For over a year now, it has been obvious that Bush has lost the war in Iraq. The insurgency grows in strength; international opposition to the war stays strong; and the few corrupt governments that have sent their troops to help Bush in his war are gradually withdrawing their forces.

The biggest winners of this war have been Osama bin Laden and Al Queda. This war had toppled their time enemy, Saddam Hussein, while helping Al Queda recruit terrorists. Adding to the magnitude of the disaster, the war in Iraq has caused a dramatic increase in bin Laden’s popularity in the Muslim world.

A phony “election,” where the results were rigged to keep the government from representing the large majority of Iraqi voters who chose Shia parties, has done nothing to stabilize the situation. In a Kurdish area of the country, Christians were not even allowed to vote.

Four more US troops were killed today, leaving the official total at 1682 killed. The corporate media generally don’t bother to report on the troops that are maimed in this nutty war.

The Iraqis we are training to serve in that country’s military are merely seeking skills they can use for the insurgency. As of last summer, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the war. Who knows how many more have been slaughtered since then?

Yet, the corporate-owned media refuse to report the fact that Bush has lost this war. They even avoid reporting on the deaths of American soldiers now. The pro-war, pro-GOP, pro-Bush bias of these corporate “news” outlets gets more blatant as time goes by. Is it any wonder so many people are seeking uncorrupted sources of news and information?

The Washington Post’s usual habit is to propagandize in favor of corporate interests and the GOP in its “news pages” while running moderate to liberal editorials. This lets them promote their right-wing agenda while giving their knuckle-walking rightist subscribers the proper impression that they are part of the “liberal media.” Every once in a while, they slip up big time as was the case in their recent editorial trying to put a positive spin on Bush’s gulags.

The Post actually had the audacity to write about Amnesty International’s use of the term “gulags” in the following manner:

But lately the organization has tended to save its most vitriolic condemnations not for the world's dictators but for the United States.

This is laughable when you remember that George W. Bush is illegally occupying the White House due to not one, but two stolen elections. Thus far, the Post has refused to report that either election has been stolen. This claim also is deceptive because condemning the actions of the Bush regime is not condemning the United States. The Bush regime in no way represents the United States.

The Post also falsely claimed that “Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants during wartime.” In fact, the gulag at Guantanamo Bay is part of the Bush regime’s broader desire to torture and imprison Muslims. So far, none of the American citizens illegally imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay has been charged or tried in a legitimate court of law.

The Post goes on to say:

Abuses there -- including new evidence of desecrating the Koran -- have been investigated and discussed by the FBI, the press and, to a still limited extent, the military.

These “investigations” have been mere coverups. There has yet to be any Special Prosecutor appointed to determine the Bush regime’s roll in the mass torture, rape, and murder of prisoners in their gulags. If legitimate criminal investigations had been taken place, senior Bush administration officials already would have been indicted for war crimes. If the press in the US were truly independent of corporate corruption and the Bush regime’s political influence, every major daily paper in this country already would have called for Bush’s and Cheney’s impeachments. There would be equally strong calls in the nation’s daily newspapers for Bush Administration officials to be tried for crimes against humanity.

The Post also engages in homophobic rhetoric in its editorial.

Turning a report on prisoner detention into another excuse for Bush-bashing or America-bashing undermines Amnesty's legitimate criticisms of U.S. policies and weakens the force of its investigations of prison systems in closed societies.

The Washington Post’s use of the terms “Bush-basing” and “America-bashing” is outrageous. Equating completely fair, accurate, and legitimate criticism of brutal policies with violent assaults and murders of people on the basis of their sexual orientations and gender identities is viciously heterosexist. The Post owes all of its lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender readers an immediate apology for this bigoted rhetoric.

The use of the second term adds additional insult given the fact that every patriotic American is outraged at the Bush regime and its gulags.

The Post has abandoned the pretense of any kind of journalistic professionalism or editorial judgement. The Post is nothing more than a propaganda device for corporate interests, the GOP, and the Religious Right. There is no point in even buying the paper. It is a complete joke.

