From a friend and fellow memo reader in response to my previous media bias memo: "This is what Marshall McLuhan foresaw in the mid twentieth century!
"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan about 1964 meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.
So the reporters have become commentators. I wonder how many people make the distinction? "
I asked my friend what he thought og the Convention and this was his reply;"1- enjoyed every moment
2-Impressions of the speakers and messages [good writers]
a- classy
b- diversity in race sex and age
c-plain factual talk
d- impression of content is that we can trust these people to return us to a constitutional republic a government of smaller size and less intrusion lower taxes
e- need more emphasis on the absolute insidious dangers in the spending levels
3- watched mostly PBS to get a feeling of the opposing view. Gwen Ifill was very uncomfortable almost speechless in face of the republican plain answers to double meaning questions. Judy Woodruff was remarkable in saying/summarizing just the exact opposite of what the republicans who appeared actually said. Funny in a sick kind of way if not so sad. Mark Hayes was unintelligible. The little glimpses I saw of CNN and FOX left me with the impression that the FOX people need to return to being reporters and not performers. CNN will always spin left ... but their presentation is a heck of a lot more believable becase they adhere to classic newsstyle. For the most part, FOX production values and style are counterproductive simply because they have become too cute, too chatty and producer centric and appeal to a limited demographic. Do not mistake this comment to describe or criticize the appearance of the FOX newspeople. It is directed to their unprofessional style of reporting the news.
4- Hope Romney and Ryan will
a- stay on message keep it positive list of three or four issues and benefits
b- actually mention - then ignore the attack ads in their speeches and ridicule them for what they are
c- need to absolutely ignore OB but speak plainly about the dangerous effects of his legislation this is very important
d- disavow negative speeches, and media - they connect and rub off on republicans and that is its OB purpose
5- so many great persuasive clips could be taken from everyones speeches -- an anthology diversity - of clips especially the women would make a powerful TV and internet campaign. RNC could create a library of clips available to everyone to distribute to their circle of internet friends frequently between now and election."
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More on Steve Oppenheimer's candidacy for Public Commission Seat: "
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1)Syria: An agenda for action
It is a depravity that has been repeated many times since the “peace and dignity” march in Deraa in March 2011 – the largest single-day massacre with 400 murdered in one day in Darayya alone – while the killing continues in Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Idlib and other Syrian cities, with the magnitude of Syrian mass atrocities as yet unknown.
In Libya, the international community intervened when there was a threat of impending mass atrocity; in Syria, the international community has yet to intervene, despite the recurring mass atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In Libya, the UN Security Council authorized intervention to protect the threatened civilian community; in Syria, the Security Council has yet to adopt one resolution – even to implement the UN-Annan plan – despite the 18 months of killing fields, where more than 20,000 Syrians have now been murdered.
In Libya, the Security Council invoked the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine – the international law principle authorizing international collective action “to protect [a state’s] population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” if the state where these crimes are being committed is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens – or worse, as in the case of Syria, it is the author of such crimes. In Syria, it is as if this principle had never been adopted by the international community, let alone the obligation to implement it.
I have been writing for over a year now of the need to affirm and implement the Responsibility to Protect doctrine to help save Syrian civilians being massacred by the Assad regime, or to initiate the requisite protection action, even without invoking the R2P doctrine. Yet, the riposte to these calls – by myself and others – for a more proactive, protective and interventionist approach has been to warn of “civil war”; of enhanced sectarian strife; of an influx of jihadists; of incessant killings – all of which have happened.
Indeed, everything that was predicted would happen as a result of international action has in fact resulted – but from international inaction.
What is so necessary now – if these dire warnings are not to assume the mantra of a self-fulfilling prophecy – is for the United States, in concert with the EU, the Arab League, Turkey, Canada and other “Friends of Syria” to move to implement the following measures with all deliberate speed: First, protection against the threat of weapons of mass destruction; the disclosure that there are some 45 chemical weapons facilities and tons of chemical weapons materials scattered throughout Syria, coupled with the declaration that the regime is prepared to use them against “external terrorist threats” is fraught with dangers, particularly as the regime refers to the rebels as “terrorists” who have foreign backing, let alone the transfer of these weapons to Hezbollah or their seizure by jihadists. It is to be hoped that the US, Russia and others can at least cooperate in protecting against this deadly threat.
