This is a complicated series of combination. Before I begin, I would like to once again bring up a quote from Gabriel Kolko I previously mentioned. Keep in mind Kolko pulled this information from the testimony records for the U.S. Industrial Commission:
The Industrial Commission accepted the necessity and inevitability of industrial combinations, urging that “Their power for evil should be destroyed and their means for good preserved.” More significantly, the commission’s hearings provided a forum for key businessmen on the question of federal regulation. Of some type in some specific area, and no interest was as strong in this demand as Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller, John D. Archibold, and H. H. Rogers of Standard called for a national incorporation law and the federal regulation of accounts and financial publicity.
The film Orwell Rolls in His Grave warns of corporate consolidation in the media.
On June 2, 2003 the FCC voted to loosen ownership rules
Currently almost all of the major media in the US is owned by one of 10 companies (this chart is from 2000 so is likely outdated).
If you look at the 10 companies who own the media you will see General Electric currently owns NBC. Now Comcast is attempting to buy into NBC. We already have the combination of GE and Microsoft in the form of MSNBC. Fox News reported:
In agreeing to buy 51 percent of NBC Universal from General Electric Co., which has controlled NBC since 1986, Comcast hopes to succeed in marrying distribution and content in a way Time Warner Inc. could not. AOL and Time Warner are undoing their ill-fated marriage Dec. 9. Time Warner has already shed its cable TV operations.
. . . .
GE would retain a 49 percent stake, with the option of unloading half its stake in 3 1/2 years and all of it in seven years. The new NBC Universal would borrow $9.1 billion that would partially go toward covering the money GE owes Vivendi.
Comcast would name three people to the board and GE two, and Comcast would manage the joint venture. Jeff Zucker would remain NBC Universal’s CEO and report to Comcast Chief Operating Officer Steve Burke. NBC Universal’s headquarters are expected to stay in New York.
Consumer groups fear that a Comcast-NBC combination would be so threatening that rivals would strike similar deals just to compete — a sentiment echoed by DirecTV Chairman John Malone in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
And if media ownership were further concentrated, consumers would see higher prices and fewer choices, said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, chief executive of the Media Access Project. He warned that online video and other new forms of competition could be squashed “before they can gain a toehold in the market.”
Satellite TV rival Dish Networks Corp., meanwhile, worries that Comcast would be in a stronger position to withhold channels from competitors. CEO Charles Ergen has complained that a regulatory loophole lets Comcast bar his company from carrying Philadelphia sports games shown on Comcast’s regional sports network. Comcast did not respond to requests for comment.
The Comcast-NBC deal is widely seen as a test of the Obama administration’s resolve to fight media consolidation, but consumer groups aren’t confident regulators will find a legal means to block the transaction.
Net Neutrality may become a big issue if Comcast owns NBC. The reason is Comcast will own a great deal of web content and they will have a vested interest in what web sites you access. What that means is Comcast will have an intensive to give packet priority to their own web sites. What packet priority means is the connection speed to a particular web site. An internet service provider has the ability to dedicate bandwidth, meaning connection speed to one site over the other.
Does this mean we should job on the Net Neutrality band wagon. Maybe. The only problem is people are easily conned by politicians from the party the identify with, so people may throw their weight behind a Net Neutrality bill that does the exact opposite of what they think they are doing.
A prime example of a bill that did the exact opposite of what everyone was told it was going to do is NAFTA. NAFTA accelerated extreme poverty in Mexico, causing illegal immigration to increase by 60% rather than helping the poor and reducing illegal immigration.
Let’s take a look at what we currently have with General Electric’s ownership in NBC.
Jeffrey R. Immelt the CEO of General Electric. Immelt is also the “Public Representative” for the Federal Reserve Bank
There are supposed to be public voices on the board of the New York Fed. The Fed is a sort of an odd entity. The Fed is a quasi governmental, quasi private entity. It’s board members chosen partly by the Board of Governors of the Fed in Washington, partly by the banks that control the Fed. The public representative, I’m going to try not to strike too close to home here, the public representative chosen by the banks–public–Jeffrey Immelt. The chairman of GE. Also the chairmen of this company — but wait a minute — he is the public voice who’s bonds are being guaranteed by the Fed.
