RT TV – Earlier this week, a video of US Marines urinating on dead Afghans went viral and caused an uproar around the world. CNN contributor Dana Loesch has come forward and admitted she’d join the troops to urinate on dead Afghans. Other members of the corporate media have come forward and stated that they don’t see anything wrong with the Marines’ disgraceful acts. Abby Martin, founder of MediaRoots.Org, joins us to examine the situation.
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Abby Martin of Media Roots on RT TV
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MEDIA ROOTS – For the last few weeks, the GOP primaries have been on the forefront of the political discourse. The corporate press has extensively covered the five remaining Republican candidates in the Presidential race as they campaign and meet with supporters nationwide. Some Americans feel the election coverage is overkill and serves as a complete distraction from real issues. Abby Martin, journalist and founder of Media Roots, weighs in on the subject with Liz Wahl from RT TV.
MR
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Liz Wahl Interviews Abby Martin on RT TV
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Liz Wahl: “And for more on this, journalist and Founder of MediaRoots.org, Abby Martin. Hi, Abby.
“So, just, first of all, I wanna get your reaction to this kind of non-stop nitpicking, you know, playing detail by detail; basically, this circus that has been playing out on TV. What’s your reaction?”
Abby Martin (c. 0:18): “It’s funny. Every four-year election cycle we have two years where it’s just a constant dog and pony show in the corporate press covering the primaries. So, two years of every election cycle you have this incessant coverage of campaign dog and pony show. And, so, it’s a total distraction from real issues. And Occupy Wall Street, these Federalised crackdowns, now it almost seems passé because it’s just constant, 100%, Primary coverage.
Liz Wahl (c. 0:48): “We are seeing this kind of coverage early on in the race. Is it too early, too soon?”
Abby Martin (c. 0:54): “Absolutely. 100% Glen Greenwald wrote an excellent article about how this Iowa Caucus was almost, it was a sham, a media ritual, just reinforcing these rituals for elections when, really, in the grand scheme of things, we know there’s voting software that can rig an election and flip the vote. So, all of these things, it’s too early to tell. It’s really a distraction from what’s really going on.
“And quietly, just like Obama’s Federalised crackdowns and the repression of human rights, we see now shipping thousands of troops, deploying thousands of troops to Israel for a potential stand-off with Iran. So, these are all real issues that are not being covered with this Election coverage.”
Liz Wahl (c. 1:42): “Talk about, maybe, the way they are being covered. You did just touch upon it. But, in terms of what they are choosing to cover, are they digging deep enough to the real important issues that matter in the nation right now? Or are they not really scratching the surface?”
Abby Martin (c. 2:02): “The GOP, it’s so interesting. The GOP race right now, so you see Ron Paul’s coverage, first, the last four years, they had no choice, but to cover him this time because he almost was a, quote, ‘front-runner.’ You see Rick Santorum surging ahead. You see all this focusing on absurd issues, like Ron Paul’s newsletters from the ‘80s, not touching on Rick Santorum’s open racism about welfare and the ‘welfare queen’ myth that he goes out and talks about in his speeches. So, you see them cherry-picking these veiled racism within the GOP candidates and their coverage of Ron Paul—finally, they have to give credence to him because he is a front-runner. But their coverage—you saw Bill Kristol grinning, saying, ‘Oh, well, Ron Paul supporters are really confusing because they’re Dennis Kucinich supporters. I just don’t even know.’ It’s like when they do have to cover him because they can’t not, they choose to cover him in a very propagandised way and try to suppress him and disenfranchise him.
“But, yeah, the coverage of the Elections are just so absurd. It’s like watching a circus. I can’t even believe it.”
Liz Wahl (c. 3:11): “Abby, you’re a journalist. What are, maybe, some of the stories or some of the issues that aren’t being covered? What’s being missed?”
Abby Martin (c. 3:20): “Well, the NDAA was passed pretty secretively on New Year’s Eve by Obama. We have this Constitutional Law professor–”
Liz Wahl (c. 3:29): “That is the National, just to clarify that, the National Defense Authorization Act, of course, a very controversial issue. We haven’t heard too much about it, but this, basically, would give the Government the right to, basically, it almost brings Guantanamo Bay right here to the U.S. I mean you would think that this is quite a big deal.”
