Media Schiavo coverage surpassed that of Tsunami

[Moses]

The United Vegetative States of America

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 Where is the free American media and their kind hearted patrons when their G.I. Joes are pumping up Iraq with depleted uranium, napalm bombs, cluster munitions and poisonous gases even as these lines are being written? Is death less camera-friendly in Iraq or is it less worthy of the Americans' attention? Are Iraqis children of a lesser god? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

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After having lived for 15 years in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schindler Schiavo crossed over from here to the hereafter on the last day of March.

With her blood scent up in the air, the feral American media went berserk in the last two weeks of Schiavo's life. Using this so called freest press in the world, the American public was lead on a leash by the right-wing activists with a not so subtle help from the neofundos ruling the roost in their great country. The pro-life campaigners remained at the point of this bizarre national entertainment.

Americans never fail to astound the world with their penchant for sensationalism. Just when it appears that they’ve scaled new peaks, they manage to notch themselves up yet higher into the dizzying summits of luridness. While the carnival of mayhem is progressing ahead in full tide in Iraq, the Americans love and sympathy for the plight of Terri Schiavo is the very embodiment of duplicity. Hypocrisy in its truest form, it speaks volumes of their OJ Simpson syndrome.

Every facet of Schiavo’s affliction was dissected with microscopic focus by the voracious lens of the American media. The American public gobbled it all up like starved men on a king's feast.

Consider the following;

The dizzying media blitz surpassed even the Asian tsunami three months ago that left approximately 300,000 people dead or missing. According to TVEyes-the digital monitoring service-in this period the cable outlets and networks have mentioned "Schiavo" more than 15,000 times. On the other hand, these same outlets mentioned "tsunami" only 9,000 times during the two weeks following the Asian humanitarian crisis. Internet chat rooms, letters to editors, opinion columns, television talk shows and all national debate forums buzzed with arguments on Schiavo's right to live or die.

The American President played a lead role in this theater of the absurd. On her death he said, "I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life... The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life." ....

It would not have been so out of place had the Americans shown the same tenderness for the misery of other human beings, especially for the ones upon whom they have inflicted it themselves. The long-forgotten Iraq war got just about 2,900 TV mentions over the same two weeks that Schiavo obsession ran wild. [Can this be used as evidence in War Crimes Trials of media moguls?]

When they were shedding tears on Schiavo like events, not very long back an Iraqi girl Fatima was being repeatedly raped by the beasts that guarded Abu Ghuraib prison. Here is an excerpt from her heart rending letter to Iraqi resistance fighters;

"...I say to you: our wombs have been filled with the children of fornication by those sons of apes and pigs who raped us. Or I could tell you that they have defaced our bodies, spit in our faces, and tore up the little copies of the Qur’an that hung around our necks? ...By God, we have not passed one night since we have been in prison without one of the apes and pigs jumping down upon us to rip our bodies apart with his overweening lust. Kill us along with them! Destroy us along with them! Don’t leave us here to let them get pleasure from raping us...Leave their tanks and aircraft outside. Come at us here in the prison of Abu Ghurayb.

They raped me on one day more than nine times. Can you comprehend? Imagine one of your sisters being raped. Why can’t you all imagine it, as I am your sister. With me are 13 girls, all unmarried. All have been raped before the eyes and ears of everyone. They took our clothes and won’t let us get dressed. As I write this letter one of the girls has committed suicide. She was savagely raped. A soldier hit her on her chest and thigh after raping her. He subjected her to unbelievable torture. She beat her head against the wall of the cell until she died, for she couldn’t take any more.

Brothers, I tell you again, fear God! Kill us with them so that we might be at peace. Help! Help! Help!"

One hundred resistance fighters launched a fierce attack on the prison lead by Fatima's elder brother. People died, Fatima reportedly among them. Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

While the Americans and their media kept a macabre death-watch over Schiavo's plight, Dr. Hafidh al-Dulaimi, the head of "the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah citizens" has reported the destruction that American troops have inflicted on Fallujah. Here is a brief gist;

"7000 totally destroyed, or nearly totally destroyed, homes in all districts of Fallujah. - 8400 stores, workshops, clinics, warehouses, etc. destroyed. - 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries demolished - 59 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges destroyed. - 13 government buildings leveled. - Four libraries, that housed thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts and books, gutted completely. - on and on and on..." Human beings lived in those buildings; make your own guess of their toll. Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die. ....