Second, it is necessary to interdict and sanction the substantial Iranian and Hezbollah military assistance to the Syrian regime – particularly Iranian arms shipments and Iranian training, financing and arming of Syrian forces and militias – which are in standing violation of existing UN Security Council resolutions. Simply put, countries, entities, groups and individuals involved in such transactions and activities must be severely sanctioned and punished, while Hezbollah – given its complicity in international terror as well as atrocities in Syria – should finally be listed by the European Union as a terrorist entity.
It should be noted that the just-released annual US State Department Country Reports on Terrorism again referred to Iran as the world’s “leading state sponsor of terrorism,” while adding that it “continues to undermine international efforts to promote peace and democracy and threatens stability” – as in Syria – and has “provided significant quantities of weaponry and funding to Hezbollah in direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.”
Third, enhanced support for the besieged opposition: All the opposition forces, from the Syrian National Council to the Free Syrian Army, are united in their request for international intervention and support to help “level the playing field,” including food, fuel and medical supplies; defensive weaponry; command and control assistance; and logistical and communications aid, training and other forms of support, which is only now, belatedly, beginning to be supplied. These efforts must be coordinated to ensure effectiveness – including the vetting of the recipients of such defensive weapons to ensure that they do not fall into the wrong hands. Indeed, the establishment of a unified US-Turkish task force for information sharing and operational planning is a welcome development, while the just-announced French initiative may move us closer to this objective.
Fourth, safe havens must be established. Aleppo is experiencing a humanitarian disaster. The combination of incessant and intensifying aerial bombardment of civilian neighborhoods – already subjected to weeks of artillery, tank and helicopter gunship bombardment – coupled with the absence of electricity, water, food and medical assistance – has generated a frightening humanitarian storm. It is crucial that safe havens be established that serve as civilian protection zones; as refuge for the displaced and assaulted; and as humanitarian corridors for the delivery of medical and humanitarian relief.
Fifth, such safe havens, which are necessary for Aleppo, are no less crucial for Syria as a whole. Indeed, I have been writing for close to a year of the need for civilian protection zones – or what Anne-Marie Slaughter called “no-kill zones” – particularly along Syria’s borders with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. This would protect against the vulnerability of the assaulted Syrian neighborhoods, while providing the desperately needed protection for displaced persons and refugees. Any Syrian assault on these civilian protection zones would authorize legitimate self-defense protection – including no-fly zones – which would protect against Syrian forces attacking these civilian areas.
Sixth, it is necessary that the United States – together with Arab, Turkish, European and other allies – works to unify the patchwork Syrian opposition, where the Free Syrian Army operates more as a network of militias than a unified command, and help plan an orderly transition on the road to, and in the wake of, Bashar Assad’s demise.
There will be the pressing challenge of rebuilding lives; rehabilitating the displaced; repatriating refugees; restarting the economy; restoring services; and protecting human security. As well, there is the need to combat the hundreds of jihadist and al-Qaida fighters – particularly from Iraq – who are in Syria.
Seventh, the Syrian political and army leadership must be put on notice that they will be held accountable for their grave violations of international law, and that they will be brought to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity, which may lessen further Syrian criminality while encouraging more defections.
It is now as timely as it is necessary to increase pressure on Assad, and those loyal to him, to seek exile lest they suffer the fate of a Muammar Gaddafi or a Saddam Hussein.
Indeed, military commanders should be urged to defect – as should high-level political leaders – who should feel encouraged by recent high-level defections such as that of Syrian Prime Minister Ryad Hijab, brigadier-generals such as Manaf Tlass, and senior diplomats, which has emboldened the opposition no less than it has jolted the Syrian regime.
