Yellow Dog

The Tsunami disaster has highlighted the corporate media's focus on sensationalistic stories, with its coverage of a newborn baby found floating on a mattress or today's big CNN story of a mother who had to let go of the hand of her 4-year-old son in order to save his younger brother.

But this article points out the media hypocrisy of non-stop coverage of innocent victims of the tsunami disaster compared to zero coverage of the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians:

"The US corporate media coverage of the tsunami disaster exposes a huge hypocrisy in the US press. Left uncovered this past year was the massive disaster that has befell Iraqi civilians. Over 100,000 civilians have died since the beginning of the US invasion and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and weakened.

The Iraqi word for disaster is museeba. Surly the loss of life from war in Iraq is as significant a meseeba as the Indian Ocean tsunami, yet where is the US corporate media coverage of thousands of dead and homeless? Where are the live aerial TV shots of the disaster zones and the up-close photos of the victims? Where are the survivor stories - the miracle child who lived thought a building collapsed by US bombs and rescued by neighbors? Where are the government official's press releases of regret and sorrow? Where is the international coalition for relief of civilians in Iraq and the upsurge in donations for Red Cross intervention? Would not Americans, if they knew, be just as caring about Iraqi deaths as they are for the victims of the tsunami?

It seems US media concerns are for victims of natural disasters, while the man-made disasters, such as the deliberate invasion of another country by the US, are better left unreported."

Tsunami Disaster Highlights Corporate Media Hypocrisy

Bush Administration Announces New Forest Regulations
New Rules are Expected to Favor Logging, Cut Standards for Wildlife Protection, Forest Management, Public Input

: "For the second year in a row, the Bush Administration has announced a harmful new forest policy on the eve of the Christmas holiday. Last December 23, the administration announced it was opening up pristine parts of the Tongass National Forest to new logging and development. Today, it is releasing what are expected to be damaging new regulatory changes to the rules that guide sound forest management.

The new rules for long-term forest planning will likely reduce protections for forest wildlife and eliminate requirements that forest plans comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. The final rules will change enforcement of the 1976 National Forest Management Act, and are expected to conform closely to a timber industry 'wish list' presented shortly after the presidential inauguration.

'We fully expect that the new forest rules will reflect the Bush administration's belief that logging companies should be the primary beneficiary of our National Forests,' said Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director. 'Americans want to protect the places where they hike, hunt and fish, but when the Bush administration rewrote the rules, they wrote the public out of the equation.'

The new forest planning rules are likely to:
--eliminate analysis of forest plans under the National Environment Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal government agencies to assess potential environmental impacts of their actions, and examine alternatives;
--scrap wildlife protections established under President Ronald Reagan;
--severely limit opportunities for public input into forest management decisions; and;
--scale back the role of independent scientists in forest management, in favor of administration scientists.

'Today's new rules could roll back 20 years of forest protections -- even many put in place by Ronald Reagan,' said Mike Anderson of The Wilderness Society. 'Taken together with the Administration's plan to curtail roadless protection for national forests, these changes will threaten many of our last-remaining roadless areas and old-growth forests.'"

Thanks again to the 51% of deluded voters--for giving us a Bush in exchange for all of the trees!

Amount of aid pledged to the Asian earthquake-tsunami disaster, killing over 100,000: $35 million

Amount spent on Bush's inauguration: $45 million

Amount spent to bomb Iraq (a bill US taxpayers are footing on their own, thanks to Bush's crappy diplomacy): $300 billion

What's wrong with this picture? Even those Republicans who possess no deductive reasoning should be able to figure this one out.

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Are We Stingy? Yes

Too bad we can't do an after-Christmas exchange....

Reelection Honeymoon With Voters Eludes Bush, Polls Say