“The intersection between GE’s interests and government action is clearer than ever,” General Electric Vice Chairman John G. Rice wrote in an Aug. 19 e-mail to colleagues.
. . . .
“On climate change,” Rice wrote, “we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives. If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses.”
Most of all, Waxman-Markey would profit a GE joint venture called Greenhouse Gas Services, which deals in greenhouse gas credits, products that have value only if a cap-and-trade bill like Waxman-Markey passes.
The leaked e-mail shows how tightly GE connects PAC contributions and lobbying efforts. “Our Company is heavily impacted by a number of issues pending in Washington this fall,” Rice wrote.
Perhaps the issue shouldn’t be what major corporation owns NBC, but allowing any major corporation to buy a media outlet so they can control the media. I would argue media ownership should be limited to create diversity within the media because media ownership consolidation does just the opposite.
On today’s show 1/23/2010 I’ll be bring up some interesting clips I’ve found lately. The first is this clip claiming Representative Oscar Callaway said J.P. Morgan had hired 12 high ranking news managers who determined which 25 news papers would be necessary to purchase in order to control the media.
This sounds like an odd claim. I was planning on going to a law library to dig through the Congressional record myself, but then I found this. On the New York Times own web site they have a news archive of an article published February 14, 1917.
FOR PRESS INVESTIGATION
Moore Asks Inquiry Into Charges
on Preparedness Campaign.
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13.–A demand for an investigation of charges printed in the Congressional Record by Representative Oscar Callaway of Texas, a pacifist Democrat, that “the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel shipbuilding, and powder interests” had purchased control of twenty-five great newspapers to further the preparedness campaign, was made in the House today by Representative J. Hampton Moore, a Pennsylvania Republican. Mr. Moore said Mr. Callaway had obtained unanimous consent to extend his remarks in The Record, and his charges had not been read on the floor, “but buried in The Record.”
“I question whether a single newspapers in the United States has taken cognizance of the remarks of the gentleman from Texas,” said Mr. Moore.
“I believe they constitute a matter of high privilege.”
He said that unless some Democrat introduced a resolution to investigate the truth of the charges he would offer such a resolution.
Following the Moore speech Congressman Callaway told interviews that he could produce proof of his charges, and said Representative Tavenner of Illinois would offer immediately a resolution for an investigation of alleged inspired newspaper articles in behalf of preparedness and participation in the European war.
Mr. Callawa’s speech, as inserted in The Record charged:
“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations got together twelve men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select from the most influential papers in the United States in sufficient numbers of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States.
These twelve men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of twenty-five of the greatest newspapers. The twenty-five papers where agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached, the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; and editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.
“The contract is in existence at the present time and it accounts for the news columns of the daily press of the country being filled with all sorts of preparedness arguments and misrepresentations as to the present condition of the United States being attacked by foreign foes.
“The policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served. The effectiveness of this scheme has been conclusively demonstrated by the character of the stuff carried in the daily press throughout the country since March 1913.
“They have resorted to anything necessary to commercialize public sentiment and sandbag the national Congress into making extravagant and wasteful appropriations for the army and navy under the false pretense that it was necessary. Their stock argument is ‘patriotism.’ They are playing on every prejudice and passion of the American people.”
Mr. Slayden asked Mr. Moore what he construed the world “sandbag” to mean.
“It means to drive Congress into a corner and make them believe we are in state of war now,” said Mr. Moore. He quoted an advertisement, signed by the American Rights League, which began:
“To the American people: Germany is at war with the United States. The repudiation of past pledges and the threat to destroy our ships and citizens constitutes a virtual declaration of war.