Media critic Jeff Cohen has come up with a brilliant idea of how to stand up for democracy in Venezuela. He has called for a buycott of Citgo gas stations. According to the Citgo Web site:

The company is owned by PDV America, Inc., an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Venezuela is the same country whose democratically elected government has been the target of an unsuccessful coup attempt by the Bush regime.

Buying gas from Citgo stations can help accomplish three important goals:

-supporting democracy in Venezuela and throughout the world>

-opposing the tyrannical and unelected Bush regime

-keeping money from going to the terrorist regime in Saudi Arabia

Related articles:

Bush Administration Behind Failed Military Coup in Venezuela

Coup-making in Venezuela: the Bush and oil factors

Venezuela coup linked to Bush team

Sadly, too many politicians are forgetting that the flag is not just a physical object. It stands for freedom. Yet, many congressmembers and senators are supporting a “flag desecration” amendment which restricts freedom. The American Civil Liberties Union is taking a courageous stand against this Amendment, and you can support their efforts.

ACLU Action Alert

It should be noted that this amendment discriminates against atheists by trying to impose the religious concept of desecration into the political discourse and into the Constitution.

If every reporter, editor, and publisher/news executive took the following quote seriously, our media would improve dramatically.

News is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity.

This is from an excellent speech by Bill Moyers at the National Conference for Media Reform. I heard part of it during the latest WBAI pledge drive, and it was quite inspiring.

Full Text of Moyers’ 2005 Speech

Moyers’ 2003 Keynote

Human Rights First: In Their Own Words: Detainees Tell of Degradation of Religious Beliefs at Guantanamo

NEW YORK – Detainees held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay told their U.S. lawyers about the use of tactics intended to degrade their religious beliefs in a series of interviews that were recently declassified by the U.S. Department of Defense and were published at Human Rights First today. The charges are consistent with other allegations by detainees at U.S.- run facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with Defense Department reports that have already been made public.

In addition to the press release, Human Rights First has released a detailed report.

It is becoming even more obvious that trashing the Koran is part of the Bush regime's policy of torturing prisoners, not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also at Gitmo. This is typical of the Christian Right's book-burning mentality.

Harper’s Magazine has released an interview with an Afghan prisoner who was an eyewitness to throwing the Koran “into the latrine.”

Even before this latest disclosure, it was obvious that Newsweek had backed down from an accurate story in response to political pressure from the Bush regime. The retraction is so typical of the right-wing bias and lack of journalistic standards so common in today’s corporate media.

Of course, the very notion of “desecration” is intellectually dubious, to put it charitably. But, flushing books down the toilet too closely reflects the anti-intellectualism of Bush and the rest of the Religious Right.

Congratulations to The Liquid List for sniffing this one out.

UPDATE: The International Red Cross informed the Pentagon about similar incidents in 2002 and 2003.

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-OR, has decided to vote against the queer community and support the “nuclear option” which would stop filibusters of Bush’s most homophobic judicial nominees. This is an interesting payback for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) which endorsed Smith’s 2002 Senate campaign in spite of the fact that his opponent was more supportive on lgbt issues.

The HRC has a habit of endorsing some Republicans who are less supportive than their opponents each election. This obvious pandering to wealthy Republican donors has been rationalized in various ways, none of which have ever had much credibility. One favorite excuse has been that endorsing less supportive Republicans is a way to improve our community’s relationship with that party, which supposedly will help us in the legislative arena.

The HRC has been making these deceptive endorsements since at least 1994, and the national GOP is even more fanatical in its homo-hatred than before. You would think that the HRC would abandon a strategy that has failed to achieve even one important queer civil rights victory, if the misleading endorsements actually were part of a legislative strategy.

Smith has taught the HRC an important lesson, pandering to Republicans does not make them your friends. The HRC needs to hold Republican politicians to the same standards that they hold everyone else to.

Part 1

There are a couple of catches. Installing extensions violates the premise of many user-interface gurus who want to clear away too many options. If you get confused by lots of options, you will want to be very selective about which options you want. Another minor problem is that their model has been so successful in generating extensions, the design for the extensions area could use an overhaul. Also, their Search engine would probably do a better job in helping you find what you want if developers had to enter a mandatory description field with a minimum of 100 characters.