Haven't the lies of their rulers now been fully exposed? Why is it that the common Americans do not see the Iraqi butchery for what it is--a brazen plan for occupation, suppression and theft of vital resources of an already aggrieved and impoverished nation, whatever the human cost. Or is it that they see it and agree with the plan of maintaining white man's license for as long as possible? Why else would they reelect this gang of criminals and thus be responsible for the carnage by default. Or has the American nation too lapsed into a persistent vegetative state and thus did not notice the gang sneaking into the white House? Should their country now be named as the United Vegetative States of America?

Why can't they see the horrendous atrocities that the United States military is visiting upon unarmed Iraqis who never posed any danger to their beloved country? Why can't their free media catch on its eagle eyed lens the raining cluster bombs, the showering napalms, and the tortures in the dungeons? If the BBC can broadcast an interview with a grieving Iraqi woman whose pregnant daughter had been machine-gunned by U.S. troops, why is there nothing on the US media? Why the common Americans are not out on the streets protesting the horrendous actions of their administration and the sinister complicity of their media? Would they show the same stoic indifference if a couple of tons of depleted uranium are shot up the New York alleys? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

Where was this concern for human misery when the death toll in Iraq shot past the 100,000 mark? Where were the tears of human compassion when Fallujah was razed to the ground and its citizens-men, women and children alike-gunned down by the valiant American troops and left on the streets for the dogs to feed on? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

Where is the free American media and their kind hearted patrons when their G.I. Joes are pumping up Iraq with depleted uranium, napalm bombs, cluster munitions and poisonous gases even as these lines are being written? Is death less camera-friendly in Iraq or is it less worthy of the Americans' attention? Are Iraqis children of a lesser god? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

When it comes to Iraq, the Americans' sympathy wells suddenly dry up. While they shed tears for a woman who remained in a halfway house for the past 15 years, the dead and the maimed of other nations are forgotten as soon as their media leads them to yet another thrilling topic. Or are these crocodile tears that they shed when they are ready to devour?

Who was it that said, "The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity."?

The American writer Lee Harris was spot on the dot in his article "Good American Hypocrisy" when he wrote," America’s current critics need to recognize that in pursuing its self-interest the United States is hardly unique-what singles us out from among nations is our obdurate hypocrisy. We have to pretend to ourselves that we are doing the right thing-often at the cost of actually doing it." Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

Long live the United Vegetative States of America.

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Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
Courtsey: Fountainhead

[RPankn]

Every facet of Schiavo’s affliction was dissected with microscopic focus by the voracious lens of the American media. The American public gobbled it all up like starved men on a king's feast.

I disagree with this. From all the coverage I saw, the facet the MSM never discussed was that Terri's cerebral cortex had disintegrated and was replaced with cerebro-spinal fluid. In essence, the part of her brain that controlled her higher functions, including the ability to feel pain, had liquified. Biologically, she was alive, but the part of Terri's brain that made her Terri was gone, and she was not living as we would think of that word. And unless someone went and did their own research into it, they would never know this because the parade of quacks the MSM brought out to discuss the medical aspect of her condition would leave this part out, or never discuss what the cerebral cortex does.

I disagree slightly with this article as a whole. Although not covered by the MSM, the Schiavo case was important in that it was an example of the neocons in both parties overreaching and their continued attempt to centralize power in the Federal government by ignoring the Constitution and principles of federalism. And although I don't agree with some of the things that come down from the 11th Circuit, I'm glad their most conservative judge rebuked Bush and Congress and noted the bill they hurredly passed was unconstitutional as Congress interfered in an area the Constitution has reserved to the States. The Schiavo case was also a good example of the neocons' and government's continued intrusion into our right of privacy as citizens. That is, our ability to make medical decisions for ourselves, or the ability of those we appoint on our behalf when we no longer cannot.

[Moses]

So even in the Schiavo case, with all that coverage, they never ever discussed the fact of her physical condition. They framed the issue exactly the way the radical zionist Tom Delay wanted them to-- even though, also, most people, even in the red states (i was in them at the time) were outraged by congress taking up the issue, and Bush interrupting his vacation, as he had done for nothing before. It wasn't even about audience, as they claimed, or ratings. It was an orchestrated mass propaganda campaign.

[RPankn]

No, if someone only listened to the MSM, they would believe Terri could function as normally as a brain damaged person could, her parents are saints and her husband Michael was evil and wanted her dead so he could collect on insurance policies he took out on her. Nevermind that there were no such insurance policies, most of the settlement money she and he received from existing insurance policies and the med mal suit was nearly depleted by the cost of her care, and battling her parents in court, and Michael was twice offered substantial sums of money to walk away and never did. The woman was on Medicaid for the last 2 years of her life for Pete's sake because the cost of her medical care was so exorbitant. She was even getting free care at the hospice she was at because she and her husband had no money.

