MEDIA ROOTS – With the Presidential election taking place in less than two weeks, the corporate media spin machine is rife with 24/7 election fervor, pitting the two establishment Presidential candidates against each other. So, Media Roots is here to remind you what other choices you have come election day. Check out our report outlining the views of the Third Party Presidential candidates with exclusive Media Roots and Breaking the Set interviews.

The mainstream press has barely mentioned the Third Party candidates, in fact no US network even aired the Third Party debate. Luckily, RT America, did. Watch the hour pre-debate panel discussion with Adriana Usero, Liz Wahl and I along with the debate in its entirety below.

Abby Martin

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RT America Third Party Debates and Pre Debate Show Panel

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For fun, here is Breaking the Set’s wrap-up analysis of the Romney vs Obama Presidential debates for the 2012 election cycle:

Debate #4: President Obama and Governor Romney agree on everything when it comes to foreign policy.

Debate #3: Corporate media ignores issues like the Guantanamo trials, Bradley Manning and Afghanistan.

Debate #2: Blatant media bias and complete disregard of objectivity during the Vice-Presidential debate coverage.

Debate #1: Georgetown University Professor, Chris Chambers, discusses the lies of omission from the Presidential candidates.

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Photo by Flickr User JHF

MEDIA ROOTS – Standing for “truth, justice, and the American way” just took a giant leap into the twenty-first century with Clark Kent leaving the Daily Planet newspaper. In next week’s issue, to be released by DC Comics, Clark is expected to stand up in front of staff and mourn how mainstream “journalism has given way to entertainment,” according to the comic’s writer Scott Lobdell. He continues to explain how the superhero’s alter ego will now “start speaking an unvarnished truth” possibly by creating an independent outlet similar to that of Drudge Report.

This could be a huge, albeit indirect, opportunity to support independent news outlets such as Media Roots. Or it could be just another way for the establishment to mislead the public into thinking comic books will become a new frontier for reliable information. A current example of how the corporate entertainment industry poses as a source for reliable news is The Daily Show, whose host is one of the twenty most influential media personalities now influencing this year’s presidential election.

Clark’s decision is still worthy of note in that a fictional superhero is acting on a crisis that is affecting the citizenry every day. This is not the first time in recent history that Superman has stood up for contemporary political issues. Just last year, he threatened to renounce his U.S. citizenship before the United Nations because of he was tired of his “actions being construed as instruments of U.S. policy.” While he didn’t actually renounce, the episode created heated discussion among both supporters and dissenters of America’s modern role in the global community.

The depth of Clark Kent’s future investigations will ultimately underscore this impact on modern society. Will he highlight the numerous questions that still surround 9/11 or feature Obama’s current war on investigative journalists? Possibly he will investigate the role hedge funds have played in the still-occurring financial collapse. Only time will tell, hopefully before it’s too late.

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

Image provided by Flickr user istolethetv.

MEDIA ROOTS – Daniel Ellsberg is now advising voters in swing states to vote for President Obama in next month’s election. The unquestionable patriot that leaked the Pentagon Papers is thus often credited with initiating the end of the war in Vietnam. Mr. Ellsberg has since helped organize several major antiwar demonstrations thus it seems peculiar for him to support an administration directly responsible for hundreds of drone assassinations, the continued operation of unlawful military detention centers, pardoning known torturers, and prosecuting whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning.

“I don’t ‘support Obama.’” Ellsberg clarified in an opinion article last Thursday. “I oppose the current Republican Party.” Echoing the recent words of Professor Noam Chomsky, he adds, “if I were a person in a swing state, I’d vote against Romney/Ryan, which means voting for Obama because there’s no other choice.” While this may have been sound advice of yesteryear, today this is simply forfeiture to the modern political duopoly funded by nearly identical corporate entities.

Ellsberg then continues to preach that “the only way for progressives and Democrats to block Romney from office, at this date, is to persuade enough people in swing states to vote for Obama.” While also ironic, this statement is alienating to all progressives who do not consider themselves Democrat. For instance, the majority of those whom continue to support Dr. Ron Paul would likely consider themselves progressives for the congressman’s continued stance against undeclared wars and the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank. And as President Obama continues to escalate Bush-era policy, it is puzzling to understand how his administration could be considered progressive in the first place.

To further discourage third-party voters, Ellsberg specifically calls out those in swing states that might be considering a vote for anyone but Obama or Romney. He considers it absurd for anyone residing in these states to think that there’s no difference between the two primary candidates and that this line of thinking is “crazily divorced from present reality.” A third-party vote in a swing state, he contends, is “complicit in facilitating the election of Romney and Ryan.” Ellsberg neglects to recognize that third-party votes in these very battleground states would actually underscore America’s current appetite for new political leadership in this country.