Abby Martin (c. 3:51): “Yeah. I mean it’s the biggest evisceration of our Bill of Rights, I think, since 9/11. I mean Bush tried to pass the Military Commissions Act and there was a big uproar in the blogosphere about that. And now you see Obama kind of just passing the NDAA, this provision that we thought, ‘Oh, the GOP, and John McCain, and Senator Levin tried to pass this provision.’ And then we find out later that Obama, himself, put in the mandate of anyone, American citizens, who are subject to the U.S. Military going in and arresting anyone.
“I mean it totally eradicates the Posse Comitatus Act and Habeas corpus, our most, it’s the bedrock of liberty of this country. And the fact that this is not being talked about, the fact that Obama actually signed this into law. The signing statement that he made doesn’t mean much when successive administrations are going to have this power. I don’t think that’s what people realise is that this power is now instated for every future administration. And that’s the scariest part.”
Liz Wahl (c. 4:48): “Abby, I want to ask you because something like the NDAA, something like that has huge implications for every American. Yet, why aren’t we hearing about these stories? We are hearing, in the latest debate, a lot of the focus was on gay marriage or birth control, issues like that. I mean why is something so incredibly important to every American, why isn’t, why aren’t we focusing on that? Or why aren’t we seeing that?”
Abby Martin (c. 5:16): “Divide and conquer. They like to use the issues of abortion and gay rights because, in a country, 350 million people in a country can never agree on these divisive issues in every election. So, it’s perfect to just bring up these election issues every time. If we really talked about the real issues that everyone can agree upon: ending the military-industrial complex; the incessant spending and exponential growth of the military-industrial complex; these never-ending wars; the economy; jobs; these are all issues that everyone across the spectrum can relate to, we want to curtail that. We want jobs. But, of course, that’s not gonna help the establishment, if we band together and fight them. So, that’s why they wanna divide and conquer us. And that’s why they keep bringing up these issues every time.
“The problem with these Federal Elections, though, is that everyone puts their faith into a candidate. And that’s where, you know, people who are putting all their faith in Ron Paul, too, I think is wrong because you need to vote every day. Every day you need to vote with what you’re doing, supporting these corporations, supporting the establishment. And that’s when people, I think, get really disillusioned. When they put all of their faith and hope into these Federal Elections and then every four years nothing changes.”
Liz Wahl (c. 6:28): “Well, today is just a, you know, the first Primaries underway. I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot more of this. Thank you so much for coming on the show. That was journalist and Founder of MediaRoots.org, Abby Martin.”
Transcript by Felipe Messina
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MEDIA ROOTS— On Thursday, November 3, 2011, Abby Martin of Media Roots spoke with Russia Today TV (RT) about the Occupy Movement, Occupy Oakland, the police-state response, and the historic general strike called by Occupy Oakland, which drew tens of thousands of supporters to shut down banks and the Port of Oakland, the nation’s fifth largest port.
Abby Martin, Media Roots founder, is interviewed in this RT segment.
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RUSSIA TODAY— Occupy protesters demonstrate resilience to crackdowns and cynicism in the media but it is still unclear what lies ahead for the movement. Abby Martin, founder of Mediaroots.org, says that Occupy can become a real political force.
While camping out and singing songs is one thing, getting the right politicians elected quite another. Martin says that the movement is unified and people are waking up to the two-party dictatorship, and realizing that the political system does not represent them anymore.
”A lot of people tried to paint this movement as not unified and we do not have a cohesive message, but as far as I can see we have one message and it is corporate greed and we are not standing for it anymore,” she declared. “No matter what your sign says, it all stems from the same source and that is corporate greed running amok.”
Martin believes it was a huge success for the movement when up to 20,000 people peacefully marched and successfully shut down the Port of Oakland. She says that getting their point across justifies shutting down America’s fifth largest port.
“It was almost necessary to get the point across, no-one is really listening to us. Mainstream media is trying to marginalize this movement. So maybe it will take something like that to really get people to recognize our force,” she said.
The mainstream media in US accuses the Occupy movement of being envious of the rich. Martin laughs it off arguing that it is about disenfranchisement and the extreme desperation that people are seeing.