I forgot to add that when some MSM quacks would discuss the cerebral cortex, they would cite to studies of coma patients, in which portion(s) of the cerebral cortex had been damaged. These studies showed the cerebral cortex does have some ability to regenerate damaged cells and neural networks, or the brain will adapt other areas of itself to make up for damaged parts -- I find that last part so interesting.

However, Terri Schiavo was in a persistant vegitative state, which, of course, is much different from a coma; if I remember correctly, the quacks would fudge around this fact by saying that coma and PVS are "similar." Also, the MSM and its quacks never acknowledged that Terri Schiavo's brain damage was caused by cardiac arrest, which doctors had concluded was brought on by her bulemia. The MSM also never indicated that after her heart attack, doctors initially assumed her cerebral cortex might regenerate itself, nor did the MSM say that her husband Michael flew her to California, and took care of her there for 6 months, so she could participate in an experimental treatment program where a device was implanted just under her skull to stimulate the brain waves thought responsible for regenerating damaged brain tissue. Of course, this didn't work, and the MSM also conveniently left out that after 15 years and her brain disintegrating in that time, there was no chance of her brain repairing itself; if it hadn't happened by now, it never would. The irony is that if there weren't so many restrictions on stem cell research and therapy, this might have been able to help Terri, or at least increase our knowledge of what stem cells can do for people with severe brain injuries.

[Moses]

We cut our cable when the war started, or just before, because it is wrong to pay people to bring war propaganda into one' s home.

Your report of the Shiavo coverage is shocking, because it PROVES that the media is nothing but political propaganda coming out of a cabal.

I did see that at the tail end, after the courts had slammed this agenda, the media then began making excuses for itself and Bush-- how helpful it was for America for the issue to be raised, etc.

Something must be done about the media. There has got to be a way to sue them for war crimes or something, and get the documents regarding their complicity.

Now they are pushing the terrorism thing-- clearly they are getting their instructions from some kind of cabal.

[RPankn]

This probably should be in the thread about Cornyn "understanding" why people would harm judges, but since this article brings up Schiavo, this is probably as good a place as any to post this.

Another reason why I think the Schiavo case was/is important, but of course not being discussed by the MSM, is because it wasn't only a way for the religious cultists and neocons who have hijacked this government to backdoor themselves into our Constitutional right to privacy (strict constructionists like Scalia and Thomas have always hated that right because its not specifically enumerated by the Constitution). The Schiavo case was also a transparent attempt by these same people to launch an all out attack on an independent judiciary as being "tyrranical" and "out of control," even though in the past 25 years, the Federal courts have been stacked by Reagan, Poppy Bush and crackhead with rightwingers. Some of them are reactionaries who have no business being on a bench anywhere, even The People's Court on TV.

There's a precedent for this. Once the Nazis eliminated judicial oversight of their actions by installing their ideologues in the judiciary, and killing those who didn't get with the program, there was nothing stopping them from what came next, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of where these zealots are taking us. However, they have been getting away with so much since 2000, I think they didn't expect this kind of backlash from Schiavo.

In Contempt of Courts
by Max Blumenthal

Washington

Michael Schwartz must have thought I was just another attendee of the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference. I approached the chief of staff of Oklahoma's GOP Senator Tom Coburn outside the conference in downtown Washington last Thursday afternoon after he spoke there. Before I could introduce myself, he turned to me and another observer with a crooked smile and exclaimed, "I'm a radical! I'm a real extremist. I don't want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!"

For two days, on April 7 and 8, conservative activists and top GOP staffers summoned the raw rage of the Christian right following the Terri Schiavo affair, and likened judges to communists, terrorists and murderers. The remedies they suggested for what they termed "judicial tyranny" ranged from the mass impeachment of judges to their physical elimination.

The speakers included embattled House majority leader Tom DeLay, conservative matriarch Phyllis Schlafly and failed Republican senatorial candidate Alan Keyes. Like a perform­ance artist, Keyes riled the crowd up, mixing animadversions on constitutional law with sudden, stentorian salvos against judges. "Ronald Reagan said the Soviet Union was the focus of evil during the cold war. I believe that the judiciary is the focus of evil in our society today," Keyes declared, slapping the lectern for emphasis.