Sometimes things must get worse before they can get better.

The Ellsberg article closes with a reference to one of America’s greatest resisters, Henry David Thoreau. While voting is itself an action, engagement in the electoral process – from private discussion to public outreach – is ultimately of more influence. So when Mr. Ellsberg could have used his influence to publicly support the third-party candidate that he’s voting for, he instead published an item that merely continues to feed into the establishment’s two-party system for continued war, continued unlawful detentions, and continued criminal conduct.

If Governor Romney does end up switching titles, perhaps then America will witness the antiwar movement awaken from its current slumber or, at least, an Occupy Wall Street renaissance. Possibly then those whom already see through the two-party charade could start to make an impression on yesterday’s thinkers while inspiring tomorrow’s leaders. But what is certain is that only when the two-party paradigm is shattered will America witness the dawn of a new political landscape.

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

Image by Flickr user jonathan mcintosh.

MEDIA ROOTS – With the second of three presidential debates now over, democracy continues to be victimized by the campaigns of establishment candidates referred to colloquially as “Obamney” or “Robama.” However, viewers of corporate media would not understand this for throughout the coverage, very little was reported on events occurring just outside the spectacle.

Since the historic Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960, televised presidential debates have been a primary tool for American voters to learn about candidates for office. Over 70 million Americans tuned-in for that first televised debate as well as last night’s orchestrated charade. But while it is widely agreed that Kennedy won the debates because of his favorable on-camera presence, the winner of last night’s debates was more nebulous. For never have these televised debates featured more than the two major candidates nor have additional voices ever been needed more in a presidential election.

Yesterday Dr. Jill Stein and her running-mate, Cheri Honkala, attempted to alter the two-party paradigm by attending the debates without “credentials.” They were promptly arrested after not refusing to leave only to be later released, without charge, shortly after the debates concluded. “We think [the Commission on Presidential Debates] is entirely illegitimate,” Dr. Stein mentioned just prior to their arrest. The physician, author, teacher, and mother continued “that if democracy truly prevailed there would be no such commission, that the debates would still be run by the League of Women Voters, that the debates would be open.”

Adding insult to injury, Time’s Mike Halperin obtained and disseminated an agreement between the two establishment candidates that was signed by representatives of both campaigns on the day of this year’s first debate in Denver. The agreement can now be downloaded in its entirety while below are some of the agreement’s most egregious items, as highlighted this morning in an article on Gawker:

– “The candidates may not ask each other direct questions during any of the four debates.”

– “The candidates shall not address each other with proposed pledges.”

– “At no time during the October 3 First Presidential debate shall either candidate move from his designated area behind the respective podium.”

– For the October 16 town-hall-style debate, “the moderator will not ask follow-up questions or comment on either the questions asked by the audience or the answers of the candidates during the debate….”

– “The audience members shall not ask follow-up questions or otherwise participate in the extended discussion, and the audience member’s microphone shall be turned off after he or she completes asking the questions.”

– “[T]he Commission shall take appropriate steps to cut-off the microphone of any…audience member who attempts to pose any question or statement different than that previously posed to the moderator for review.”

– “No candidate may reference or cite any specific individual sitting in a debate audience (other than family members) at any time during a debate.”

– For the town-hall debate: “Each candidate may move about in a pre-designated area, as proposed by the Commission and approved by each campaign, and may not leave that area while the debate is underway.”

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Photo provided by Flickr user Daquella manera.

Dr. Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, surrounded by law enforcement officers,

explain to the American people yesterday how the presidential debates are illegitimate and

offers insight into what an appropriate presidential debate would look like.

MEDIA ROOTS – Recently we caught up with director Dean Puckett and Dr. Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, the creators of the film Crisis of Civilization. Puckett discusses his background as an activist and why he believes corporate media is becoming more irrelevant by the day. Dr. Ahmed sheds light on the true scope of Al Qaeda as well as the Pentagon’s new “lily pad” base system.

Be sure to check out our previous film review for Crisis of Civilization.

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Interview with filmmaker and director Dean Puckett

You have had some experience as an activist I understand. You chained yourself to a tree to save a community from being bulldozed, or something along those lines? Please talk about that.
 
