."...
*****************************************
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 22:53:21 -0800
Subject: MediaLink & Iraq Incubator Hoax
From: Alex Constantine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
MediaLink & Iraq Incubator Hoax
http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2�d9710a&L(R)jmc&F�� 281
THE VIDEO NEWS RELEASE
Before reviewing my pilot studies, it is important to understand why VNRs
can be so misleading. The VNR that triggered the greatest shock was created by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton, on October 10, 1992. This was one month after U.S. troops had been sent to Kuwait to stop Iraqi
aggressions, and before Congress had actually approved the Gulf War.
Nayirah, a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl, gave public testimony in front of
the congressional human rights caucus. With tears in her eyes, and at times
barely able to continue, she told of armed Iraqi soldiers storming hospitals
in Kuwait, snatching premature babies out of their incubators, and leaving
them on the floor to die...Nayirah's story was recorded by a camera crew
hired by Hill and Knowlton, and the film was used to produce a video news
release. Portions of the film were aired that night on NBC's Nightly News.
The VNR was also sent to MEDIALINK, eventually reaching a total audience of
about 35 million...President Bush evoked Nayirah's story six times in one
month while explaining the need to go to war...No fewer than seven senators referred to the babies as justification for their support of the January 12, 1991 resolution authorizing war....What members of Congress did not know was that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. She had been coached by Hill and Knowlton before giving testimony....The PR company was working for a group...being financed almost entirely by the Kuwaiti royal family.[14]
Thursday, May 29, 2008
THE PATH TO 9/11 (PART 8): Southeastern Asset Management (SAM), Longleaf Partners, the Return of Kenneth Langone - and "THE PATH TO 9/11"
BY ALEX CONSTANTINE
[From The Lexington Comair Crash, part 41]
Possum on the Road
On June 2, 2006, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, another evangelical whose religion is stitched indelibly on his sleeve, learned the meaning of existential terror.
"There were some frightening moments for Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and his family last week," Aero-News sympathized, "as the business jet they were on experienced engine failure at 43,000 feet."
Huckabee, his wife Janet Huckabee, daughter Sarah, staffer Chad Rockett and a state trooper were on board. The jet climbed to circumvent storm clouds when "a noise came from the jet's right engine. 'We were flying over Tennessee, enjoying the flight, when suddenly a most horrible sound started coming from the airplane engine,' Huckabee said in a speech to North Carolina Republicans Tuesday. 'It was doing all sorts of funny things airplane engines are not supposed to do.'...
The close call, "which the southern governor likened to 'running over a great big possum in the road,' ended with everyone safe on the ground." Mechanics repaired the malfunctioning engine, everyone climbed back on board and were on their way.
"Huckabee wouldn't say who the plane's owner was, saying it wouldn't be fair to single out the aircraft's owner as 'it wasn't the fault of the airplane.'" You wouldn't want to trample on the Cessna's feelings ... or publicize a violation of federal political campaign laws ...
Huckabee refused to answer inquiries from the politrazzi, but the incident report filed at the Chatanooga airport listed the owner of the Cessna, Southeastern Asset Management (SAM), based in New Hampshire.
Huckabee blogger Michael Powell, an NYU grad student, describes SAM as "a New Hampshire-based company of which Ted Suhl is the manager. Suhl is a past contributor to Huckabee campaigns, a Huckabee-appointee to the state Child Welfare Agency Review Board, and also the director of the Lord’s Ranch in Warm Springs, a religious-based youth home whose $8.5 million contract with the state is paid through Medicaid." ...
The airplane with the "funny" engine generated a hogshead of headlines, but none of them concerned the title holder of the Cessna, Southeastern Assets Management, itself. SAM holdings include a sizable share of General Motors. Disney. Renault. Phillips Electronics ....
Southeastern Assets Management, the Lord's Ranch operator, currently owns owns Yum! Brands and KFC through the Longleaf Partners Fund.
The Longleaf Partners Fund was the financial eminence gris of much-despised "The Path to 9/11," the Pixar/Disney propaganda piece that calls up the most dishonest anti-communist bandwagons of the Cold War.
Editor & Publisher reported with an offended air ...
COMPANIES DIRECTLY INVOLVED OR CONNECTED WITH THE MOVIE
The Path to 9/11
...
AKA Longleaf Partners Funds
6410 Poplar Ave., Suite 900, Memphis, TN 38119
O. Mason Hawkins, Chairman/CEO
http://forums.therandirhodesshow.com/lofiversion/index.php/t96251.html
...
Southeastern Asset Management, Inc.
TOP DISNEY INSTITUTIONAL SHAREHOLDERS
Vanguard Group, Inc.
Morgan Stanley
Barclays Global Investors UK Holdings Ltd
FMR Corp. (Fidelity Management & Research Corp)
Wellington Management Company, LLP
Capital Research and Management Company ...
Also the BASS FAMILY
About Capital Research and Management Company and General Re, the re-insurer of the World Trade Center when it fell. Capital is a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. The New York Times reported on June 22, 1988: " ... At the end of March, five institutions each owned more than 3 percent of General Re's shares, according to Technimetrics Inc., which tracks institutional stock data. Capital Research and Management, which oversees the American Funds family of mutual funds, was the largest holder, owning 6 percent of the shares, followed by Fidelity Investments, the Regents of the University of California, Davis Selected Advisers and Invesco Capital Management. ... "
TOP MUTUAL FUND HOLDERS
Longleaf Partners Fund
[see Southeastern Asset Management above]
Vanguard 500 Index Fund
[see Vanguard Group above]
College Retirement Equities Fund-stock Account
Administered by TIAA-CREF Investment Management, LLC(324)
ABC was cursed far-and-wide for the 9/11 "documentary" – particularly for the imaginary scene in which President Clinton casually waves off a chance to kill Osama bin Laden.
Most newswire reports said: "ABC responded Tuesday with a statement saying that the miniseries was 'a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews.'"
Governor Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission, chimed in with a statement that the scene was, after all, "a composite."
That is, Pepsico's Thomas Kean, destined to be an all-too-familiar face in this story ... as it happens, the SAM/Longleaf affiliate, Yum! Brands, with Chickenfuehrer David Novak at its helm, is a spin-off of Pepsico. Interests are in conflict here ... with 9/11 ... and God ... in the middle of it.
Who is David Novak? The loyalist of another evangelical front, of course (can our old friend Howard Ahmanson, Jr. be far away?), Southeast Christian Church, the largest church in Godly Kentucky.
