January 2005, Volume 12 Nr. 5, Issue 140

Noise, Lies and the People's Redux

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski
  

Mark Twain said, "Advertising is legalized lying".  Our multi-venue,  multi-channel media leave no-one untouched.  We are exposed to perpetual media noise through broadcast TV, cable TV, satellite TV, music, internet, internet TV, AM and FM radio, short-wave radio, internet radio, satellite radio, video games, billboards, marquees, , books, book covers, bumper stickers, magazines, flyers, newspapers, press conferences, speeches, debates, lectures, sermons, teachers, professors, politicians, agents provocateur, experts, press secretaries and talking heads.  

In the year 2004, $22 billion was spent on network TV advertisements alone.  A typical hour-long television broadcast contains fifteen minutes of advertising.  This does not include the embedded advertising known as product placement.  By the age of twenty-one, the average U.S. TV viewer would see 1,000,000 commercials.  Children under the age of six are heavy television viewers.  They are unable to understand the purpose of commercials and advertising and are highly likely to accept the claims being made, that is, they accept the legalized lying Mark Twain spoke of.  The young human psyche is incessantly bombarded by distorted, albeit hip calls, to buying something.  For children ages 6 - 17, watching television is the number one after-school activity.  Lying to children is an acceptable American activity that leads to them accepting lies as adults.  How else to explain that over half of the U.S. adult population still believes that Iraq had something to do with September 11, 2001, even after the 9-11 Commission and George W. Bush both concluded that there was no connection between the two?  Repeat the lie often enough and it becomes accepted as the truth.  Inculcate the acceptance of lies at an early age and fewer repetitions are required to promulgate the acceptance of the lie.  

Consequences

Being lied to daily through the media has become a rite of passage in the USA.  What are the consequences of all the noise and lies?  

Young people think that they are savvy.  They think that they question what is presented, and, they do, but still within a context that securely proscribes the question forms and that gives them little in the way of options to protest the manipulation.  Their most likely reaction is to consume (stuff, fashion, gossip, drugs), not to create.  So even if the kids "rebel" by consuming a different "brand" than the ones so heavily promoted, well the capitalists, as a class, as a concept and certainly as the context -- the capitalists still win. (JeanneE Hand-Boniakowski)

Consider the commercials for erectile dysfunction.  Erectile dysfunction is, in all but a few cases, an invented disease, just as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is an invented danger, chimerical crises that nonetheless create extreme fear responses. The marketing enterprise delivers the lies and we internalize them.  We are flaccid, and, we are fearful.

The heavy price we pay for broadcast legal lying is a society that can no longer recognize the lie.  The critical thinking skills necessary to challenge a claim are no longer readily available.  Nor, are they desirable.  Meanwhile, the noise and the lies continue to increase dominating our lives in a never ending stream of balderdash.  Like a sponge we soak up what is called "news", but in reality is the orchestrated propaganda of capitalism and the so-called corporate "free market system" that has taken over the government of the United States.  

Consider the case of the radio commentator Armstrong Williams who was in cahoots with the United States Department of Education.  Williams accepted $240,000 to talk positively about president Bush's No Child Left Behind program.  Mr. Williams self-described "poor judgment" allowed the Education Department to use taxpayers dollars in the pursuit of secretly altering the public's perception of a flawed education policy.  This is a new ethical low for journalists.  It provides more evidence that the  voices in the news are on the take.  Such payment for establishment blather is nothing new.  As Armstrong Williams put it, ""This happens all the time. There are others."  