Eighth, the international community must protect against the risk of rising sectarian violence, jihadist radicalization, and reprisal and revenge killings, by securing firm commitments from Syrian opposition forces to address these phenomena seriously while protecting the rights of minorities; assistance to rebel commanders should be conditioned on such undertakings.
Ninth, there needs to be the mandated deployment of a large international Arab-led peace protection force in Syria that will, inter alia, order troops and tanks back to barracks and bases; order and monitor compliance with the cessation of violence; and help secure the peaceful transition to a post-Assad regime.
Tenth, there is a clear and compelling need for enhanced humanitarian assistance arising from the exponential increase in internally displaced people within Syria, which has doubled since March to now number more than 1.5 million persons displaced and over one million in need of assistance, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have flowed – and continue to flow – into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, with the attending risk of the destabilization of these border regions. The announcements of increased humanitarian assistance by Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are but steps in the right direction, which should be replicated by other “Friends of Syria.”
Again, as others have put it, “Loss of time means loss of lives.” The time to act is now, and it is long past. Every day, Syrian civilians die, not because of the actions we have taken, but because of the actions we have not taken.
Irwin Cotler is a professor of law (emeritus) at McGill University and former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada. He is the co-editor of The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in our Time, a recent publication of Oxford University Press.
1)Syria: An agenda for action
By IRWIN COTLER
The grisly reports of the latest Syrian mass atrocity in Darayya reflect the all too horrific Syrian depravity pattern: First, laying siege to the city – denying its inhabitants food, water, electricity, medical assistance and communications of any kind; second, launching a sustained, intensified and indiscriminate air, tank and artillery bombardment; third, maintaining the siege by surrounding and entering the city with tanks, troop carriers, heavy weapons, soldiers and militias – threatening to “cleanse” the city – while not allowing any of its inhabitants to leave; finally, shabiha – government killer militias – going house-to-house, engaging in wanton executions, killing whole families, even burning bodies so as to cover up the extent of the horror, only to exacerbate it.
It is a depravity that has been repeated many times since the “peace and dignity” march in Deraa in March 2011 – the largest single-day massacre with 400 murdered in one day in Darayya alone – while the killing continues in Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Idlib and other Syrian cities, with the magnitude of Syrian mass atrocities as yet unknown.
In Libya, the international community intervened when there was a threat of impending mass atrocity; in Syria, the international community has yet to intervene, despite the recurring mass atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In Libya, the UN Security Council authorized intervention to protect the threatened civilian community; in Syria, the Security Council has yet to adopt one resolution – even to implement the UN-Annan plan – despite the 18 months of killing fields, where more than 20,000 Syrians have now been murdered.
In Libya, the Security Council invoked the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine – the international law principle authorizing international collective action “to protect [a state’s] population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” if the state where these crimes are being committed is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens – or worse, as in the case of Syria, it is the author of such crimes. In Syria, it is as if this principle had never been adopted by the international community, let alone the obligation to implement it.
I have been writing for over a year now of the need to affirm and implement the Responsibility to Protect doctrine to help save Syrian civilians being massacred by the Assad regime, or to initiate the requisite protection action, even without invoking the R2P doctrine. Yet, the riposte to these calls – by myself and others – for a more proactive, protective and interventionist approach has been to warn of “civil war”; of enhanced sectarian strife; of an influx of jihadists; of incessant killings – all of which have happened.
Indeed, everything that was predicted would happen as a result of international action has in fact resulted – but from international inaction.
What is so necessary now – if these dire warnings are not to assume the mantra of a self-fulfilling prophecy – is for the United States, in concert with the EU, the Arab League, Turkey, Canada and other “Friends of Syria” to move to implement the following measures with all deliberate speed: First, protection against the threat of weapons of mass destruction; the disclosure that there are some 45 chemical weapons facilities and tons of chemical weapons materials scattered throughout Syria, coupled with the declaration that the regime is prepared to use them against “external terrorist threats” is fraught with dangers, particularly as the regime refers to the rebels as “terrorists” who have foreign backing, let alone the transfer of these weapons to Hezbollah or their seizure by jihadists. It is to be hoped that the US, Russia and others can at least cooperate in protecting against this deadly threat.