Sean Sellers, co-coordinator of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, writes: "Southeast Christian sent busloads of people to lobby the Kentucky legislature in favor of an anti-gay marriage amendment this year. The pastor of Southeast Christian, Bob Russell, said during the recent presidential campaign, 'We [evangelicals] have more reasons to start a revolution than they did in 1776... I don't see how you can be a dedicated Christian and remain neutral.' Mr. Novak is also is a proud and vocal evangelist of what he calls 'Jesus-Centered Leadership,' joining Reverend Russell to stage motivational workshops on the topic for thousands of people at a time."
This was a curious set of connections. Longleaf Partners Fund – Lord's Ranch – Mike Huckabee – Thomas Keane – David Novak – "The Path to 9/11" ...
And - wouldn't you know - Kenneth Langone (see part one), a close associate of Novak's.
[From The Lexington Comair Crash, part 41]
Possum on the Road
On June 2, 2006, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, another evangelical whose religion is stitched indelibly on his sleeve, learned the meaning of existential terror.
"There were some frightening moments for Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and his family last week," Aero-News sympathized, "as the business jet they were on experienced engine failure at 43,000 feet."
Huckabee, his wife Janet Huckabee, daughter Sarah, staffer Chad Rockett and a state trooper were on board. The jet climbed to circumvent storm clouds when "a noise came from the jet's right engine. 'We were flying over Tennessee, enjoying the flight, when suddenly a most horrible sound started coming from the airplane engine,' Huckabee said in a speech to North Carolina Republicans Tuesday. 'It was doing all sorts of funny things airplane engines are not supposed to do.'...
The close call, "which the southern governor likened to 'running over a great big possum in the road,' ended with everyone safe on the ground." Mechanics repaired the malfunctioning engine, everyone climbed back on board and were on their way.
"Huckabee wouldn't say who the plane's owner was, saying it wouldn't be fair to single out the aircraft's owner as 'it wasn't the fault of the airplane.'" You wouldn't want to trample on the Cessna's feelings ... or publicize a violation of federal political campaign laws ...
Huckabee refused to answer inquiries from the politrazzi, but the incident report filed at the Chatanooga airport listed the owner of the Cessna, Southeastern Asset Management (SAM), based in New Hampshire.
Huckabee blogger Michael Powell, an NYU grad student, describes SAM as "a New Hampshire-based company of which Ted Suhl is the manager. Suhl is a past contributor to Huckabee campaigns, a Huckabee-appointee to the state Child Welfare Agency Review Board, and also the director of the Lord’s Ranch in Warm Springs, a religious-based youth home whose $8.5 million contract with the state is paid through Medicaid." ...
The airplane with the "funny" engine generated a hogshead of headlines, but none of them concerned the title holder of the Cessna, Southeastern Assets Management, itself. SAM holdings include a sizable share of General Motors. Disney. Renault. Phillips Electronics ....
Southeastern Assets Management, the Lord's Ranch operator, currently owns owns Yum! Brands and KFC through the Longleaf Partners Fund.
The Longleaf Partners Fund was the financial eminence gris of much-despised "The Path to 9/11," the Pixar/Disney propaganda piece that calls up the most dishonest anti-communist bandwagons of the Cold War.
Editor & Publisher reported with an offended air ...
COMPANIES DIRECTLY INVOLVED OR CONNECTED WITH THE MOVIE
The Path to 9/11
...
AKA Longleaf Partners Funds
6410 Poplar Ave., Suite 900, Memphis, TN 38119
O. Mason Hawkins, Chairman/CEO
http://forums.therandirhodesshow.com/lofiversion/index.php/t96251.html
...
Southeastern Asset Management, Inc.
TOP DISNEY INSTITUTIONAL SHAREHOLDERS
Vanguard Group, Inc.
Morgan Stanley
Barclays Global Investors UK Holdings Ltd
FMR Corp. (Fidelity Management & Research Corp)
Wellington Management Company, LLP
Capital Research and Management Company ...
Also the BASS FAMILY
About Capital Research and Management Company and General Re, the re-insurer of the World Trade Center when it fell. Capital is a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. The New York Times reported on June 22, 1988: " ... At the end of March, five institutions each owned more than 3 percent of General Re's shares, according to Technimetrics Inc., which tracks institutional stock data. Capital Research and Management, which oversees the American Funds family of mutual funds, was the largest holder, owning 6 percent of the shares, followed by Fidelity Investments, the Regents of the University of California, Davis Selected Advisers and Invesco Capital Management. ... "
TOP MUTUAL FUND HOLDERS
Longleaf Partners Fund
[see Southeastern Asset Management above]
Vanguard 500 Index Fund
[see Vanguard Group above]
College Retirement Equities Fund-stock Account
Administered by TIAA-CREF Investment Management, LLC(324)
ABC was cursed far-and-wide for the 9/11 "documentary" – particularly for the imaginary scene in which President Clinton casually waves off a chance to kill Osama bin Laden.
Most newswire reports said: "ABC responded Tuesday with a statement saying that the miniseries was 'a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews.'"
Governor Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission, chimed in with a statement that the scene was, after all, "a composite."
That is, Pepsico's Thomas Kean, destined to be an all-too-familiar face in this story ... as it happens, the SAM/Longleaf affiliate, Yum! Brands, with Chickenfuehrer David Novak at its helm, is a spin-off of Pepsico. Interests are in conflict here ... with 9/11 ... and God ... in the middle of it.
Who is David Novak? The loyalist of another evangelical front, of course (can our old friend Howard Ahmanson, Jr. be far away?), Southeast Christian Church, the largest church in Godly Kentucky.
Sean Sellers, co-coordinator of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, writes: "Southeast Christian sent busloads of people to lobby the Kentucky legislature in favor of an anti-gay marriage amendment this year. The pastor of Southeast Christian, Bob Russell, said during the recent presidential campaign, 'We [evangelicals] have more reasons to start a revolution than they did in 1776... I don't see how you can be a dedicated Christian and remain neutral.' Mr. Novak is also is a proud and vocal evangelist of what he calls 'Jesus-Centered Leadership,' joining Reverend Russell to stage motivational workshops on the topic for thousands of people at a time."
This was a curious set of connections. Longleaf Partners Fund – Lord's Ranch – Mike Huckabee – Thomas Keane – David Novak – "The Path to 9/11" ...
And - wouldn't you know - Kenneth Langone (see part one), a close associate of Novak's.