At a banquet the previous evening, the Constitution Party's 2004 presidential candidate, Michael Peroutka, called the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube "an act of terror in broad daylight aided and abetted by the police under the authority of the governor." Red-faced and sweating profusely, Peroutka added, "This was the very definition of state-sponsored terror." Edwin Vieira, a lawyer and author of How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary, went even further, suggesting during a panel discussion that Joseph Stalin offered the best method for reining in the Supreme Court. "He had a slogan," Vieira said, "and it worked very well for him whenever he ran into difficulty: 'No man, no problem.'"

The complete Stalin quote is, "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."

The threatening tenor of the conference speakers was a calculated tactic. As Gary Cass, the director of Rev. D. James Kennedy's lobbying front, the Center for Reclaiming America, explained, they are arousing the anger of their base in order to harness it politically. The rising tide of threats against judges "is understandable," Cass told me, "but we have to take the opportunity to channel that into a constitutional solution."[/u]

Cass's "solution" is the "Constitution Restoration Act," a bill relentlessly promoted during the conference that authorizes Congress to impeach judges who fail to abide by "the standard of good behavior" required by the Constitution [What they are seeking to do with this bill is amend the Constitution as the current standard necessary to impeach a Federal judge is "high crimes and misdemeanors." The last impeachment and conviction of a federal judge that I know of was district court judge who had been taking bribes and was named, appropriately enough, Nixon]. If they refuse to acknowledge "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government," or rely in any way on international law in their rulings, judges also invite impeachment. In essence, the bill would turn judges' gavels into mere instruments of "The Hammer," Tom DeLay, and Christian-right cadres.

[Continued in next post]

[RPankn]

Conference speakers framed the Constitution Restoration Act in pseudo-populist terms--the only means of controlling a branch of government hijacked by a haughty liberal aristocracy against the will of the American people. As Michael Schwartz remarked during a panel discussion, "The Supreme Court says we have the right to kill babies and the right to commit buggery. They say the people have no right to express themselves, that the people have no right to make laws. Until we have a court that reflects a majority," Schwartz continued, his voice rising steadily, "it is a sick and sad joke that we have a Constitution here."

The right wing claims that judges should reflect majority opinion. But what is the majority opinion? After DeLay and Senate majority leader Bill Frist passed special bills ordering federal courts to consider the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, according to a Gallup poll, Congress's public approval rating sank to 37 percent, lower than at any time since shortly after Republicans impeached President Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, 66 percent of respondents to a March 23 CBS News poll thought Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed. The notion that the Christian right's agenda is playing well in Peoria must be accepted on faith alone.

The recent right-wing fixation on impeaching judges was conceptualized by David Barton, Republican consultant and vice chairman of the Texas GOP. In 1996 Barton published a handbook called Impeachment: Restraining an Overactive Judiciary, which was timed to coincide with Tom DeLay's bid for legislation authorizing Congress to impeach judges. "The judges need to be intimidated," DeLay told reporters that year.

In 1989 Barton published a book titled The Myth of Separation, which proclaims, "This book proves that the separation of church and state is a myth." The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, in a critique of his 1995 documentary America's Godly Heritage, stated that it was "laced with exaggerations, half-truths, and misstatements of fact." Barton is on the board of advisers of the Providence Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist group that promotes the idea that biblical law should be instituted in America. In 1991 Barton spoke at a Colorado retreat sponsored by Pastor Pete Peters, an adherent of racist Christian Identity theology with well-established neo-Nazi ties. During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee hired him as a paid consultant for "evangelical outreach." The RNC sponsored more than 300 events for him.

DeLay's bill, based on Barton's writings, failed due to lack of GOP support. But the judicial impeachment campaign was reignited six years later when a federal court ordered the removal of then-Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument from courthouse grounds. In February 2004 a group of about twenty-five enraged ministers and movement leaders gathered in Dallas to plot a new response. The Constitution Restoration Act was the result. According to Moore, he was a principal author, along with Herb Titus, the former dean of Pat Robertson's Regent University law school, and Howard Phillips, a veteran third-party activist whose US Taxpayers' Party served as a vehicle for the antigovernment militia movement during the 1990s. All three men stalked the halls of the downtown Marriott last Thursday and Friday.

In the Senate the bill was sponsored by Richard Shelby, a senator from Roy Moore's home state; among the co-sponsors is Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who is contemplating a run for the Republican nomination for President [Hillary is making nice with this scum and the DLC demands we vote for her in 2008]. The bill was introduced on March 3, before the Terri Schiavo affair erupted, before Florida Circuit Judge George Greer ordered the removal of her feeding tube and before he became the poster-child for the right's judicial impeachment campaign [Nevermind that Greer himself is a Republican and was a member of an SBC church before they asked him to leave].

