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Rhetoric

Tracking the shifting rhetorics of politics, culture, and the media.

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News

David Barstow and Robin Stein | New York Times | March 13, 2005

"Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production. [more]

Administration Balks At 'Gay' In Gay Suicide Conference

Doreen Brandt | 365Gay.com | February 16, 2005

"The Bush administration has told a federally funded conference on LGBT suicide to remove the words 'gay,' 'lesbian,' 'bisexual' and 'transgender' from its material. [...] 'It is incredible, the venom from these people,' said spokesperson Mark Weber who added that the name change was 'only a suggestion'. / But, when pressed by the Post about how strong a suggestion it was, Weber replied: 'Well, they do need to consider their funding source.'" [more]

Crafty language of political power and bite

Molly Ivins | Sacramento Bee | January 27, 2005

"Then, one day, some focus group showed that people, particularly older people, react negatively to any connection between Social Security and the word private. For some reason, people like the sound of 'personal accounts' better than they do 'private accounts.' / So the Republicans, with their fabulous ability to march in lockstep, all about-faced and started referring to the privatization of Social Security as 'personal accounts.' This is the new political correctness." [more]

Reflections on Tsunamis and the State of Exception

Jordy Cummings | Press Action | December 29, 2004

"A revolutionary antiwar movement should be well aware of its ability to create a real state of exception, that is an exception to the exception of global civil war." [more]

'The War on Terrorism': A Doctrine of Aggression for the Propagation of US Style 'Democracy' by Force

Ch'oe Hak-ch'o'l | World News Connection | December 15, 2004

"The 'war on terrorism' the United States is babbling about can never coexist with genuine democracy. In the places where the United States wages the 'war on terrorism,' the democratic freedom and rights of the people are repressed and obliterated and the sovereignty of countries and nations is violated without any exception." [more]

How Teddy Roosevelt Fathered the “Bush Doctrine”

William Marina and David Beito | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | December 10, 2004

December 6, 2004, marked the centennial of one of the landmark statements in U.S. foreign policy: Theodore Roosevelt’s so-called “Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” It was here, and not in the post-9/11 speeches of George W. Bush, that we first heard the rationalization for a pre-emptive imperialism coming from the White House. [more]

Empires As Ages Of Religious Ignorance: George W. Bush's Crusade And American Fundamentalism

William Marina | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | November 15, 2004

What is less understood is that all of the great empires in history have been characterized by a decline of reason and an increase in super-naturalist faith, combined with a belief in the empire with the emperor holding God’s “mandate” on earth. [more]

The Fire is Spreading...

Dahr Jamail | Electronic Iraq | November 9, 2004

"The word on the street that the resistance was mostly out of Falluja prior to this battle is verified by the Iraqi Minister of Defense himself. The fire had begun to spread long before the current onslaught of Falluja." [more]

Fallujah and the Reality of War

Rahul Mahajan | Empire Notes | November 9, 2004

"The first assault on Fallujah was a military failure. This time, the resistance is stronger, better-armed, and better-organized; to 'win,' the U.S. military will have to pull out all the stops." [more]

Screams Will Not Be Heard

Madeleine Bunting | Guardian | November 8, 2004

"There's a repulsive asymmetry of war here: not the much remarked upon asymmetry of the few thousand insurgents holed up in Falluja vastly outnumbered by the US, but the asymmetry of information. In an age of instant communication, we will have to wait months, if not years, to hear of what happens inside Falluja in the next few days." [more]

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