The Path to 9/11 (Part Seven): Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch & Washington Group International
By Alex Constantine
Peter Lynch was the husband of the late neo-con National Review propagandist Cathy Seipp. Ms. Seipp was the mentor of MediaBistro's Kate Coe, a spider-like propagandist who revels in trashing "conspiracy theorists." The following is from my investigation of the Duncan/Blake "suicides," and this is how I discovered Peter Lynch and the Washington Group International:
CATHY SEIPP'S CIA-FASCIST PROPAGANDA ROLE: " ... Like [Dennis] Miller, Ron Silver, Rob Long, Ben Stein, and a few celery-stick munchers, [Cathy] Seipp works the angle of being a rare, beleagured conservative in heathen Hollywood. You know, the type of writer/personality who peddles tales about saying something positive about George Bush at a party and everybody falling down in a dead faint; that sort of thing."
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/2005/12/index.html
----> CATHY SEIPP "GOES TO BAT FOR JOE MCCARTHY and attacks the Hollywood Left:
http://www.plugnickeltimes.com/archives/S_0704a.html
----> DENNIS SEIPP, HER HUSBAND, WORKS FOR WASHINGTON GROUP INTERNATIONAL, INC. (WGI), formerly Morrison-Knudsen Corporation, which intersected with the CIA: " ... Brown & Platt is a rather prestigious Chicago law firm with a history dating back to 1881. It has become international in scope and has offices all across this country and around the world. Why would this legal giant have an interest in my little, obscure blog? One word and that is Seipp! The real kicker is that their interests do not revolve around the recently departed Cathy Seipp, but rather Dennis Seipp, associated with Washington Group International, Inc. ... "
http://mike-connectingthedots.blogspot.com/2007/03/cathy-seipp-story.html
----> THIS RETURNS US DIRECTLY TO WARREN BUFFETT'S CHARITY GOLF OUTING AT OFFUTT ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. WGI IS THE FORMER MORRISON-KNUDSON CORP., WHICH BRINGS US TO: "Peter S. Lynch - Manager o/t Fidelity Magellan Fund; FIDELITY MUTUAL FUND Whiz; Director of Morrison Knudsen and W. R. Grace & Company; Wall Street Stock Investor; Advisory Committee AmeriCares."
----> Re Lynch: He is a Knight of Malta, a distinction he shares with WR Grace and son. AmeriCares, of course, is a CIA front. On and on ...
http://letsrollforums.com/movers-and-shakers-sovereign-t16438p10.html
But more importantly, ANNE TATLOCK (see part four), who was with Warren Buffett when her Fidelity Savings office was destroyed at the World Trade Center on 9/11, is also a principal of the FIDELITY MUTUAL FUND.
SEC Filing - http://www.secinfo.com/dwvdh.z22.htm
----> Let's Draw the Buffett-Tatlock-Lynch-9/11 Loop even Tighter: Recall that Anne Tatlock was an executive at FIDELITY INVESTMENTS. AND: "Peter Lynch (born January 19, 1944) is a Wall Street stock investor. He is currently a research consultant at FIDELITY INVESTMENTS."
----> Today, PETER S. LYNCH - A KNIGHT OF MALTA - IS VICE CHAIRMAN OF FIDELITY INVESTMENTS.
http://www.zoominfo.com/search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=1389647
He's been there for some time: " ... Lynch was hired as an intern with Fidelity Investments in 1966 partly because he had been caddying for Fidelity's president (among others) at Brae Burn Country Club in Newton, Massachusetts. ... When he returned after a two year Army stint he was hired permanently in 1969."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lynch
----> RE: Washington Group International, Inc.
WGI'S Defense Services Program, from the company web site:
" ... The Department of Defense, CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES and military installations face considerable challenges in responding to multiple world events. The transformation of the military structure, base closures and natural disasters has increased the demand for a highly qualified pool of contractors that quickly engage and mobilize to provide affordable, timely response. From new construction to refurbishment of existing facilities, we add value and cost savings to military projects and government-related agency life cycle programs. Our core strength lies in complex operations management in government facilities, backed by 70 years of military service in engineering, procurement, construction, operations, maintenance and management:
Global Military Base Operations, Maintenance, Closure and Realignment
Classified Engineering and Construction
Global Infrastructure and Privatization
http://www.wgint.com/markets/defense/defense_services/
----> WGI is owned by the URS Corporation. Let's take a look at the URS Board of Directors, where we find representatives from Rand Corp., Lockheed (Cohen Group is its lobbying arm), Textron, some CIA fronts (Agilent, VeriSign), and other scurillous corporations:
H. Jesse Arnelle - ... a director of Textron Corporation since 1993 ... a director of Gannett Company [owned in part by BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY] ... a director of Union Pacific and Resources, Inc.; as a director of Wells Fargo and Company; and as a director of Waste Management, Inc. ...
Armen Der Marderosian - ... Mr. Der Marderosian served as President and Chief Executive Officer of GTE Government Systems Corporation from 1995 to 1999 ...
Lydia H. Kennard - ... served on the Board of Trustees of Rand Corporation since 2002 ...
General Joseph W. Ralston - ... Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group since 2003 ... a director of Lockheed Martin since 2003 ... General Ralston's military career began in 1965 and concluded in 2003 when he retired from active duty. General Ralston's military career was highlighted by his service as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C. from 1996 to 2000 and Commander, U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO from 2000 to 2003.
John D. Roach - ... a director of VeriSign, Inc. (since July 2007) ...
William P. Sullivan - ... the President and Chief Executive Officer of Agilent Technologies, Inc. ... He served as Agilent's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer from March 2002 until March 2005 ... a Director of Agilent since March 2005..
William D. Walsh - Mr. Walsh has served as Chairman of Sequoia Associates LLC, a private investment firm, since 1982
••••••
----> Re: Cathy Seipp
Fox News mourned her passing after a long bout with lung cancer: " ... Cathy was a conservative by choice, not by upbringing, and she delighted in exposing liberals for their elitism and insensitivity. ... "
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,260268,00.html
MEMORABLE QUOTES BY CATHY SEIPP
"The WGA West remains filled with unreconstructed apologists for American Communists."
" ... People on the left [who in America push for affirmative action for women and gay marriage] are making common cause with political Islam, which regards women as chattel and think homosexuals should be crushed in walls. ... "
http://www.lukeford.net/essays/contents/mediabias.htm
"The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times are liberally-biased and will not admit it... "
http://www.lukeford.net/essays/contents/mediabias.htm
"A disapproving phrase you get called a lot here if you’re conservative is 'mean-spirited.'"