It is no longer a question of whether there shall be war with Germany. There is war with Germany.”
Mr. Moore said that among the signers of the advertisement were Dr. Lyman Abbott and the Reverend Randolph H. McKim, pastor of the Church of the Epiphany of this city, and went on to criticize the latter for his actions as a minister of the gospel. Mr. Moore then proceeded to declare his own neutrality.
“I am neither pro-German, as some of the papers have recently insisted, nor pro-Ally,” he said. “I am, as this Congress ought to be, pro-American and nothing else.”
Edward Bernays wrote U.S. War propaganda for WWI. He was on the Committee for Public Information or CPI. Bernays never wrote I did this or I did that. Instead he referred to what someone could do, when referencing something he had actually done. Bernays would also refer to the “intelligent minority” — a group Bernays apparently believed he was a member of.
PROPAGANDA
(2005 reprint of the 1928 book)
Page 53-54
Propaganda does exist on all sides of us, and it does change our mental pictures of the world. Even if this be unduly pessimistic—and that remains to be proved—the opinion reflects a tendency that is undoubtedly real. In fact, its use is growing as its efficiency in gaining public support is recognized.
This then, evidently indicates the fact that anyone with sufficient influence can lead sections of the public at least for a time and for a given purpose. Formerly the rulers were the leaders. They laid out the course of history, by the simple process of doing what they wanted. And if nowadays the successors of the rulers, those whose position or ability gives them power, can no longer do what they want without the approval of the masses, they find in propaganda a tool which is increasingly powerful in gaining that approval. Therefore, propaganda is here to stay.
It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda [written by Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann] during the war [WWI] that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibility of regimenting the public mind. The American government and numerous patriotic agencies developed a technique which to most persons accustomed to bidding for public acceptance, was new. They not only appealed to the individual by means of every approach—visual, graphic, and auditory—to support the national endeavor, but they [including Bernays and Lippmann] also secured the cooperation of the key men in every group—persons whose mere word carried authority to hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers. They thus automatically gained the support of fraternal, religious, commercial, patriotic, social, and local groups whose members took their opinions from their accustomed leaders and spokesmen, or from the periodical publications which they were accustomed to read and believe. At the same time, the manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the mental clichés and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror, and the tyranny of the enemy. It was only natural, after the war ended, that intelligent persons should ask themselves whether it was possible to apply a similar technique to the problems of peace.
It should be noted Edward Bernays got a lot of his ideas from Walter Lippmann who wrote the 1922 book “Public Opinion.” If you really want to shake up your reality, read Walter Lippmann’s book “Public Opinion.”
Let’s get back to the CFR.
One thing the above video is wrong about is Dick Cheney severed as a director of the Council on Foreign Relations two times according to the Council on Foreign Relations own web site:
Richard B. Cheney 1987-89, 1993-95
So we have talked about media control, and the CFR — I would now like to bring up one news source that I really can’t stand and that is NPR. I used to think they were great, but once I started looking at news that comes from outside the US, and even alternative news sources like CounterPunch.org, DemocracyNow.org, and TheRealNews.com, I realized just how bad NPR sucks. (Check out the news feeds I have posted.)
I believe this might explain why. Check out this Google search on NPR’s web site:
As of today NPR has 657 references to the Council of Foreign Relations. It says right on their web site foreign correspondent Deborah Amos is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
With all this in mind, was Aaron Russo telling the truth? Russo claimed Nickolas Rockefeller told him the CFR’s goal was to establish a global government and track everyone with an RFID chip.
The BBC program called TimeWatch had three episodes that aired in the early 1990′s on something called Operation Gladio. This program is being touted as essential to understand false flag operations.
In Robert Newman’s History of Oil, he claims WWI was actually the first war for oil.
Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann both wrote US war propaganda for WWI. In Bernays book “Propaganda” he mentions the “Invisible Governors” or “Invisible Wire Pullers” 16 times.