”The rich keep getting richer. We are talking about corporations not paying taxes. Why should we? It is a two-tier justice system. We are held to a different sort of justice system in America. We are not standing for it anymore,” she says.
Allan Rivlin, co-editor of CenteredPolitics.com, says there is an explanation why people are demanding a change in the rules that have been in effect for decades.
“I think the success of the movement is the simplicity of the message,” he says. “They got it down to four words: ‘We are the 99%’. And that message, as simple as it is, really cuts to the heart of what a lot of people are experiencing, which is a tremendous inequality that has been growing for years. They are also seeing a system that is out of balance with respect to too much corporate influence over politicians and over Congress.”
© 2011 RT
Abby Martin of Media Roots is featured in this RT article and video report.
RUSSIA TODAY– As the scandal over voicemail and phone-hacking by the Murdoch media empire rages, public and political fury has focused on ruthless tabloids out of control. But some say in this day and age, the whole concept of privacy is falling apart.
News International chairman James Murdoch has been accused of trying
to mislead British MPs by saying he was unaware of the true extent of
phone-hacking by reporters. His testimony was challenged by two former
executives, Colin Myler and Tom Crone, who say Murdoch was informed
three years ago that the illegal practice went beyond just one rogue
journalist.
And as the scandal continues to grow, critics believe
the issue is just the tip of the iceberg in a society that no longer
values the privacy of the people.
“Everybody just clicks
through, agreeing to the terms and conditions. Well those terms and
conditions are very, very heavily weighted against you and your privacy
interest,” says Dave Saldana, the communications director of Free Press.
“We
see breaches of privacy by corporations happening all across America,
all across the world really, in every sector. Surveillance is rampant.
But really this is all a microcosm of the biggest surveillor of all –
that is, the state,” journalist Abby Martin believes.
There
is little Americans can do with the state having sweeping access to
their private information – access that followed the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, under a new law known as the Patriot Act.
The privacy of
Hasan Elahi, who is an associate professor at the University of
Maryland, was taken away from him in 2002, when he was detained by the
FBI for absolutely no reason he says, and scrutinized for months,
without charge.
His response? For nine years he has voluntarily
documented nearly every waking hour of his life on the web. He has
subsequently even turned it into an art-form.
“These are all the toilets that I’ve used. You know that on Sunday, November, 24, 2007 I used this toilet, for example,” he explained pointing at a wall of pictures on his website.
He
posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he
bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his
real-time physical location on a map.
Hasan says his extraordinary abandonment of his own privacy stems from the ignorance of the authorities.
“In
fear they decided: ‘well that guy looks like an Arab, so he must be an
Arab. If he’s an Arab them he must have explosives, everyone knows
that.’ That’s the logic where we’re operating. You realize how
ridiculous that logic sounds. But when your own country takes that as
the basis for national policy… Ignorance as the basis of your national
policy is a pretty scary situation. And that’s how I got caught up in
it,” he told RT.
For Hasan, privacy has become a relic of
the past, and he says he’s not surprised that journalists or anyone else
really, would use the same surveillance tactics as the state.
In
that sense, it might be of no surprise that the chief architect of the
Patriot act, the lawyer who put it together, happens to be one of
Murdoch’s hand-picked News Corp board directors. Viet Dinh served as
assistant attorney general in the Bush administration, and was described
by some as the purveyor of the most sweeping curtailment of freedom in
the US since the McCarthy era.
At a time when corporations and
the government can easily hack into people’s private lives, it does not
come as a surprise when social networks give your personal information
to ad companies, or when other industries live off breaching people’s
privacy.
In the US it is so widespread, and people have gotten so
used to it, that Rupert Murdoch seems to be a perfect part of the
system rather than some special villain, whose corporation has been
undertaking some unique unlawful practices.
Because in America they are not so unique.
© 2011 RT
RUSSIA TODAY– Barack Obama and the US Congress joined forces to successfully extend the Patriot Act until 2015, meaning broader domestic surveillance will pioneer through America for another four years. The variety of far-reaching surveillance measures being used to collect information from most law-abiding citizens are being criticized as tools to perpetrate fear for political purposes.
Abby Martin, founder of Media Roots is featured in this Russia Today segment.