Peter Lynch was the husband of the late neo-con National Review propagandist Cathy Seipp. Ms. Seipp was the mentor of MediaBistro's Kate Coe, a spider-like propagandist who revels in trashing "conspiracy theorists." The following is from my investigation of the Duncan/Blake "suicides," and this is how I discovered Peter Lynch and the Washington Group International:
CATHY SEIPP'S CIA-FASCIST PROPAGANDA ROLE: " ... Like [Dennis] Miller, Ron Silver, Rob Long, Ben Stein, and a few celery-stick munchers, [Cathy] Seipp works the angle of being a rare, beleagured conservative in heathen Hollywood. You know, the type of writer/personality who peddles tales about saying something positive about George Bush at a party and everybody falling down in a dead faint; that sort of thing."
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/2005/12/index.html
----> CATHY SEIPP "GOES TO BAT FOR JOE MCCARTHY and attacks the Hollywood Left:
http://www.plugnickeltimes.com/archives/S_0704a.html
----> DENNIS SEIPP, HER HUSBAND, WORKS FOR WASHINGTON GROUP INTERNATIONAL, INC. (WGI), formerly Morrison-Knudsen Corporation, which intersected with the CIA: " ... Brown & Platt is a rather prestigious Chicago law firm with a history dating back to 1881. It has become international in scope and has offices all across this country and around the world. Why would this legal giant have an interest in my little, obscure blog? One word and that is Seipp! The real kicker is that their interests do not revolve around the recently departed Cathy Seipp, but rather Dennis Seipp, associated with Washington Group International, Inc. ... "
http://mike-connectingthedots.blogspot.com/2007/03/cathy-seipp-story.html
----> THIS RETURNS US DIRECTLY TO WARREN BUFFETT'S CHARITY GOLF OUTING AT OFFUTT ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. WGI IS THE FORMER MORRISON-KNUDSON CORP., WHICH BRINGS US TO: "Peter S. Lynch - Manager o/t Fidelity Magellan Fund; FIDELITY MUTUAL FUND Whiz; Director of Morrison Knudsen and W. R. Grace & Company; Wall Street Stock Investor; Advisory Committee AmeriCares."
----> Re Lynch: He is a Knight of Malta, a distinction he shares with WR Grace and son. AmeriCares, of course, is a CIA front. On and on ...
http://letsrollforums.com/movers-and-shakers-sovereign-t16438p10.html
But more importantly, ANNE TATLOCK (see part four), who was with Warren Buffett when her Fidelity Savings office was destroyed at the World Trade Center on 9/11, is also a principal of the FIDELITY MUTUAL FUND.
SEC Filing - http://www.secinfo.com/dwvdh.z22.htm
----> Let's Draw the Buffett-Tatlock-Lynch-9/11 Loop even Tighter: Recall that Anne Tatlock was an executive at FIDELITY INVESTMENTS. AND: "Peter Lynch (born January 19, 1944) is a Wall Street stock investor. He is currently a research consultant at FIDELITY INVESTMENTS."
----> Today, PETER S. LYNCH - A KNIGHT OF MALTA - IS VICE CHAIRMAN OF FIDELITY INVESTMENTS.
http://www.zoominfo.com/search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=1389647
He's been there for some time: " ... Lynch was hired as an intern with Fidelity Investments in 1966 partly because he had been caddying for Fidelity's president (among others) at Brae Burn Country Club in Newton, Massachusetts. ... When he returned after a two year Army stint he was hired permanently in 1969."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lynch
----> RE: Washington Group International, Inc.
WGI'S Defense Services Program, from the company web site:
" ... The Department of Defense, CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES and military installations face considerable challenges in responding to multiple world events. The transformation of the military structure, base closures and natural disasters has increased the demand for a highly qualified pool of contractors that quickly engage and mobilize to provide affordable, timely response. From new construction to refurbishment of existing facilities, we add value and cost savings to military projects and government-related agency life cycle programs. Our core strength lies in complex operations management in government facilities, backed by 70 years of military service in engineering, procurement, construction, operations, maintenance and management:
Global Military Base Operations, Maintenance, Closure and Realignment
Classified Engineering and Construction
Global Infrastructure and Privatization
http://www.wgint.com/markets/defense/defense_services/
----> WGI is owned by the URS Corporation. Let's take a look at the URS Board of Directors, where we find representatives from Rand Corp., Lockheed (Cohen Group is its lobbying arm), Textron, some CIA fronts (Agilent, VeriSign), and other scurillous corporations:
H. Jesse Arnelle - ... a director of Textron Corporation since 1993 ... a director of Gannett Company [owned in part by BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY] ... a director of Union Pacific and Resources, Inc.; as a director of Wells Fargo and Company; and as a director of Waste Management, Inc. ...
Armen Der Marderosian - ... Mr. Der Marderosian served as President and Chief Executive Officer of GTE Government Systems Corporation from 1995 to 1999 ...
Lydia H. Kennard - ... served on the Board of Trustees of Rand Corporation since 2002 ...
General Joseph W. Ralston - ... Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group since 2003 ... a director of Lockheed Martin since 2003 ... General Ralston's military career began in 1965 and concluded in 2003 when he retired from active duty. General Ralston's military career was highlighted by his service as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C. from 1996 to 2000 and Commander, U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO from 2000 to 2003.
John D. Roach - ... a director of VeriSign, Inc. (since July 2007) ...
William P. Sullivan - ... the President and Chief Executive Officer of Agilent Technologies, Inc. ... He served as Agilent's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer from March 2002 until March 2005 ... a Director of Agilent since March 2005..
William D. Walsh - Mr. Walsh has served as Chairman of Sequoia Associates LLC, a private investment firm, since 1982
••••••
----> Re: Cathy Seipp
Fox News mourned her passing after a long bout with lung cancer: " ... Cathy was a conservative by choice, not by upbringing, and she delighted in exposing liberals for their elitism and insensitivity. ... "
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,260268,00.html
MEMORABLE QUOTES BY CATHY SEIPP
"The WGA West remains filled with unreconstructed apologists for American Communists."
" ... People on the left [who in America push for affirmative action for women and gay marriage] are making common cause with political Islam, which regards women as chattel and think homosexuals should be crushed in walls. ... "
http://www.lukeford.net/essays/contents/mediabias.htm
"The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times are liberally-biased and will not admit it... "
http://www.lukeford.net/essays/contents/mediabias.htm
"A disapproving phrase you get called a lot here if you’re conservative is 'mean-spirited.'"