For an interesting perspective on Edward Bernays, see the BBC four part documentary Century of Self. I don’t agree Freud was Edward Bernays greatest inspiration as the film claims. Read Propaganda and Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion. I believe you will see were Bernays got his ideas from.
Lew states that Dr. Dake at Stanford University is no longer taking patients by appointment, but Stanford is accepting applications for a study on CCSVI as the cause of Multiple Sclerosis.
For some reason I made the mistaking of saying Dr. Zamboni who discovered CCSVI is located in Canada. This was a slip of the tongue on my part. Dr. Zamboni is located in Italy, but the in depth news report on CCSVI was produced and aired by CTV (Canada TV). To watch the full report click on the image to the upper right.
I ran out of time to cover this on the air, but I asked Lew how much the Liberation Treatment did cost, and it was $70,000+ but luckily insurance covered the procedure because it could be demonstrated constricted veins were causing other health problems, like massive headaches.
I was able to contact the office of Tomasz Ludyga in Poland. You can see the price schedule I was quoted here. According to Dr. Ludyga’s office, the most expensive procedure that includes consultation, screening, and two stints–that means an angioplasty for two different veins–costs 4700 euros. As of today’s conversion rate, that translates into $6,640.67.
On today’s show I’m going to be talking about the previous two posts I’ve made, and the U.S. media blackout on M.S. research being done abroad.
I know many people in the U.S. think we have the greatest health care system in the world, But this is totally overlooking the fact Medical Tourism is a growing industry. The U.S. media leads everyone to believe people are traveling to the U.S. when they need medical care. This is not necessarily the case. One web site that specializes in medical tourism, medicaltourism.com, states the most frequent destinations for medical tourism are:
Costa Rica
India
Israel
Mexico
South Korea and
Thailand
The most common treatments people are receiving are:
ACLS (advanced cardiac life support)
Hip Replacement
Partial Knee Replacement
Root Canals
Spinal fusion
TURP (transurethral resection of the prostate)
Another web site specializing in medical tourism is medretreat.com.
I read a post by one woman who stated she had an unsuccessful IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) treatment in the U.S. for $10,000 and had the same treatment in Poland which was successful for $800. That means it was cheaper to go on vacation to Poland than to have the procedure done here in the U.S. ivfpolandexperts.com.
A site promoting stem cell treatments in China, stemcellschina.com is linking to an article from Utah’s own Daily Herald on Tori Schmanski, who traveled to China for a stem cell treatment. Tori was disabled after a being submerged Under water in a car accident.
While my sister-in-law was having was having her monthly Tysabri infusion she recently talked to a man who was traveling to China for stem cell treatment for Multiple Sclerosis.
Back to Multiple Sclerosis. It looks like the actual cause for Multiple Sclerosis has been found, and therefore a cure. If you know anyone who has Multiple Sclerosis, you understand what a big deal this is. People with Multiple Sclerosis slowly wind down over a number of years as the neurological damage accumulates.
Currently in the U.S. there are two (2) main treatments for MS: Avonex which runs around $1500 a month, and Tysabri which runs around $2500 a month.
According to Dr. Paolo Zamboni of Ferrara, Italy the cause of MS–the trigger that sets off the disease–is actually caused by constricted veins that do not allow blood to drain from the brain. I’m going to play you some of the audio today, but that truly can not do this report justice. I would like to urge everyone to go to the CTV (Canada TV) web site and watch the full program. There will be subtitles for the Italian patients who have had the liberation treatment along with fantastic video footage of imaging from MS patients so you can see what the constricted veins look like for yourself: The Liberation Treatment: A whole new approach for MS
I setup the web site ccsvims.com to try to make a list of doctors who will screen for CCSVI or perform the Liberation Treatment. Aside from Dr. Drake in California, it looks like the best option is a doctor named Tomasz Ludyga in Poland, but I need find someone who speaks Polish to contact EuroMedic for me. If you speak Polish and can help out, please contact me.
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