Update [2006-5-30 12:6:28 by Steven D]: Whistleblowers lose their right to sue their government employers for retaliation firings thanks to a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in which Justice Alito cast the deciding vote. The story at Yahoo News (via Raw Story) is here. More on this wretched decision follows at the end of this blog post.
The war on truth is a long war, one that we have been fighting for generations, and will continue to fight for generations to come. Our children will fight it, and our grandchildren. A dirty war of falsehoods and character assassination, omissions and fabrications.
But if there is one thing I know, we can’t let the liars win. We will fight them on the beaches, and in the hedgerows, on the streets of cities large, medium and small, and especially on our blogs, where no lie shall go unchallenged, no prevarication shall be ignored, no canard avoid our mockery. We must never surrender to the deceivers!
With that in mind, here are today’s Top Three Alerts in the War on Truth:
(cont. below the fold)
First up, is another in a long line of attacks against global warming, where Fox News put this idiot on the air:
This weekend on the show “Cashin’ In,” Fox News analyst Jonathan Hoenig asserted that global warming was “bogus,” and “dreamed up” by environmentalists to stop economic development:
There’s no scientific proof that global warming even exists. To be honest, it’s a bogus consensus dreamed up by Greens because they hate industry. They hate advancement. They hate technology…Greens will lead us back to the stone ages.
It’s Hoenig that’s living in a dream land. Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.
Why the BIG LIE on global warming right now? Most right wing pundits have long given up the argument that global warming is occurring, relying instead on the “talking points” that it is either:
(1) Not caused by human activity (i.e., they blame undersea volcanoes or solar activity or or some equally bogus explanation for the rise in temperatures world wide), or
(2) The cause of global warming is uncertain and requires further study (a favorite dodge of our President).
Why this suddden surge of lying on the Climate Change front? The only explanation I can give is all the buzz that’s been generated by An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary regarding Al Gore’s powerpoint presentation on the danger posed to our world by man made emissions of greenhouse gases. As always, ad hominem attacks against Gore are also part of the package. Fox News again leads the way with one guest commentator who compared Gore’s film to work produced by Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, while another global warming skeptic has compared Gore’s beliefs about the environment to Adolph Hitler’s beliefs about the Jews.
Second item: This report is from the online edition of the British newspaper, The Independent about an FCC investigation into fake news stories planted in the US media by the Bush administration and several major corporations:
Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.
Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.
The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items. […]
Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer’s product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe’en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel – in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.
Just remember this: if you’ve seen a “happy story” segment about Iraq on one of your local television stations, take it with pound of salt. There’s a good chance it was produced by our very own State Department (or another government agency) to talk up our successes in the “Central Front on the War on Terror.” Same caveat goes for news videos that seem to tout a particular compamy’s products, or chat up its reputation.
Third, and final, War on Truth alert involves (who else?) President Bush telling these whoppers at West Point’s graduation ceremony:
“Coalition forces drove the Taliban from power, liberated Afghanistan, and brought freedom to 25 million people. In Afghanistan, the terror camps have been shut down; women are working; boys and girls are going to school; and Afghans have chosen a president and a new parliament in free elections.”
In Iraq, Bush said, the country’s former dictator is on trial, and a new unity government has stood up. “The world has seen the beginning of something new: a constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East.”
Although progress has been made, Bush said America is still in the early stages in the struggles for freedom, with setbacks, challenges and tests of America’s resolve. “Yet we’ve also seen days of victory and hope. In the past four years alone, more than 110 million human beings across the world have joined the ranks of the free. And this is only the beginning.”
Freedom! Like the right to be free to be murdered if you’re a member of the wrong religious sect. The right to be forced to wear a burkha, or be kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. The right to be bombed, shot at, and grieve at the funerals of your loved ones. The right to malnutrition and disease and lack of adequate medical care. The right to enjoy 2 hours of electrical power a day, and to have sewage contaminate the water you drink. Ah, yes, so many freedoms to remind people of.
That’s our President Bush: Enemy No. 1 in the War on Truth.
Vigilence!
Update on Supreme Court Whistleblower decision:
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for government employees to file lawsuits claiming they were retaliated against for going public with allegations of official misconduct.
By a 5-4 vote, justices said the nation’s 20 million public employees do not have carte blanche free speech rights to disclose government’s inner-workings. New Justice Samuel Alito cast the tie-breaking vote. […]
The ruling sided with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, which appealed an appellate court ruling which held that prosecutor Richard Ceballos was constitutionally protected when he wrote a memo questioning whether a county sheriff’s deputy had lied in a search warrant affidavit.
Ceballos had filed a lawsuit claiming he was demoted and denied a promotion for trying to expose the lie.
Dissenting justices said Tuesday that the ruling could silence would-be whistleblowers who have information about governmental misconduct.
“Public employees are still citizens while they are in the office,” wrote Justice
John Paul Stevens. “The notion that there is a categorical difference between speaking as a citizen and speaking in the course of one’s employment is quite wrong.”The ruling is significant because an estimated 100 whistleblower retaliation lawsuits are filed each year.
The Bush administration had urged the high court to place limits on when government whistleblowers can sue, arguing that those workers have other options, including the filing of civil service complaints.
Thus we begin to reap the bitter harvest of the Alito appointment. It is a sad day for our democracy.
Whistleblowers exposing government misconduct should have the maximum protection permitted by our legal system, not the least. How many people will be discouraged from coming forward as a result of this I can’t say, but it can only have a chilling effect on anyone considering risking his or her career because of a crisis of conscience and a desire to make the truth about government wrong-doing known to the American Public.