Trauma of 9/11 Appears to have Altered Brains, Study Suggests
Physorg.com
May 28, 2008
Magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of healthy adults more than three years after Sept. 11, 2001, shows areas that have less gray matter volume in those who were near ground zero on 9/11, compared with those who were much farther away. This is three views of the brain areas that have lower gray matter volume in the 9/11-exposed group. Notably, all of these areas (which show up brighter in this image) are associated with the processing of emotion.
Healthy adults who were close to the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, have less gray matter in key emotion centers of their brains compared with people who were more than 200 miles away, finds a new Cornell study.
"This suggests that really bad experiences may have lasting effects on the brain, even in healthy people," said Barbara Ganzel, the study's lead researcher and postdoctoral fellow at Cornell's College of Human Ecology.
The study -- one of the first to look at the effects of trauma on the brains of healthy adults -- is published in the April issue of Neurolmage. It follows a Cornell study by the same authors that found people living near the World Trade Center on 9/11 have brains that are more reactive to such emotional stimuli as photographs of fearful faces. Combined, the two studies provide an emerging picture of what happens in the brains of healthy people who experience a traumatic event.
The smaller volume of gray matter -- composed largely of cells and capillary blood vessels -- that Ganzel found were in areas that process emotion and may be, Ganzel suggests, the brain's normal response to trauma. The subjects in the study did not suffer from any mental or physical health disorders. Gray matter, a major component of the nervous system, is composed of the neuron cell bodies that process information in the brain.
About half of Americans experience a trauma in their lifetime, and scientists know a lot about the effects of trauma on the brains of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but not about people without clinical disorders. And most people, Ganzel said, who experience a trauma don't get PTSD.
Key brain areas that are smaller are also more responsive to threat, said Ganzel, suggesting that these changes may be a helpful response to living in an uncertain environment.
"We have known for a long time that trauma exposure can lead to subsequent vulnerability to mental health disorders years after the trauma," Ganzel added. "This research gives us clues about the biology underlying that vulnerability."
The researchers used two types of magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 18 people who were within 1.5 miles of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and compared them to scans of 18 people who lived at least 200 miles away at the time. One type showed the gray matter volume, and the other showed the brain's response to emotional stimuli (pictures of fearful and calm faces). Those who were close to the disaster on Sept. 11 showed more emotional reactivity in the amygdala, a brain area that detects the presence of threatening information.
Combining the brain data revealed that those who were near the World Trade Center had smaller, more reactive amygdalas, and this, in turn, was related to how anxious they were years later. Several other brain regions associated with emotion processing were also smaller in those who were close to the disaster.
The researchers also found that study subjects who had experienced other types of trauma (violent crimes, sudden death of a loved one) showed a similar reduction in gray matter and similar response to emotional faces and anxiety.
"This suggests that the differences we see in the brain and behavior of people who were near the Sept. 11 disaster are not specific to that one event," Ganzel said. "And it turns out there is a very similar pattern of gray matter volume loss with normal aging, which raises the question of what role trauma plays in the aging brain."
Co-authors include Elise Temple of Dartmouth College, Cornell graduate student Pilyoung Kim, and Gary Glover of Stanford University.
Source: Cornell University
This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com
http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=131208099
May 28, 2008
Magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of healthy adults more than three years after Sept. 11, 2001, shows areas that have less gray matter volume in those who were near ground zero on 9/11, compared with those who were much farther away. This is three views of the brain areas that have lower gray matter volume in the 9/11-exposed group. Notably, all of these areas (which show up brighter in this image) are associated with the processing of emotion.Healthy adults who were close to the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, have less gray matter in key emotion centers of their brains compared with people who were more than 200 miles away, finds a new Cornell study.
"This suggests that really bad experiences may have lasting effects on the brain, even in healthy people," said Barbara Ganzel, the study's lead researcher and postdoctoral fellow at Cornell's College of Human Ecology.
The study -- one of the first to look at the effects of trauma on the brains of healthy adults -- is published in the April issue of Neurolmage. It follows a Cornell study by the same authors that found people living near the World Trade Center on 9/11 have brains that are more reactive to such emotional stimuli as photographs of fearful faces. Combined, the two studies provide an emerging picture of what happens in the brains of healthy people who experience a traumatic event.
The smaller volume of gray matter -- composed largely of cells and capillary blood vessels -- that Ganzel found were in areas that process emotion and may be, Ganzel suggests, the brain's normal response to trauma. The subjects in the study did not suffer from any mental or physical health disorders. Gray matter, a major component of the nervous system, is composed of the neuron cell bodies that process information in the brain.
About half of Americans experience a trauma in their lifetime, and scientists know a lot about the effects of trauma on the brains of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but not about people without clinical disorders. And most people, Ganzel said, who experience a trauma don't get PTSD.
Key brain areas that are smaller are also more responsive to threat, said Ganzel, suggesting that these changes may be a helpful response to living in an uncertain environment.
"We have known for a long time that trauma exposure can lead to subsequent vulnerability to mental health disorders years after the trauma," Ganzel added. "This research gives us clues about the biology underlying that vulnerability."
The researchers used two types of magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 18 people who were within 1.5 miles of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and compared them to scans of 18 people who lived at least 200 miles away at the time. One type showed the gray matter volume, and the other showed the brain's response to emotional stimuli (pictures of fearful and calm faces). Those who were close to the disaster on Sept. 11 showed more emotional reactivity in the amygdala, a brain area that detects the presence of threatening information.
Combining the brain data revealed that those who were near the World Trade Center had smaller, more reactive amygdalas, and this, in turn, was related to how anxious they were years later. Several other brain regions associated with emotion processing were also smaller in those who were close to the disaster.
The researchers also found that study subjects who had experienced other types of trauma (violent crimes, sudden death of a loved one) showed a similar reduction in gray matter and similar response to emotional faces and anxiety.
"This suggests that the differences we see in the brain and behavior of people who were near the Sept. 11 disaster are not specific to that one event," Ganzel said. "And it turns out there is a very similar pattern of gray matter volume loss with normal aging, which raises the question of what role trauma plays in the aging brain."
Co-authors include Elise Temple of Dartmouth College, Cornell graduate student Pilyoung Kim, and Gary Glover of Stanford University.
