Watergate was not, as the stereotypical myth and breathless legends go, a great moment for democracy in which a corrupt president was brought down, and a great "investigation" reformed Washington. It was an inside coup d'état, and a limited hangout, that saved Nixon and his cabal from true exposure and jail time, and helped preserve—not reform—the system that made his crimes possible.

Watergate gave the naïve public a false sense of security—the fallacy that "they" (Washington) were "cleaning up"—and ushered in a new era of corruption. Gerald Ford, J. Edgar Hoover's right hand man on the Warren Commission, became president. Ford pardoned Nixon, and selected Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. The CIA learned how to do a better job covering up their activities and controlling information. America's corporate media, long infiltrated and controlled by government operatives, would be increasingly corrupted and corporatized, and made into the voices of the White House. The Washington Post, never a paragon of investigative reporting, became even worse with time. Bob Woodward became a buddy stenographer for the Bush presidents...

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=456789#p456789

John Simkin, on 21 February 2012 - 05:50 AM, said:

A great book. I tried to get her to participate on the forum but unfortunately, the writing of this book has frightened her off talking about the CIA.

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=17859

October 21, 2011

The timing is almost too good: a terrific Wall Street melodrama at the moment the Occupy Wall Street protests are building. We haven't seen the like since Three Mile Island had a near-meltdown a couple of days after The China Syndrome exploded into theaters. Now, Margin Call seems anything but marginal...

Margin Call is a different sort of big-business film than its best-known predecessor, Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Stone wanted to create a capitalist demon in Gordon Gekko, but ended up making him so charismatic that he became a role model. Despite the amounts of money bandied about, there's nothing in Margin Call to inspire anyone — except, of course, those fervent Wall Street occupiers. (Recommended)

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/21/141415405/margin-call-a-movie-occupied-with-wall-street

The CIA and the Media

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000-word cover story, published in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977, is reprinted below.

By Carl Bernstein

October 20, 1977 In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28610.htm

HBO documentary called 'Sing Your Song' about the life of Harry Belafonte.

It covers his life especially during the early Civil Rights movement.

I never knew this, but he goes onto saying in the documtary that in 1960, MLK was arrested in Atlanta for a traffic stop but they trumped up charges and were going to sentence him to work on the chain gang.

Belafonte and others in the movement went to the 2 running Presidential candidates and Nixon ignored them, while the Kennedys did something. JFK made RFK go down to Atlanta and got MLK out of jail.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19382

Lee Daniels and Hugh Jackman to tackle Martin Luther King slaying
By Steven Zeitchik
July 31, 2012, 3:32 p.m.

EXCLUSIVE: Lee Daniels and Hugh Jackman failed to get a civil rights picture off the ground when their passion project "Selma" fell apart two years ago. But the pair are taking another crack at that subject, exploring the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination with a new film that takes an unconventional view of King's murder.

Daniels will direct and Jackman will star in "Orders to Kill," a story that aims to tell an alternative version of the King shooting, according to a person familiar with the project who was not authorized to talk about it publicly. Millennium Films will produce and finance the film, which is currently being shopped around to distributors in Hollywood. A Millennium spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The film will tell the story of William Pepper (Jackman), a controversial attorney and activist who for decades has argued that convicted killer James Earl Ray, who recanted his confession and died arguing his innocence, didn't shoot MLK.

The picture will follow Pepper over the years as he wages a one-man campaign, interviewing witnesses and building support for his theory that other interests, including those from the U.S. government, were behind the 1968 Memphis killing. (In a nutshell, Pepper, who is still alive, argues that government interests wanted King dead because of his opposition to the Vietnam War.) It will be based on Pepper's own book, which has been adapted for the screen by Hollywood screenwriter Hanna Weg...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-lee-daniels-hugh-jackman-to-tackle-martin-luther-king-slaying-20120731,0,7278278.story

Donald Scott "Don" Drysdale (July 23, 1936 – July 3, 1993) was a Major League Baseball player and Hall of Fame right-handed pitcher with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was one of the dominant starting pitchers of the 1960s, and became a radio and television broadcaster following his playing career. The Disney character Herbie has the number 53 since that was Drysdale's number...

Drysdale was born in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California and attended Van Nuys High School, where one of his classmates was actor Robert Redford...

Drysdale died of a heart attack in his hotel room in Montreal, Quebec, on July 3, 1993. Radio station employees were sent to look for him when he failed to make the bus for Olympic Stadium. where the Dodgers were to play the Expos. Hotel staff went in and found him face down, near his bed...

Among the personal belongings found in Drysdale's hotel room was a cassette tape of Robert F. Kennedy's victory speech after the 1968 California Democratic presidential primary, a speech given only moments before Senator Kennedy's assassination. In the speech, Kennedy had noted, to the cheers of the crowd, that Drysdale had pitched his sixth straight shutout that evening. Drysdale had apparently carried the tape with him wherever he went since Robert Kennedy's death...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Drysdale