Journalists have become cheerleaders for the establishment.  News pundits have become regurgitators of the corporate/Pentagon line.  The "experts" trotted out in their spiffy desert camouflage uniforms are the paid partisans of Pentagon management.  Nary is an opposing view or voice of contradiction heard.  The media have sucked in,  and sucked up to, the "if you are not with us you are against us" fascist mindset.  The media have, like the Borg, been assimilated into the collective.  They are part of the mantra matrix chanting the same administration line and lies.  Facts no longer matter.  Investigative journalism has succumbed to the Tucker Carlson and James Carville style of babble.  The bow-tied  and bald-headed bastards put knots in our brains.  The truth is as author, Steve Allen many years ago in his book, "Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking With 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind", warned us, is that we have severely increased the tendency to ineptitude.   As a quick example, "disclaimer stickers" were placed on the biology textbooks in Atlanta's Cobb County school system.  The stickers said that the theory of evolution is just that, a theory.  Wonderful.  Yet, a recent study concluded that over half the United States' population does not know that tomatoes have genes.  The lies of the anti-evolution sticker and the noise of the crowd that spawned it supercedes the rational thinking of science.  Hoorah for ignorance.  One more cheer for death to intellectualism.  Fortunately, on January 14, 2005, a federal judge in Georgia ruled that the stickers were unconstitutional and ordered them removed.

Crank it Up!

The noise level will be turned up a notch beyond tolerable on Thursday, January 20, 2005, as George W. Bush is coronated for his first term as President of the United States.  On that day, the media hype will be running on full throttle as $40 - $50-million dollars are consumed by a celebratory machine decidedly oblivious to the death and suffering that it has created around the world.  While the orchestrators of the electoral college victory gyrate in black ties, minks, champagne and caviar at a myriad of inaugural balls, thousands of mangled bodies both Iraqi and U.S. scream out in their physical distortion hurtling invective at the callousness of the over-indulgence.  Just as the radiation of sun is often a precursor to cancer of the skin, the consummate greed of power over-expressed via a fabricated electoral mandate manifests a malignancy on the republic.  The malignancy has metastasized itself morphing into a broadcast sputum of unavoidable proportions.  As Billionaires for Bush put it, "All the excess, twice the greed".   While not a complete list there will be the following balls to get off on:

• Black Tie and Boots Inaugural Ball 1/19/2005
  Sponsored by The Texas State Society - Marriott Wardman Park Hotel 
• Illinois Presidential Inaugural Gala 2005 1/19/2005
  Sponsored by Motorola - Grand Hyatt Hotel
• South Carolina Inaugural Ball 1/21/2005
  Sponsored by the South Carolina State Society - Smithsonian National Museum of American History
• GW University Inaugural Ball 1/20/2005
  Omni Shoreham Hotel
• Heritage Inaugural Ball 1/22/2005
  Hosted by Heritage Festivals
• 2005 Lawyers Inaugural Ball
• Indiana State Society Inaugural Ball
• New Hampshire Inaugural Reception
• North Carolina Inaugural Ball
• Texas Wyoming Ball
• Constitution Ball
• Freedom Ball
• Independence Ball
• Democracy Ball
• Patriot Ball
• Stars and Stripes Ball
• Commander-in-Chief Ball

Perhaps, the biggest lie that will permeate the nation will take place with the oath swearing in the President.  The noise exhibited at that moment is the annunciation of the subversion of the Constitution and that which has been the good contained within the nation.  When George W. Bush says the words below he radiates the admission to high crimes and misdemeanors for which he should be impeached,

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.

for the Constitution does not allow lying to the people.  Nor, does it allow the executive branch to declare war on any nation based upon a lie -- not even based upon the truth, for that matter, as only Congress can declare war.  

Falling Harder Than Nixon

On January 15, 2003, former attorney general of the United States, Ramsey Clark, put forth articles of impeachment against president George W. Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H, Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John David Ashcroft.  While two of the cast of characters will be leaving the scene the background radiation of their lies remains ever present.

In 1972, Richard Nixon of California defeated George McGovern by 60.7% to 37.5% of the popular vote.  Nixon received 17,838,725 more votes than McGovern with an electoral landslide of 520 votes to just 17 for McGovern.  Less than two years later, on August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace, thus avoiding being impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.  In the election of 2004, an election fraught with irregularities, questions and fraud, George W. Bush ostensibly defeated John F. Kerry by a mere 3,319,878 votes, with the electoral college margin of 286 to 252, hardly a mandate by comparison.  Richard Nixon's precipitous downfall provides evidence that the people have a limit to how much noise and lying they will put up with.  The time will soon come when the people will make their own noise demanding that the Constitution be once again returned to them from corporate fascism that has taken over the United States government.  