Source: Cornell University
This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com
http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=131208099
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The Path to 9/11 (Part Six): Introduction to the Buffett-Farish-Hunt Axis
Also see: "The Path to 9/11, Part One: General Electric, ChoicePoint - Key Interlocking Fascist Directorates - and Kenneth Langone"
By Alex Constantine
This syndicate often interacts with the Bass Family of Texas and its business interests. W.S. Farish III and his well-heeled connections in Lexington, Kentucky bring another dimension to 9/11 research, and that is barely touched upon in this entry. The section closes with an examination of ES&S and other companies involved in voting technology. This series began with ChoicePoint, and the strategic acquisition of key companies detailed below illustrates that the 9/11 group was bent on controlling the election process before executing 9/11 and turning the government over to private sector contractors in the name of national security. Also, note the first appearance of Coca-Cola (Warren Buffett began accumulating stock in the company in 1988, and was a major shareholder by 2001) - the company will reappear in connection with Black Tuesday with some frequency. The same can be said of Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).
BEAR STEARNS, BUFFETT'S AIG & PRE-9/11 PUT OPTIONS
" ... Bear Stearns, which is now broke, was linked to [W. Buffett's] American Insurance Group (AIG) and PRE 9/11 put options placed on the New York and Chicago financial exchanges 72 hours before the September 11th attacks. ...
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?p=2424547
GULF RESOURCES AND BEAR STERNS
" ... From the beginning of Gulf Resources, there was always a representative on its board of New York's Bear Stearns firm ... "
http://www.kmf.org/williams/bushbook/bush_book.txt
THE HUNT FAMILY CONTEXT: GULF RESOURCES, WILL FARISH, HENRY KRAVIS, GW BUSH
ON THE BOARD of Gulf Resources sat George A. Butler, CEO of Houston's Post Oak Bank. Butler represented W. S. ("Auschwitz") Farish III, American inheritor of Auschwitz fortunes. Farish was the founder of Post Oak Bank.
The Hunt family had controlled some 15% of Gulf Resources shares. In 1977, the Hunts appointed GHW Bush executive committee chairman of the First International Bank in Houston. Ray Hunt subsequently signed a lucrative oil deal with the ruler of North Yemen - under the aegis of Vice President Bush.
•••••••
Ray Hunt
HUNT'S GULF RESOURCES AND CHEMICAL, CIA'S WALTER MISCHER, A 9/11 PLOTLINE CONNECTION, WATERGATE HISTORY
Sidney Adger ... had two sons--John and Stephen. John was a business partner of man named Robert Corson. ... Corson's ex-father-in-law was Walter Mischer, whose son, Walt Jr. was a fraternity brother (Kappa Sigma) of Stephen. Mischer Sr. was a friend of Bush Sr.--a neighbor in the exclusive area of Houston.
In 1972 Sidney Adger was a director of the Bank of Texas along with Robert
H. Allen and William C. Liedtke, Jr. The Bank of Texas later merged into
Walter Mischer’s Allied Bank [Pete Brewton writes that "Coca-Cola and Walter Mischer provided Oliver North his Contra training facility on 700,000 acres in Belize." Mischer purchased the training ground in Belize with Coca-Cola's CEO, Charles W Duncan. Very coincidental: "Next door to Hilliard's Huffman Flying school in Venice Florida is Duncan Aero, which traces back to the Duncan's in Texas. Source: http://austinist.com/2005/08/23/in_the_news.php]. George A. Butler was "chairman emeritus" of Allied Bank in 1983-84, while Jack T. Trotter was chairman of the Board of the bank and Walter Mischer was chairman of the Board of Allied Bancshares, Inc., the holding company.
George Butler and Robert H. Allen were directors of Gulf Resources, which had a role in providing part of the funds which were found in the Miami bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker, through Houston's Republican campaign for Nixon's CREEP, William Liedtke, Jr. Allen was the financial officer for CREEP. Butler was also chairman of the Post Oak Bank in Bush's wealthy neighborhood. ...
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg24525.html
•••••••
WALTER MISCHER OF IRAN-CONTRA FAME
Walter Mischer, Sr.
Walter Mischer is a secretive "shot caller" in Texas with clear connections to "The Company", which simply include the Bush family rather then emanating from his relationship with the Bush family.
Mischer has helped the CIA over the past several decades with their operations in Central America by purchasing remote areas of jungle and turning them into clandestine landing strips used to move drugs and guns. No politician in Texas has any hope of getting elected to any office beyond dog catcher without Walter Mischer's approval.
Ask Mischer about any of this -if you can get in touch with him- and he will deny he knows anyone you ask about, even when there are documented business and personal relationships between Mischer and the subject of the inquiry.
Mischer's modus operandi is not to ally himself with either political party, but to purchase influence with both parties so that whoever wins the election means that Walter Mischer can celebrate with the winners, and by extension so can Mischer's friends such as the CIA and Mischer's associates in organized crime.
http://www.talkaboutdrinks.com/group/alt.coffee/messages/354120.html
•••••••
Enter Election Systems and Software (ES&S) (RECALLING THE 9/11 CONNECTIONS OF CHOICEPOINT in Part Three of this series)
Founded in Omaha, Nebraska, under the name “Data Mark Systems” by brothers Todd and Bob Urosevich, the company soon changed its name to American Information Systems (AIS). In 1984, the Uroseviches obtained financing from William and Robert Ahmanson, whose family piled up a fortune in the savings-and-loan and insurance industries. Howard Ahmanson Jr., a younger cousin of the AIS financiers, has parlayed his fortune into extremist right-wing politics, pushingthe agenda of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which openlyadvocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy. William and Robert Ahmanson appeared to be more moderate than Howard Jr. and invested money in theater and public broadcasting. In 1987, they sold their direct shares in the voting-machine company to the Omaha World-Herald (which took a 45 percent stake inthe company) and the McCarthy Group (35 percent.
http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:eIwTKXuX-pgJ:www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf+Cronus+industries&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us
The Ahmansons sold their stock in American Information Systems (AIS) to the McCarthy Group and World Herald Company in Omaha, Nebraska.
"Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of AIS and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, AIS purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. ONE OF THE BRC OWNERS WAS [CAROLINE] HUNT of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the COUNCIL ON NATIONAL POLICY. In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment.
"In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel's ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel's first election victory was described as a 'stunning upset' by one Nebraska newspaper. ...
"Bob Urosevich was the Programmer and CEO at AIS, before being replaced by Hagel. Bob now heads Diebold Election Systems and his brother Todd is a top executive at ES&S. Bob created Diebold’s original electronic voting machine software. Thus, the brothers Urosevich, originally funded by the far Right, figure in the counting of approximately 80% of electronic voting in the United States.
