Ron Paul is certainly getting more mainstream media attention than he did when he ran for President, but the censors are still at work.

Justin Miller deserves credit for his Atlantic article pointing out how Gallup and Rasmussen polling agencies are ignoring Ron Paul as a potential 2012 candidate. They list Tim Pawlenty and Haley Barbour, but no Ron Paul. Justin Miller makes the rather obvious case for Ron Paul’s consideration.

Rasmussen: “In a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, it’s close to a three-way tie when GOP voters are asked whom they would vote for � from among a list of six prominent Republicans – in the 2012 party primary in their state: 25% say Romney, while 24% say Palin and 22% opt for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

After that, GOP primary voters list former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (14%), while Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty each received one percent (1%) of the vote. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate.”

(What a convenient list of establishment candidates.)

Gallup:

Kudos to Justin Miller, but I feel he should have at least acknowledged the widespread censorship and slander Ron Paul faced during his presidential campaign. I detailed much of it here: Censoring Ron Paul – Why the rEVOLution will not be televised, back when I was a fledgling blogger. I saved my own copies of only some (not all) of the offending coverage. Unfortunately, some of the most glaring examples have been removed by the news sources.

Lets not be surprised that Rasmussen is ignoring Ron Paul now. They even did so DURING the election:

(click for saved web page)
And this poll was AFTER Ron Paul’s 6-million-dollar money bomb.

Fox “News” ignored Ron Paul’s second place finish in Nevada:

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Fox “News” also edited Ron Paul out of AP news stories.

USA Today cover story / photos / candidate-profiles covered four of the five candidates still in race at the time. The excluded candidate was . . . (drum roll) . . . Ron Paul.

MSNBC debate bias
Romney: 21 minutes, 11 seconds (12 answers and asked 1 question)
McCain: 16 minutes even (12 answers and asked 1 question)
Giuliani: 13 minutes and 50 seconds (10 answers and asked 1 question)
Huckabee: 12 minutes and 11 seconds (8 answers and asked 1 question)
Paul: 6 minutes and 31 seconds (5 answers and asked 1 question)

The CNN/YouTube debate went for 35 minutes before Ron Paul got a question. He received the least amount of time, and only four question. (Giuliani got nine.) Hear Ron Paul comment.

Washingtonpost’s post-debate commentary excluded Ron Paul.

In a staggering display of selective perception, NY Times columnist Bob Herbert laments the GOP’s militancy, completely ignoring Ron Paul’s presence. This is especially asinine, as Herbert’s own beliefs most closely resemble Paul’s. Herbert mentions all GOP presidential candidates in his column except . . . (surprise, surprise) . . . Ron Paul.

CNN’s Glenn “Bandwagon” Beck held a political poll and excluded Ron Paul

BBC news’s election guide excluded Ron Paul.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper ranks almost all the candidates on Israel-issues (except Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich).

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Ahead of Florida Primary, extensive Miami Herald article does mention Paul, once, right at end.

LA Times poll excludes Ron Paul.

Real Clear Politics polls exclude Ron Paul.

Article about CBS news censoring Ron Paul from graphics and commentary (removed)

CNN puts up the words “Blaming America for 9-11″ under Ron Paul during this video. Unfortunately, the video has been removed.

MSNBC’s Hardball:

Given Giuliani’s abysmal performance in the election, you wonder who decided he was 1st tier, and Ron Paul was 3rd tier.

Two NY Times articles attack Ron Paul on 24 Dec 2007. The NY Times then apologizes, sort of.

See Also:

(thanks Eric C.!)

The list goes on. Check out my old post Censoring Ron Paul – Why the rEVOLution will not be televised to see more. Unfortunately, there are many dead links.

UPDATE: Also check out The Orange Line – anatomy of a smear campaign.

“Israel continues to ratchet up diplomatic pressure against European Union funding of a group that exposed what it described as war crimes perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.

The deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Rafi Barak, expressed ‘concern’ last week over Britain’s financial contributions to ‘Breaking the Silence,’ an organization founded by IDF veterans which collects testimonies from soldiers serving in the Palestinian territories.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

“Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, personally intervened to suppress evidence of CIA collusion in the torture of a British resident, the high court heard today.

