Daily Ghion Water ~ The Ghion Journal

Today’s Ghion Water is dedicated to the Washington Post, a place where yellow journalists wear brown shirts. I say this in light of something Max Blumenthal pointed out in his tweet earlier. Josh Rogin, a foreign correspondent, does an admirable job of being a spokesman for warmongering neocons and neoliberals who can’t get enough of unleashing bloodbaths around the world. Josh advocates a continued US presence in Syria and pushes for yet more bombings of a nation that never attacked us in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions…because you know, laws and morality only apply to nations with lesser guns.

Josh and the hacks at the Washington Post prove the point that media that is owned by plutocrats who benefit from war are not a free press, they are the propaganda arm of the military-financial complex. Let this serve as a stark reminder of the imperative behind truly independent journalists and non-corporate voices. Without further ado, here is your Daily Ghion Water.

Real News Behind Trump’s Sensationalism

He’s using not racist dog-whistle terms but racist bullhorn terms like “chain migration” and fabricating points about the immigration system. The visa lottery for example does contain security vetting, and he said that there was none. It’s very difficult for new citizens of the U.S. or immigrants to bring distant family members. Chain migration is essentially a myth. He dressed that up in scare mongering about MS-13 and Latino gang members. Beyond that, he offered a very bellicose foreign policy vision, but at the same time, I had actually expected him to take credit for the bilateral talks and the planned display of unity at the Olympics between North and South Korea, and he didn’t even take that opportunity. [from the Real News]

Agenda Setting and Post-Rationalization

This has always been my concern about school privatization schemes: I fear a world in which perfectly decent public schools are sapped of funding, with students given vouchers that leave them in worse private alternatives. My dystopian world is one in which corporations decide to open private schools that offer nothing but job training, public schools are steadily defunded, and students get shunted off to FedEx Academy. (It may be hard to resist, if it comes with the prospect of a job at the end. And libertarians like Bryan Caplan have suggested that school should be job training instead of useless rubbish like “literature” and “the arts.”) Actually, my true dystopia may already exist: the “online charter school” where kids sit in a room with a computer all day and learn literally nothing. [from Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs]

Enron Was Child’s Play

The idea that $21 Trillion slipped through the cracks at the Defense Department and HUD, under the watch of both political parties, doesn’t fit the desired narrative at the nation’s top newspapers either. The fact that their legions of journalists have not attempted to publicly debunk the story speaks volumes about the report’s legitimacy. With that in mind, the reality that no major newspaper has shed any light on the work done by Skidmore and his team, much less expanded upon it, is shameful at the very least. At its worst, the press appear as potential co-conspirators in a coverup, even if nothing nefarious is actually afoot. [from Tim Nuell of Ghion Journal]

The Inhumanity of the Prison-Financial Complex

I was handcuffed after I got dressed and removed from that cell. I was handed over to another squad of officers. There were about 12 members of the death squad who volunteered to be the execution team. I had known for quite a long time that a black man was the spokesman to the media for this institution whenever it came to executions and other events. However, I must admit that I was a bit shocked to see two black men volunteering to murder me. Maybe it was because of all the history books that I have read about my ancestors and our fight for freedom within this country. In this reading and learning, I found that the vast majority of murders, including lynching and execution of blacks in America, have happened at the hands of whites. [from Kevin Cooper of Truthdig]

One Step from Annihilation

The world is, at this moment, standing in a wading pool full of gasoline. The United States is standing in it also, but content in the knowledge it holds the most matches and everyone better remember that. If the world is destroyed in a massive nuclear war, it will be one the United States started over a reason incomprehensible to everyone but U.S. government officials. Billions dead and for what? Democracy? You mean the democracy of the United States who has more people in prison per capita than the countries it accuses of being “dictatorships”? Or the democracy where unarmed people are gunned down in the streets by American cops after being stopped for farcical reasons? Can it be any wonder the United States will start a nuclear war over equally specious reasons? [from Jack Perry of Balkans Post]

Governed by Kleptocrats

Members of Congress have received billions from Big Pharma companies, including Purdue Pharma, which began manufacturing oxycodone over 20 years ago. As covered on Redacted Tonight, Purdue Pharma capitalized on the ignorance of doctors who underestimated the drug’s power and addictiveness, rebranding pain relief as a “right” and directing sales representatives to lie about the health risks. As their profits grew, so did their and other companies’ donations to Congress. Big Pharma spent $152 million lobbying Congress in 2016. [from Natalie McGill of Redacted Tonight]

We Have Power in Our Hands (from Ghion Journal’s YouTube Channel)

This Day in History

1909 - U.S. troops leave Cuba after installing Jose Miguel Gomez as president. Because being the police of the planet is exactly what the founders advised us to do. I mean it’s not like the framers did not advocate for a monsterous federal government that taxes us without full representation and has manifested King George in the 21st century right? On second thought…

Quote of the Day

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Profiled This Day

Today’s profile picture is in honor of citizen journalists around the world who make it their purpose to seek truth and speak truth to power. As noted above, corporate media has proven to be nothing more than the propaganda arm of their plutocrat owners. They sacrifice the public good in order to meet the private demands of their shareholders. Mainstream media has breached the public trust and can not be called “free press” by any stretch of the imagination. Into the vacuum steps citizen journalists, who are now the last line of defense between tyranny and accountability.

The list of people who wake up each day to uphold the credo of journalism and pay tribute to spirit of muckrakers is one too many to count. I’m thankful to be mentioned in the same breath as some truly heroic people who do a lot more than me to hold the feet of authority to the flames. Here is to citizen journalists world wide and independent journalists everywhere. Join me today and use social media to highlight the work and worth of independent journalism by using #IndeiMedia

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