"Like Ohio, the State of Maryland was disturbed by the potential for massive electronic voter fraud. The voters of that state were reassured when the state hired SAIC to monitor Diebold’s system. SAIC's former CEO is Admiral Bill Owens. Owens served as a military aide to both Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, who now works with George H.W. Bush at the controversial Carlyle Group.
"ROBERT GATES, former CIA Director and close friend of the Bush family, also served on the SAIC Board. Wherever Diebold and ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow. Alastair Thompson, writing for scoop.com of New Zealand, explored whether or not the 2002 U.S. mid-term elections were 'fixed by electronic voting machines supplied by Republican-affiliated companies.' The scoop investigation concluded that: 'The state where the biggest upset occurred, Georgia, is also the state that ran its election with the most electronic voting machines.' Those machines were supplied by Diebold."
http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2006/11/lexington-comair-crash-part-17-gps.html
WHAT THE HUNT FAMILY OF TEXAS HAD TO GAIN BY GW BUSH'S ELECTION "WIN" IN 2000
" ... the allocation of Iraqi petroleum rights ...will be going, in part, to the Hunt Oil Company of Bush associate Ray Hunt. Heir to ultra-rightwing billionaire H.L. Hunt, Ray Hunt sat on George W. Bush’s foreign intelligence advisory board, a position that gave him immediate access to the most sensitive intelligence documents about Iraq and other matters. ... "
http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2007/10/ftr-611-update-on-911-and-related.html
ALSO SEE: "Bush Oil Buddies Divvy Up Iraq (Money Doesn't Talk, It Swears)":
"This news from last week didn't generate nearly enough buzz but is surely a big deal: Hunt Energy of Dallas has signed an oil production-sharing agreement with the grand poobahs of northern Iraq's Kurdistan region, in apparent defiance of the central government in Baghdad, which has questioned its legality. ... "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-williams/bush-oil-buddies-divvy-up_b_65361.html
Moving the Bush Bubble to the Big D
Media Transparency
June 4, 2007
One month after 9/11, Bush honored his friend Ray Hunt with a seat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), and he was re-appointed in January 2006 (Bryce, 2005). According to the White House, this board operates to offer the president "objective, expert advice" on the conduct of foreign intelligence (Wolffe and Bailey, 2005b). Hunt, with international business interests, has access through PFIAB to intelligence that is unavailable to most members of Congress. This group is privy to the most current and sensitive information gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the military intelligence organizations, and several others sources (Bryce, 2005). PFIAB operates in complete secrecy. According to Salon magazine, members of this oversight board "are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and unlike other public servants who work for the president, there is no public disclosure of the PFIAB members' financial interests" (Bryce, 2005).
Several experts are persuaded that Hunt's position at PFIAB could easily benefit both Hunt Oil's worldwide energy interests and Halliburton, which has been awarded billions of dollars worth of no-bid, cost-plus contracts in Iraq by the U.S. government (Bryce, 2005; Wolffe and Bailey, 2005). Hunt has been on Halliburton's board of directors since 1998, when Dick Cheney was running the company and serving as an SMU trustee (1997- 2000). Interestingly, soon after Hunt joined the Halliburton board, he was placed on its compensation committee, where he helped determine Cheney's pay package (Bryce, 2005). In fact, in 1998 Hunt's committee decided that Cheney deserved a $3.78 million bonus (Bryce, 2005), and in 2000 he got $33.7 million award when he joined the Bush campaign (Bryce, 2000).
http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=196
•••••••
RE ES&S
ES&S is “the largest company in the world focusing solely on automating the election process.” The company “provides specialized systems and software to automate the entire election process for local, state, and national governments worldwide.” ES&S is a reorganized company that was given a new name in November 1997 after combining two of the largest election machine companies: Business Records Corp. (BRC, formerly part of Cronus Industries) and American Information Systems, Inc. (AIS).
ES&S is a privately held company owned by unknown investors and headed by Aldo Tesi, who refers to the democratic franchise as “the election industry.” The company is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska and supplies “thousands and thousands of machines being used across the country” to more than 2,200 U.S. jurisdictions in 49 states.
http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2006/12/twists-and-turns-who-owns-sequoia.html
•••••••
Only the Paranoid Survive
rigorousintuition.blogspot.com
Eva Sion on the Christian reconstructionists and their faith-based electronic voting machines:
Theonomic Reconstructionism is a belief that the only true authority is God's, that allegiance to biblical laws trumps that of civic law and that the Kingdom of Heaven needs to be built on Earth before Jesus will come again. In addition to that, homosexuals should be put to death, women should be banned from civic office, apostates and heretics should be stoned to death and there is a great need for more Christian politicians.
Not content to philosophize about such things, the TR movement sprang into action. Funded by billionaires such as Howard Ahmanson and the Coors and Hunt families, Reconstructionists formed think tanks such as the Chalcedon Institute and the Rutherford Institute (the friendly guys that funded Paula Jones' lawsuit against Clinton) to give the Christian Right a philosophical base to draw from, and political action committees to finance their elections....
Ahmanson inherited his money from his father, owner of Home Savings & Loan (during the S&L scandal of the Reagan years, Home's investors, mostly small family investments, lost over $150 million dollars. No one went to jail). In addition to funding PACs and think tanks, Howard Jr. parlayed his fortune into the majority stock of a business called American Information Systems (AIS) started by two enterprising brothers, Todd and Bob Urosevich. AIS later merged with Business Records Corporation (BRC) and became Election Systems & Solutions (ES&S). ES&S is the number one provider of touch-screen voting machines. Their website claims that their products were used in collecting 56% of the national vote in the last presidential elections.