The dramatic turn emerged as lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident abused in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay, joined by lawyers for the Guardian and other media groups, asked the court to order the disclosure of CIA material.

It consists of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA knew, and what it told MI5 and MI6, about the treatment of Mohamed. Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, the judges hearing the case, have said that the summary contains nothing that could possibly be described as ‘highly sensitive classified US intelligence’.

However, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has repeatedly told the court that the US would stop sharing intelligence with the UK if the CIA material was published.” (Read more from guardian.co.uk)

More change we can believe in?

“The Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians call the ‘catastrophe’ of Israel’s creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren, the education minister said Wednesday.

The reference to ‘al-naqba,’ the Arabic word catastrophe, as Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel’s 1948 creation, was inserted by a dovish Israeli education minister in 2007.

The phrase remains contentious six decades later, a symptom of the continuing divisions in Israel. Many Israeli Arabs identify politically with their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, some Israeli Jews accuse Israeli Arabs of disloyalty to the country.

Israel’s current government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line Likud Party, includes members who favor cracking down on Israeli Arabs by ordering loyalty oaths or even moving them out of Israel.” (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

“The business site Bloomberg is running a story today titled Yuan Deposes Dollar on China’s Border in Sign of Trade’s Future. [Interestingly, after being up for over an hour, this story suddenly went away between 1 and 2 am. Before coming back in what seemed like a slightly less hard hitting form.]

When Treasury Secretary Geithner spoke on June 1st to students at Peking University and claimed that America was in good shape and China’s dollar investments were safe. His assurances were greeted with loud hoots of laughter from the assembled students, many of them the sons and daughters of China’s elite. Geithner humiliation was barely reported in America, but it seemed to resonate much more strongly elsewhere around the globe. Spawning many stories similar to the story running today at Bloomberg.com about how people are digging up that jar full of dollars and replacing them with gold or border traders switch from dollars to other currencies. The disbelieving laughter of China’s students may well mark a sea change. The begin of the end for the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. With America’s politicos planning to spend approximately double what they expect to collect in taxes this year, it is easy to see why the students were amused by Geithner posturing. But the chaos that will ensue if a dollar crisis were to suddenly force America’s politicos to start living within America’s means won’t be funny.” (from humods.com)

When I first found this story, it included a video of a Palestinian man in Gaza talking about how he was used as a human shield – held at gunpoint and made to enter Palestinian homes ahead of Israeli soldiers.

That video is gone. Now there’s a video of an Israeli spokeswoman denying the allegations and promising investigations.

“A group of soldiers who took part in Israel’s assault in Gaza say widespread abuses were committed against civilians under “permissive” rules of engagement.

The troops said they had been urged to fire on any building or person that seemed suspicious and said Palestinians were sometimes used as human shields.

Breaking the Silence, a campaign group made up of Israeli soldiers, gathered anonymous accounts from 26 soldiers.” (Read more from news.bbc.co.uk)

Important qualifier: Though they didn’t mention it, the transcript was clearly abridged. I guess the person who did the abridging wasn’t interested in Obama’s historic recognition of Palestinian suffering.

“An alert KABOBfest reader noted that an AP transcript of Obama’s speech “as provided by CQ Transcriptions” left out the President’s comments on the suffering of the Palestinians.

The AP’s version has him jump from his moving description of Nazi crimes against the Jews to a warning against the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran:

Six million Jews were killed, more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless. It is ignorant, and it is hateful.

It’s about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.

In the transcripts posted on the White House’s website, the President’s words on the Palestinian experience are posted:

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they’ve endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations — large and small — that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own. (Applause.)

Given the accolades for that being the greatest presidential summary of Palestinian victimization under Israeli rule ever, it is shocking it was selectively excised from the transcripts.

Looking at the AP’s version, which is hosted on Yahoo, it is clear the transcripts are abridged. First, they do not acknowledge that. Second, why remove such an important point? I cannot help but think it was motivated by pro-Israel bias.” (Read more from kabobfest.com)

“Ludwig von Mises was never able to get a paid academic post in the U. S. He was shut out of American economic journals, and boycotted and ridiculed by the establishment – all because he told the truth, without fear or compromise, when it wasn’t fashionable to do so.