The interesting aspect of this is that no competitor can maintain any kind of advantage for a significant amount of time. If someone comes up with a new bell or whistle, it will be added by a Firefox extensions developer in short order. It looks as though open source is the future of browsers.

To add extensions to your Firefox browser, go to the “Tools” menu, then select “Extensions.” Once the “Extensions” window pops up, select “Get More Extensions” on the lower right. The Extensions window also is useful, because it lets you uninstall extensions that you decide you don’t want later.

You don’t have Firefox???? Upgrade your browser to Firefox.

Much attention has been given to this open-source upstart browser, focusing on its security advantages, superior user interface, and reduce file size compared to Internet Explorer. In the general U.S. web public, Firefox now has nearly 7% of the market share, bouncing IE to below 89%, down from 95.5% a year ago. Given that most users do not bother to even install a browser, this is remarkable.

In Europe, where people tend to be better educated than here in the U.S., Firefox has over 13% of the market (30% in Finland and almost 23% in Germany). Firefox’s share on the O’Reilly web sites was recently reported at 35%, which is hardly surprising given the tech-savvy nature of that audience.

With all the media buzz, the best feature of the browser is being underemphasized. Extensions are what truly separate Firefox not only from IE, but from Opera and all other proprietary browsers. This is where the strength of the open source model has its greatest effect. Any sufficiently skilled programmer who wants a new feature or to change the browser’s behavior has the ability to design extensions to the browser. The Firefox Extensions site also has a user rating system, with comments, which help you evaluate whether or not you wish to add them.

“Paste and Go” is my favorite. If you copy a Web address, you can right-click and choose “Paste and Go,” meaning you don’t have to then click on Go after pasting or hit the enter key. Even more useful is that extension’s “Paste and Search” feature, which allows you to paste your keywords into the browser’s search box and get results with a single right-click. Other extensions improve bookmarking, get rid of animated gifs, and change the behavior of tabbed browsing, something Microsoft has yet to even implement in its browser.

There are serious developer tools, like validation of code, a color picker, and a screen reader validator. There are sublimely silly extensions, including one that makes the text on the pages sound like they were uttered by the Swedish Chef.

Part 2

One indication of how pervasive the right-wing bias is in corporate-owned media can be found in the burying of Gannongate. Let’s review the situation.

- A man posing as a reporter gained access to the White House on numerous occasions under an inaccurate name.

- The organization he worked for was a front for the Texas GOP.

- This person was given preferential treatment at Bush’s press conferences in return for softball questions which primarily served to glorify Bush and vilify the opposition party rather than obtaining information for the public about the Bush regime and its policies.

- There are allegations that Guckert/Gannon received classified information about the identity of a CIA agent whose husband offended the Bush regime.

- There is no indication that a proper vetting was done on Gannon before giving him access inside the White House, a serious security breach.

- The Gannongate scandal happened at the same general time that the Bush Administration got caught paying off fundamentalist propagandists Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher with government funds.

If something like this happened during a Democratic administration, every major news outlet would flog the story to death. Republicans would start impeachment proceedings, and they would be quite correct in doing so.

Gannon seems to be starting a pity campaign to get queers to ignore the story. But, it’s tough for me to have any sympathy for him when he has been completely disloyal to the lgbt community. Gannon has propagandized for Bush, a fanatical and dangerous homophobe and has been active in the homo-hating Free Republic crowd. He actually attacked a politician for being pro-gay (in this case John Kerry). Loyalty is a two-way street, something Gannon/Guckert/whatever has yet to realize.

The irony is that only sheer laziness by the Bush regime allowed Gannon to become the high profile player he temporarily became. If they knew he was queer, much less involved in porno/prostitution Web sites, the wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near Bush’s press conferences.

Alternet has an excellent article on the subject by Michael Dietz, “Becoming Jeff Gannon”

Democrats.com is calling for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the scandal.