Sure, well firstly, it wasn’t a tree. My hand was chained inside a concrete barrel which was attached to the gates of Dale Farm. Dale Farm was the largest Traveller community of its kind in Britain. It consisted of nearly a hundred plots of land and at its peak, over a thousand residents of Irish Traveller and English Gypsy heritage. I spent 6 weeks living in the community there as part of a resistance to an eviction threat by the local council. Unfortunately we failed and Basildon Borough Council evicted 90 families (about 500 people, many of them children) from the 52 plots of land at Dale Farm because they didn’t have planning permission even though they owned the land that they were living on.

There has been much written about Dale Farm but I think the crux of it is that there is a lot of prejudice against Gypsy and Traveller communities in the UK which gave the Conservative Government the remit to carry out what I believe to be a racist eviction. People like to hide behind the bureaucracies of planning law and conservative ideologies which justify violent evictions of children and families. But in reality we have a hypocritical Legal System which is stacked in favour of the wealthy so it is almost impossible for Travellers to find a piece of land to live on in peace in a way which suits their culture. No one has the right to dominate the natural resources of this planet yet Travellers are hounded to the point where a culture is virtually wiped out because they refuse to conform to what is considered ‘normal society.’ As my good friend Simon said, “no court in the land could make the eviction of Dale Farm just,” and that is how I feel about it.

So I was chained to the gates on the day when there was the first real threat of eviction of the community. You can watch the video of me ‘locked on.’ And truth be told I have some regrets about the experience. I don’t regret locking on or being a part of the resistance at Dale Farm but I really regret talking to the media as I feel it trivialized what I was doing. Putting your body in the way of injustice is something which I feel is important but talking to right wing press will always undermine your actions no matter how well you put your points across.

I wasn’t there on the day of the actual eviction of Dale Farm which was the harshest piece of State Violence that we have seen in this country in my lifetime. If you go back there now the whole area has been dug up and destroyed and there are Travellers living on the side of the road. It was utterly pointless but the establishment has shown once again the lengths it will go to protect its most valuable asset: land. 

How did Nafeez influence you the most to make this film?

I am attracted to Nafeez’s work because of the way he communicates his ideas which is to analyze global issues such as peak oil, climate change, the war on terror, the destructive nature of neoliberal capitalism from a systems point of view. So he will analyze the root structural causes of these issues without getting caught up in conspiracy theories, or “them and us” type rhetoric. He keeps a level head and is very pragmatic. His work also feels passionate yet not preachy, with a level of humility about history and the possibility that he could be wrong, which I personally find much easier to engage with than many progressive academics whom are sometimes quite dogmatic about their approach.

But also, as a filmmaker, you have to ask yourself, “how can you add to this?” So reading his book I felt like I could bring these ideas to an audience who would not previously have engaged in the text, which is why I felt it was worth spending a year of my life adapting it into a feature length film alongside artist and animator Lucca Benney.

Also I feel like Nafeez is a unique voice being a Muslim and talking about these issues and it’s not something he gets enough credit for in my opinion. Many of these policies affect Muslim communities globally and domestically and so he deserves to have a place. I’m glad this film seems to be making more people aware of his work.

Other than that I have learnt a hell of a lot from him. It was almost like I did a course in international relations and global politics just making the film. We did seven or eight interview sessions, constantly talking back and forth on the phone and working together to make the film and create the final script. Not to mention the community screenings and film festivals we have attended together since last October.

We’ve learnt from each other, as I think I have taught him to communicate his ideas in a more simple way. Due to having to condense it into a 77 minute film I have had to really strip it down and get to the heart of the issue and also in terms of communication I would say stuff like “how can we say this in a less academic way?” or “how can it be clearer?” I have seen this has translated into the real world in talks and articles which Nafeez has produced since. Ultimately through the experience of making the film, and to this day as we see the film find its audience on television and the internet, we have become friends and he has helped me understand the world better. And that in turn has influenced the way I have approached things like activism and the way I communicate ideas.
 
There’s an irony of using campy, government funded, public educational film clips in the movie and Crisis of Civilization being the new, 21st century version of a public, educational film, if you will. How much is Crisis of Civilization an antidote to mainstream media propaganda and disinformation?

Key to making this film possible was the discovery of internet archives of open source stock footage. I used footage mainly from the Prelinger Archives and AV Geeks collection, carefully selected from watching hundreds of films. It is a world where you find subtle (and not so subtle) metaphors and parallels to shine fresh light on contemporary issues facing our societies. Some of the films are made by institutions like General Motors and Monsanto and so there is some irony in using them to interpret global crises such as food shortages and energy depletion but also from a creative point of view they look wonderful.

I would sit watching them for hours and hours. I became obsessed with these films and immersed myself in this strange corporate parallel universe. The reason they are so fascinating is because they tell us so much about the world we live in. They represent the ideologies that have gotten us into this mess and the films often bring humor and a surreal edge to Nafeez’s factual and academic work. We also made a conscious decision to make the animations beautiful in their simplicity using iconography such as a business monster eating a forest to guide the audience through the thesis.