Second, it is necessary to interdict and sanction the substantial Iranian and Hezbollah military assistance to the Syrian regime – particularly Iranian arms shipments and Iranian training, financing and arming of Syrian forces and militias – which are in standing violation of existing UN Security Council resolutions. Simply put, countries, entities, groups and individuals involved in such transactions and activities must be severely sanctioned and punished, while Hezbollah – given its complicity in international terror as well as atrocities in Syria – should finally be listed by the European Union as a terrorist entity.
It should be noted that the just-released annual US State Department Country Reports on Terrorism again referred to Iran as the world’s “leading state sponsor of terrorism,” while adding that it “continues to undermine international efforts to promote peace and democracy and threatens stability” – as in Syria – and has “provided significant quantities of weaponry and funding to Hezbollah in direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.”
Third, enhanced support for the besieged opposition: All the opposition forces, from the Syrian National Council to the Free Syrian Army, are united in their request for international intervention and support to help “level the playing field,” including food, fuel and medical supplies; defensive weaponry; command and control assistance; and logistical and communications aid, training and other forms of support, which is only now, belatedly, beginning to be supplied. These efforts must be coordinated to ensure effectiveness – including the vetting of the recipients of such defensive weapons to ensure that they do not fall into the wrong hands. Indeed, the establishment of a unified US-Turkish task force for information sharing and operational planning is a welcome development, while the just-announced French initiative may move us closer to this objective.
Fourth, safe havens must be established. Aleppo is experiencing a humanitarian disaster. The combination of incessant and intensifying aerial bombardment of civilian neighborhoods – already subjected to weeks of artillery, tank and helicopter gunship bombardment – coupled with the absence of electricity, water, food and medical assistance – has generated a frightening humanitarian storm. It is crucial that safe havens be established that serve as civilian protection zones; as refuge for the displaced and assaulted; and as humanitarian corridors for the delivery of medical and humanitarian relief.
Fifth, such safe havens, which are necessary for Aleppo, are no less crucial for Syria as a whole. Indeed, I have been writing for close to a year of the need for civilian protection zones – or what Anne-Marie Slaughter called “no-kill zones” – particularly along Syria’s borders with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. This would protect against the vulnerability of the assaulted Syrian neighborhoods, while providing the desperately needed protection for displaced persons and refugees. Any Syrian assault on these civilian protection zones would authorize legitimate self-defense protection – including no-fly zones – which would protect against Syrian forces attacking these civilian areas.
Sixth, it is necessary that the United States – together with Arab, Turkish, European and other allies – works to unify the patchwork Syrian opposition, where the Free Syrian Army operates more as a network of militias than a unified command, and help plan an orderly transition on the road to, and in the wake of, Bashar Assad’s demise.
There will be the pressing challenge of rebuilding lives; rehabilitating the displaced; repatriating refugees; restarting the economy; restoring services; and protecting human security. As well, there is the need to combat the hundreds of jihadist and al-Qaida fighters – particularly from Iraq – who are in Syria.
Seventh, the Syrian political and army leadership must be put on notice that they will be held accountable for their grave violations of international law, and that they will be brought to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity, which may lessen further Syrian criminality while encouraging more defections.
It is now as timely as it is necessary to increase pressure on Assad, and those loyal to him, to seek exile lest they suffer the fate of a Muammar Gaddafi or a Saddam Hussein.
Indeed, military commanders should be urged to defect – as should high-level political leaders – who should feel encouraged by recent high-level defections such as that of Syrian Prime Minister Ryad Hijab, brigadier-generals such as Manaf Tlass, and senior diplomats, which has emboldened the opposition no less than it has jolted the Syrian regime.