Now, according to Howard Phillips in a speech to the conference, his "good friend" Wisconsin GOP Representative James Sensenbrenner is planning to hold hearings on the Constitution Restoration Act in the House. DeLay, who appeared on a big screen during a Thursday morning session to call for the removal of "a judiciary run amok," has put his name on the act as the House sponsor.

The Schiavo case remains the flashpoint for the right. That was apparent at a Thursday evening banquet honoring the lead attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents, David Gibbs. After a breathless introduction from Peroutka, who called the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube "an act of terror," Gibbs confidently strode to the lectern while a crowd of about 100 regaled him with a thunderous standing ovation. Baby-faced, with his hair molded tightly against his scalp and clad in a well-tailored navy blue suit, Gibbs maintained a cool disposition during his speech, presenting a sharp visual contrast to the wildly gesticulating, bedraggled figures who held the microphone throughout most of the conference. But Gibbs's impeccable appearance and measured tone were not enough to mask the lurid nature of his speech.

First, Gibbs suggested that Schiavo fell into a persistent vegetative state not because of an eating disorder but as the result of "some form of strangulation or abuse at the hands of her husband, possibly." [Even the doctors in Schiavo's med mal suit never advanced this theory or suggested it during their defense in that case. I hope Michael Schiavo sues ever last one of these bastards for defamation] Then, Gibbs asserted that after Schiavo's parents were awarded millions of dollars by the state to provide for her care, Michael Schiavo "began moving against the family to kill his wife." [It was the other way around actually and the money didn't come from the state. Terri's parents couldn't have cared less about their PVS daughter until Michael won a few million in the med mal case against Terri's doctors for failing to diagnose her bulemia, which led to her heart attack and subsequent condition. Only then did the Schindlers suddenly remember they had a daughter.] These claims, however, did not hold up in court because, as Gibbs explained, "a judge that never went to see [Schiavo] was the judge who made the decision that her life did not matter." [And nevermind that 6 court appointed doctors and 2 guardian ad litem did see her and all agreed she was PVS.]


As members of the audience gasped, Gibbs painted a vivid portrait of Schiavo in her hospital bed. "Terri Schiavo was as alive as anyone you see sitting here," he said. "She liked my voice. It was loud and deep and she would roll over and try to talk back." [Uh no, persons in PVS occasionally make noises and move their eyes, but they do so involuntarily, not consciously] But after Judge Greer "literally ordered her barbaric death," everything changed.

Gibbs described his visit to Schiavo's hospital room after her feeding tube had been removed. Schiavo lay in bed "with her eyes sunken deep in her head...she was skeletal," Gibbs recounted. "Then she turned to her mother suddenly, like she wanted to speak, and she just started sobbing." [I would like to know how Mrs. Schindler saw this because after the feeding tube was removed, she never went to the hospice, except on the day of Terri's death.] By now, members of the audience were crying.

As soon as he left the stage, one of the event's planners asked all the men in the room to get down on the floor and pray. With no other choice, I moved my plastic-upholstered chair aside, took to my hands and knees and listened as plaintive voices arose all around me with prayers for Schiavo's parents and maledictions against judicial tyranny. A saccharine version of Pachelbel's Canon emanating from the player piano in the hotel lobby seeped through the banquet hall's open doors, suffusing the ceremony with a dreamlike atmosphere. When I finally dared to look up from the ground, I realized that my head was only inches from an enormous posterior belonging to William Dannemeyer, the former congressman who once issued a letter to his colleagues listing twenty-four people with some connection to Bill Clinton who died "under other than natural circumstances."

As the conference attendees filed out of the banquet hall and into the rain-flecked night, mostly silent except for the few who were still sobbing, they seemed prepared to do anything--absolutely anything--against judges. "I want to impale them!" as Michael Schwartz told me.

"This isn't Colombia. This isn't drug lords terrorizing the judiciary. It's America," Florida Judge George Greer declared recently. Greer remains under police guard.

On Monday, April 11, at Senator Frist's invitation, David Barton will lead him and other senators on an evening tour of the Capitol, offering "a fresh perspective on our nation's religious heritage."


www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050425&c=1&s=blumenthal

[Moses]

This is what the media should be reporting on-- but instead they deliberately fan the flames for the fascist theocrats?