Todd Urosevich is now Vice President of ES&S. Strangely enough, brother Bob moved on to head the second largest computerized vote-counting business, Global Election Systems, recently purchased by ATM and security giant Diebold. (They now have both the Ohio and Georgia contracts.) In a round table swap of incestuous patronage the previous executives of Global moved on to head the third largest vote-counting company in the nation, Advanced Voting Systems. Combined, these three corporations will process nearly 80% of the next nationwide elections.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_archive.html
•••••••
ES&S and ACS
ES&S (which describes itself as privately owned) and Sequoia are effectively the same company, the company that owns both is called Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) of Dallas, TX. They are apparently also a major player in providing technology services to the US court system, USPS, DOT, FCC, the US Senate, the White House, and several other government agencies.
http://911review.org/Alex/CIA_deckers_Atta_ACS.html
•••••••
AFFILIATED COMPUTER SERVICES (ACS) - NSA CONTRACTOR WILL BE INVOLVED IN 9/11
FROM: "Lexington Comair Crash, Parts 1-5: The Hand on the Data Stream/Teterboro Incident/Darwin's Devolution, CIA Terrorism/Flight Lesson/Teterboro & the CIA," By Alex Constantine
... The founder and chairman of the ACS board is Mr. Darwin Deason, a generous contributor to the Republican Party. Deason's "partner in crime" at ACS, and a ranking company director, is J. Livingston Kosberg - a former S&L thief. Pete Brewton, in The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, wrote: "Gibraltar Savings, whose chairman, J. Livingston Kosberg, was a prominent fund-raiser in Texas for the Democratic Party."
Patriots. And "prominent," too. ...
At Gibralter Savings down in Dallas, there was this nasty business ...
"ROBERT STRAUSS, Dallas attorney; U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee; friend of George Bush and former business partner with James A. Baker III; he and his son, Richard, were involved in a number of failed Texas S&Ls, including Lamar and Gibraltar." -
http://www.freewebs.com/ciascams/
Yes, "CiaScams." Gibralter, like the other S&L heists of the '80s, was a CIA/Mafia operation.
CIA/Mafia, like ACS, with "prominent" friends at the pinnacles of both political parties. ... A little searching on the net turns up another interesting connection to ACS - the destruction of the World Trade Center, or at least the plotline. ACS approved the change in Mohammed Atta's visa status in the US from tourist to student in 2002, according to the testimony of Huffman Aviation CEO Rudy Dekkers, and Tom Blodgett, a managing director at ACS, before the Kean Commission. This was a well-publicized "computer glitch."
How far, exactly, was ACS involved in CIA business? The GovExec website reports, "in November 2003, Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. acquired a government contracts division of Affiliated Computer Services Inc., a smaller firm, headquartered in Dallas, with DEEP CONNECTIONS TO THE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES." The very idea.
The intimate bond was apparent when it emerged that it was an ACS division purchased by Lockheed responsible for torture at Guantanamo Bay.
One week before the Comair crash in Lexington, on August 20, 2006, the Associated Press released a story on the "ACS Bribery and Federal Contract Fixing" scandal: "Affiliated Computer Services Inc., one of the companies negotiating with the Family and Social Services Administration for a state welfare eligibility contract worth an estimated $1 billion over 10 years, formerly employed FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob." But most significantly, "Privately-owned" ES&S and Sequoia voting machine concerns are effectively controlled by the same company - Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) of Dallas, Texas."
And it was an election year ...
While digging about, you will find an anonymous blogger who observes that ACS and ES&S are "a major player in providing technology services to the US court system, USPS, DOT, FCC, the US Senate, the White House, and several other government agencies.... What does this mean? It's an interesting concentration of power. If one controls the datastream of an organization, one has a great deal of knowledge of what it's really doing. Actually, in this case, it would be interesting to know the relationship between ACS and the GOP and/or the Bush family."
http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2008/03/lexington-comair-crash-parts-one-three.html
•••••••
EXECUTIVES AT ACS TOOK ADVANTAGE OF IMMEDIATE POST-9/11 STOCK MARKET INACTIVITY TO BACKDATE STOCK OPTIONS
Post 9-11 Backdating Issues: The War at Home
A recent lead article in the Wall Street Journal, “Companies Say Backdating Used in Days After 9/11” (March 7, 2007), was an obvious attempt to pluck at the readers’ heartstrings. In my case, it worked.
The article reads, in part,
... the nation’s stock markets were closed from Sept. 11 to Sept. 14. When they reopened the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average skidded more than 14%, in the worst full week for the blue-chip average since Germany invaded France in May 1940. Scores of companies rushed to grant options during the market’s trough…. some companies said it was pure happenstance, while others said it was intended to help motivate executives through the difficult period. But until recently none had admitted the award dates reflected improper backdating.
The notion that corporate executives would take personal advantage of a national disaster is outrageous. It is especially disheartening to think that these same business leaders were decrying acts of aggression against our country while performing underhanded acts of financial aggression against their own investors. ...
The nine companies known to have backdated in the fall of 2001 are Affiliated Computer (ACS), Broadcom (BRCM), Brocade (BRCD), Corinthian Colleges (COCO), KLA-Tencor (KLAC), Monster Worldwide (MNST), Progress Software (PRGS), Take-Two Interactive (TTWO), and UnitedHealth (UNH)....
http://seekingalpha.com/article/30330-post-9-11-backdating-issues-the-war-at-home
•••••••
Council for National Policy, Sequoia
Who's behind these private companies? It's hard to tell: the corporate lines--even the bloodlines--of these "competitors" are so intricately mixed. For example, at Diebold--whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to "delivering" his home state's votes to Bush next year--the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing "steering group" stacked with Bushist faithful.
Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the "Christian Reconstructionist" movement, an extremist faction that openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, with the imposition of strict Christian dominion, placing "the state, the school, the arts and sciences, law, economics, and every other sphere under Christ the King." This "dominion" includes the death penalty for homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners and--we kid you not--slavery, "one of the most beneficent of Biblical laws." As the movement's leader--and Ahmanson's fellow CNP member--R.J. Rushdoony puts it: "The Christian should therefore not fear laws in support of Christian social goals just because they interfere with personal freedom."
Ahmanson also holds a major stake in ES&S, where he's joined by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. Before his ascension to high office, Hagel was CEO of an earlier ES&S incarnation. Thus, when he ran for the Senate, his own company counted the votes. Needless to say, his initial victory was reported as "an amazing upset." Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company of ES&S. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998 gubernatorial race was ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes.
Sequoia also has a colorful history, most recently in Louisiana, where it was the center of a massive corruption case that sent top state officials to jail for bribery, most of it funneled through Mob-connected front firms. Sequoia executives were also indicted, but escaped trial after giving immunized testimony against state officials. The company's corporate parent is the UK communications and printing firm De La Rue, which even as we speak is churning out the colonial currency notes for the new Iraq, courtesy of a hefty Coalition contract. De La Rue, in turn, is owned by the private equity firm Madison Dearborn--a partner of the Carlyle Group, where George Bush I makes millions trolling the world for war pork, privatizations and sweetheart deals with government insiders.
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd09262003.html
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