Eighth, the international community must protect against the risk of rising sectarian violence, jihadist radicalization, and reprisal and revenge killings, by securing firm commitments from Syrian opposition forces to address these phenomena seriously while protecting the rights of minorities; assistance to rebel commanders should be conditioned on such undertakings.
Ninth, there needs to be the mandated deployment of a large international Arab-led peace protection force in Syria that will, inter alia, order troops and tanks back to barracks and bases; order and monitor compliance with the cessation of violence; and help secure the peaceful transition to a post-Assad regime.
Tenth, there is a clear and compelling need for enhanced humanitarian assistance arising from the exponential increase in internally displaced people within Syria, which has doubled since March to now number more than 1.5 million persons displaced and over one million in need of assistance, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have flowed – and continue to flow – into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, with the attending risk of the destabilization of these border regions. The announcements of increased humanitarian assistance by Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are but steps in the right direction, which should be replicated by other “Friends of Syria.”
Again, as others have put it, “Loss of time means loss of lives.” The time to act is now, and it is long past. Every day, Syrian civilians die, not because of the actions we have taken, but because of the actions we have not taken.
Irwin Cotler is a professor of law (emeritus) at McGill University and former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada. He is the co-editor of The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in our Time, a recent publication of Oxford University Press.
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Virtually every left-wing attack on Bush can legitimately be turned against Obama.
It could not last — the attendee of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church sermonizing on tolerance; the practitioner of Chicago politics lecturing on civility; the most partisan voting record in the Senate as proof of a new promised bipartisanship; earlier books and speeches calling for hard-core progressivism as evidence of a no-more-red-state-blue-state conciliation. And in fact the disconnect did not last, and Barack Obama finds himself dealing with assorted chickens coming home to roost.
In the summer of 2004, Michael Moore released a crude propaganda film, Fahrenheit 9/11, full of distortions and half-truths, and yet passed off as a documentary — all designed to help swing the election to Democratic challenger John Kerry. Hollywood, the media, and the Left in general did not worry about the film’s inaccuracies or the mythology that the infomercial was a disinterested documentary. Instead, liberals deified Moore. Indeed, he was an honored guest at the Democratic Convention, and liberal luminaries paid him obeisance at various showings of the film.
The goddess Nemesis took note, and this year Dinesh D’Souza and John Sullivan followed Moore’s model. The result is a blockbuster “documentary,” 2016: Obama’sAmerica, that does more to Barack Obama than Michael Moore once did to George W. Bush. The Left is perturbed, unappreciative that its own methods and objectives have been turned against itself, and in a more sophisticated and far more effective manner than Moore’s buffoonery.
The Left in the era of Barack Obama established other ends-justify-the-means precedents. In 2008, Obama surmised that no one else would ever raise the sorts of gigantic sums that he was then amassing (in toto nearly $800 million, more than twice the amount raised by John McCain), and so was the first candidate to renounce public financing of a presidential campaign in the general election since the law was passed. But, of course, Obama never imagined that four years later his approval ratings would be less than 50 percent, or that he would be running against a financier who could match his efforts dollar for dollar.
Nor did Obama think that a mesmerized Wall Street, from which he raised more cash than any prior candidate, would object all that much to his populist boilerplate against “1 percenters,” “fat-cat bankers,” and owners of “corporate jets.” So now what exactly will he do? Appeal to Romney to abide by public-financing rules? Blast Romney for raising too much money? Damn Romney for courting Wall Street?
Beneath the folksy veneer and the serial calls for “civility,” Obama proved vicious in his denunciations of George Bush, at one point calling him “unpatriotic” for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over eight years. Obama offered two general arguments: that the chief executive is solely responsible for economic hard times, and that four years is easily long enough to right the ship. Obama scoffed at the Bush defense that politically driven interventions by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — hand in glove with congressional overseers — had distorted the real-estate market and contributed to the subprime-mortgage collapse, which destroyed an otherwise strong economy.