I think the mainstream media is becoming more and more irrelevant as the images we see on our TV screens become less in parity with the experiences we are having in the real world. As neoliberal capitalism is failing but the talking heads keep saying the same old crap, people will be looking for different voices and hopefully we can be one of them. There is a faux balance that is created with the news here in Britain. They would never report a more radical perspective on an issue that would really be challenging to the status quo, for example “Lets completely change the way we create money.” Their ‘balance’ is always within a very narrow framework.

Independent media and journalism, along with the internet, is revolutionizing the way we perceive the world and I think that the resurgence in documentary film making along with digital technology is really exciting and is something I am proud to be a part of. I think this is why people are turning to documentary because you can actually take the time to explore and explain something in depth. People are looking to delve beneath the headlines and get into the issues, whether it’s an adaptation of a book or a human story that is not even political, we’re seeing more thirst for real journalism and real filmmakers with a voice to be an antidote to the news and media as people try and make sense of the world around them. The real challenge is how to keep our momentum, break down mainstream distribution channels, and communicate to larger audiences without bowing down to mainstream conventions or sensationalism.

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Interview with Dr. Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
 
Another great documentary is the BBC production, The Power of Nightmares. It purports that Al-Qaeda literally means “the list” and was a C.I.A. created list of mujahideen fighters, under Bin Laden’s leadership, who fought the Soviets. How real is Al-Qaeda and how much is it a C.I.A. created nightmarish, figment of our imagination?
 
Al-Qaeda is real, but it did very much originate as an intelligence database of Mujahideen recruits. The later British foreign secretary Robin Cook confirmed in the Guardian that Al-Qaeda referred to a CIA database. These recruits were mobilized primarily in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. However, it would be a mistake to assume that Al-Qaeda is simply, therefore, an extension of the CIA and a figment of our imagination. The recruits that joined Al-Qaeda were drawn from militant strands of Muslim movements in parts of the Muslim world which already existed. Since then, those strands have often solidified. Al-Qaeda does exist and it does have real agency but it is a loose network rather than a hierarchical centralized structure and it’s precisely this looseness that makes it vulnerable to infiltration, penetration, and manipulation from outside.

Al-Qaeda  has also remained fundamentally dependent on a variety of state agencies for support, namely, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Qatar, the UAE, to name a few. As these are to a large extent client regimes of the US and UK, there is scope for manipulation through strategic provision and withdrawal of aid. So, in summary, yes there are real militant Islamist extremists out there, some of them affiliated with a network of Mujahideen fighters associated with a core group originally trained with the logistical and financial support of the CIA. In this context, it would be too simplistic to simply assert that Al-Qaeda is a “figment of our imagination.” On the other hand, there is evidence that the Al-Qaeda label has been misapplied, sometimes deliberately, by Western military intelligence agencies to broadly demonize social groups whose links with Al-Qaeda are in reality tenuous (e.g. Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb: despite some real elements of Al-Qaeda being involved in some cases, many others do not withstand scrutiny – e.g. see the work of Jeremy Keenan). Equally, cases where Al-Qaeda do appear to be involved are underplayed and the al-Qaeda element is overlooked when it suits certain geostrategic interests (e.g. links of the 7/7 bombers with al-Qaeda networks in the Balkans; the role of the west in financing Al-Qaeda Mujahideen networks in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia).
 
Since 9-11, the United States military has been implementing the “lilly pad” base system; around 50 smaller bases, scattered around the world with small troop numbers, spartan amenities and complete with pre-equipped weaponry. What does this new strategy say about the American empire in the 21st century?

Successive US military planning and national security strategy documents confirm that the US continues to adopt a military posture in which it self-identifies as a unilateral hegemonic power with ultimate responsibility for the integrity of the existing global political and economic order. To this end, the US has attempted to spawn a network of bases in key strategic regions around the world with a view to enable a unique capacity to mobilize military forces at will, with speed, anywhere in the world, and further, to potentially fight wars in multiple theatres. They are a way of continuing to encroach on and contain the power of US rivals like Russia and China.

However, the distinctive quality of the lilly pad system is to focus on less public forms of military penetration into diverse geographical locations, to empower intelligence functions and covert operations capability in a way unlikely to solicit significant public awareness and opposition. It is also linked to a need for greater efficiency in military budgets, facing the strain in the context of continuing global recession.

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Adam Miezio for Media Roots.

Cover art created by Abby Martin.