Some Bush lies 
(from Democratic National Committee website: http://www.democrats.org/specialreports/top10_lies/

"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." [Bush Remarks, Cincinnati OH, 10/7/02

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." [Bush, State of the Union, 1/28/03

"In an interview with Polish television on May 30, Mr. Bush cited the trailers [found in postwar Iraq] as evidence that the United States had 'found the weapons of mass destruction' it was looking for." [New York Times, 6/26/03]

"The 'Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln saying that their mission was accomplished." [Bush, News Conference, 10/28/03]

"Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term." [Bush, State of the Union, 2002]

"Tax relief is central to my plan to encourage economic growth, and we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens," Bush promised. [Bush Remarks at Western Michigan University, 3/27/01]

"We must uncover every detail and lean every lesson September the 11th."  [Bush 11/27/03]

"Bush had pushed hard for the Medicare drug benefit, but said he would not sign anything that exceeded $400 billion." [Boston Globe, 1/30/04]

"We will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of...carbon dioxide." [Bush speech, "A Comprehensive National Energy Policy," 9/29/00, Saginaw, MI]

"I'm a united, not a divider." [Bush, Austin American-Statesman, 7/30/00]
  

Articles of Impeachment
of
President George W. Bush
Vice President Richard B. Cheney
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
and
Attorney General John David Ashcroft

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors. --Article II, Section 4 of The Constitution of the United States of America

Acts which require the impeachment of President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Attorney General John David Ashcroft include:

1) Ordering and directing a proclaimed "pre-emptive", or "first strike" war of aggression against Afghanistan causing thousands of deaths indiscriminately, a major proportion non combatants, leaving millions homeless and hungry and installing a government of their choice in Kabul.

2) Authorizing daily intrusions into the airspace of Iraq by U.S. military aircraft in violation of the sovereignty of Iraq and aerial attacks on facilities and persons, on the soil of Iraq, killing hundreds of people indiscriminately, initially falsely claiming self defense though over a period of eleven years not a single U.S. aircraft has been struck or damaged by gunfire from Iraq, but later admitting the targeting of defense installations in Iraq, as war preparations they ordered progressed.

3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilians facilities and locations where civilian casualties are unavoidable.

4) Threatening Iraq with proclaimed "pre-emptive", or "first strike" attack and a war of aggression by overwhelming force and military superiority including specific threats to use nuclear weapons while engaged in a massive military build-up in nations and waters surrounding Iraq.

5) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently proclaiming an intention to change its government by force while preparing to assault Iraq in a war of aggression.

6) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

7) Authorizing, directing and condoning bribery and coercion of governments and individuals to cause them to act in violation of their duty and the law, including to maintain and tighten enforcement of economic sanctions against Iraq which continue to increase the death rate of infants, children and elderly persons; to attack and kill designated groups, or persons; to permit use of land, facilities, territorial waters, or air space for U.S. attacks on Iraq; to vote, abstain in a vote, or publicly proclaim support for a U.S. or U.N. attack on Iraq; to defect from Iraq, or to falsely accuse it of weapons concealment to break down opposition to a U.S. war of aggression; and to reject ratification of the Treaty creating an International Criminal Court, or reject its jurisdiction over the United States. 8) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks by the U.S.

9) Violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in "pre emptive" wars, first strike attacks and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and other nations by assuming powers of an imperial executive who is not accountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and the people of the United States to prevent interferences with the unlawful executive exercise of military power and economic coercion against the international community.

10) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting, violations and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.

Ramsey Clark Former Attorney General of the United States of America
January 15, 2003

© 2005 Jozef Hand-Boniakowski (excluding articles of impeachment)