Obama boasted further that he would cut the deficit by half during his first term, and asserted that he would rather be a successful president than a two-term one. And he added that he should not be reelected if the economy was not restored to health. Apparently Obama assumed that after every recession (this one ended in June 2009) there is a natural recovery, the latter all the more robust when the former is severe. For all the right-wing scare talk about Obamacare, federal takeovers, more taxes, and too many regulations, Obama also took for granted that the cry-wolf private sector would bounce back — no matter how much his policies threatened it — and would almost magically continue to make so much money that an ever-growing government could redistribute ever more of it.
Yet now Romney is echoing Obama’s exact arguments: Yes, the chief executive is responsible for things like 43 months of 8 percent–plus unemployment, $5 trillion in new debt, and anemic GDP growth; and, yes, if things do not improve after four years, then it is time to change the president.
Obama established a wink-and-nod type of negative attack. As he called in sonorous tones for hope and change and a new civility, he negatively stereotyped a stunning cross-section of Americans: The white working class became “clingers,” the police “stereotype” minorities and act “stupidly,” small-business owners “didn’t build” their own businesses, doctors lop off limbs and yank out tonsils, bankers are “fat cats” — apparently on the premise that such groups would never take all this invective seriously. At various times Mitt Romney has been reduced to a dastardly financial pirate, a killer of innocent cancer victims, a veritable racist, and now a misogynist. After the class-warfare card and the race card, we await only Obama’s use of the Mormon card. Yet the polls remain roughly even, and Obama is about to be the target of a no-holds-barred assault fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars. Ethically speaking, what possible Romney sin might Obama object to? That super-PAC ads are unfair? That Romney has gone negative? That Romney stereotypes entire groups? That Romney’s inner staff are ethically compromised? This, after Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, was paid $100,000 for two speeches in Nigeria in December 2010, to a company that was eager for influence and whose affiliates did business with an embargoed Iran; Plouffe made the trip to Nigeria about a month before he joined the administration as a senior adviser. Just this month, deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on national television asserted something demonstrably false — that she did not know the facts about the woman Mitt Romney supposedly caused to die of cancer.
During the Bush administration, the Left established another caricature: the gaffe-prone, golf-playing elitist George Bush. Did they ever imagine that they were ensuring like caricature for the leftist academic Barack Obama, who quite unexpectedly would play golf four times more often in four years than Bush did in eight years? Or that for every Bushism there would be a “corpse-man”? Or that the small ranch house in Crawford, Texas, would be trumped by First Family jaunts to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Aspen? I would like to think a slip like “57 states” is just a slip, or that golf is valuable presidential relaxation, but I was taught by the Left that such garbled speech is a window into a confused mind, and that presidential golf is elite recreation that betrays class privilege.
In 2008, there was a lot of sloganeering on energy policy. Obama assured us that we could “not drill” our way out of a spike in gas prices. “Millions of new green jobs” was heard at almost every rally, along with shouts about wind and solar this and that. In less guarded moments, Obama assured us that he would pass cap-and-trade legislation, “bankrupt” coal companies, and allow coal-based energy prices to “skyrocket.” These were the heady days of “peak oil” and the liberal attack against “oil men in the White House” — on the eve of the Chevy Volt and breakthrough new companies with names like Solyndra.
At the very time when well-connected crony capitalists were squandering hundreds of millions of dollars in federal wind and solar subsidies, a quiet private-sector revolution in horizontal drilling and fracking vastly expanded America’s gas and oil reserves — despite, not because of, Obama’s energy policies. The paradox finally become so absurd that Obama was reduced to bragging that the United States was producing more gas and oil under his watch than ever before, apparently on the logic that oil men were so adept that they could find vast amounts of new sources of energy on private lands without worrying about the Obama administration’s efforts to virtually cut off all new leasing on federal lands. The result is that our first green president is facing $4-a-gallon gas while he brags that what he tried to stop proved unstoppable.
Nemesis, remember, is not just karma, but payback with an absurd twist.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institutionand the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.
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