[Robert] Heilbroner, however, has never been anything but fashionable. A professor at the New School for Social Research, his lecture fees are high and his books sell well, especially his history of thought, The Worldly Philosophers, which glorifies Marx and Keynes and never mentions the Austrians.

Like John Kenneth Galbraith, Heilbroner has gotten rich by attacking capitalism. And also like Galbraith, every time he writes a book, the reviews in the top media read like sales copy.” (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

“A brief obituary appears in the New York Times, courtesy of The Associated Press: ‘Robert Heilbroner, 85, Economist and Writer, Dies.’

Absent from this brief death notice is, perhaps, one of Heilbroner’s most famous formulations. Upon the collapse of 20th century socialism, he said: ‘Mises was right.’” (from mises.org)

Press release from The Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel: “On April 8th, the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel erected the billboards throughout the Albuquerque area in order to inform the public about the misuse of their tax dollars, denominated in human lives. The group was motivated by concern for the Palestinian people who had recently been subjected to a massive invasion of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military. Over 1,400 Palestinians – mostly civilian, including three hundred children – were killed and over 5,000 were injured. In 2007 the Bush administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Israel over a ten year period beginning in 2008. The majority of these dollars will be used to purchase American-made weapons.

The design of the billboard had been approved by Lamar and the billboards’ wording and final image were suggested by Lamar’s graphics designer.

According to information from Lamar, it appears groups claiming to be pro-Israel have conducted a campaign to pressure Lamar to remove the billboards. The Coalition believes this is a deliberate attempt to silence its right to free speech because the humanitarian message of the billboards supports equal rights for the Palestinian people, thereby necessitating criticism of Israel.”

This brief lecture by the Mises Institute’s director of editorial affairs offers a fantastic glimpse at the long struggle for truth by economists of the Austrian School.

“The bank has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website.

Florida-based Mr Morgan began a blog entitled ‘Facts about Goldman Sachs’ – the web address for which is goldmansachs666.com – just a few weeks ago.” (Read more from telegraph.co.uk)

by John Pilger

“When I returned from the war in Vietnam, I wrote a film script as an antidote to the myth that the war had been an ill-fated noble cause. The producer David Puttnam took the draft to Hollywood and offered it to the major studios, whose responses were favorable – well, almost. Each issued a report card in which the final category, ‘politics,’ included comments such as: ‘This is real, but are the American people ready for it? Maybe they’ll never be.’

By the late 1970s, Hollywood judged Americans ready for a different kind of Vietnam movie. The first was The Deer Hunter which, according to Time, ‘articulates the new patriotism.’ The film celebrated immigrant America, with Robert de Niro as a working class hero (‘liberal by instinct’) and the Vietnamese as sub-human Oriental barbarians and idiots, or ‘gooks.’ The dramatic peak was reached during recurring orgiastic scenes in which GIs were forced to play Russian roulette by their Vietnamese captors. This was made up by the director Michael Cimino, who also made up a story that he had served in Vietnam. ‘I have this insane feeling that I was there,’ he said. “Somehow… the line between reality and fiction has become blurred.’

The Deer Hunter was regarded virtually as documentary by ecstatic critics. ‘The film that could purge a nation’s guilt!’ said the Daily Mail. . . .

My own 2007 film The War on Democracy, which inverted the ‘war on terror’ in Latin America, was distributed in Britain, Australia and other countries but not in the United States. ‘You will need to make structural and political changes,’ said a major New York distributor. ‘Maybe get a star like Sean Penn to host it – he likes liberal causes – and tame those anti-Bush sequences.’ . . .

These are extraordinary times. Vicious colonial wars and political, economic and environmental corruption cry out for a place on the big screen. Yet, try to name one recent film that has dealt with these, honestly and powerfully, let alone satirically. Censorship by omission is virulent. We need another Wall Street, another Last Hurrah, another Dr. Strangelove.” (Read more from antiwar.com)

“This is the story about a girl that’s actually a dude who’s brought in 3.8 – 19.4 million visitors* to Village Voice Media websites by gaming Digg.

Village Voice Media appears to be running an organized reciprocal Digg campaign using staff at their network of alt-weekly newspapers across the United States. Two Digg users, Ivanb and Philostrato, are responsible for the vast majority of that traffic” (Read more from thedeets.com)