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Western media that is under absolute influence of Israeli lobby is trying to dampen the high voter turnout of Irans parliamentary elections.

The message from Iran is that the high turnout of 65 percent in the parliamentary elections is a response of loyalty against Western pressures and threats.

Press TV has interviewed Mark Dankof, former US Senate candidate from San Antonio about US media's purposeful attempts to spin Iran's elections in a negative light and the disproportionate influence and control of the American news media by the Israeli lobby in the US. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: In monitoring some of the media, they led in their coverage of Iran's election by saying 'not fair or free' and then they continued with their story; however, some of these same entities not that long ago were extremely encouraging with so-called elections i.e. one-man elections in Yemen, which we know was absolutely no election at all. Why the difference, what exactly is going on?

Dankof: I think you can pretty much tell the difference in terms of what it is that Israel wants and what the Western multinational corporations want.

A primary example of this - Ron Kampeas had an article recently in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which is reproduced by the Jerusalem Post talking about the fact that this pro-Israel element in the US was behind the effort to get the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO) or the People's Holy Warriors de-listed by the American State Department as a terrorist organization.

And when we continue to read this article we discover that there is a group called the Global Initiative for Democracy that sponsored this gathering, which are major Israeli lobby figures in the American government and these American governmental figures have clear links to Israel and to Netanyahu's war lobby.

This not an accident and I think it's a microcosm of the larger problem that we come to when we start looking at all of the influence that Israel has in the Western media and the number of these global institutes-for-democracy of various kinds operating under various guises including the National Endowment for Democracy that are little more than conduits for Israel and the Western multi-nationals to try and co-opt the local political scene wherever it takes place around the globe manipulated in a direction that is serving the usual political purposes.

Press TV: As an American here in Iran I have to say one thing I have found interesting in looking at the Iranian people is a sophistication of the electorate and how informed they are. Even children, you are able to enliven discussions about elections; kids have an opinion about what is going on politically.

We touched a little bit earlier on the low turnout in elections in the US - What do you attribute this to? Why the difference - why is there such a low turnout, not only a low turnout in the US, but it almost seems a case of political apathy?

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‘Israel in full control of Western media’

Andrew Bolt Monday, March 05, 2012 at 12:15am

Niche modeller Dr David Stockwell wonders if the media inquiry understands the blog sites it wants the Federal Government to police:

The Media Inquiry by Finkelstein Q.C. proposed on page 301 the regulation of blogs with more than a specific number of hits per annum, suggesting an equivalency with print media:

Does he know how many actual readers that 15,000 hits a year represents?

Of the total number of hits a blog receives, at least 90% are due to search bots (like Google and Bing), spammers and sundry malicious automata.

Of the remaining 10% of hits that could be identified with real people, around 75% are bouncers, people who click away within a few seconds.

Of the real readers, they might browse a few pages, contributing 3 or 4 hits.

Therefore, the ration of hits to readers is around 0.1*0.25*0.25 or less than 1%.

Conservatively, 15000 hits per annum translates into 150 unique readers once a year, or less than one reader per day.

Yet Finkelstein seems to suggest that 15000 hits per annum is equivalent to a publication with a print run of 3000 copies.

Read more here:
Media inquiry wants to control even blogs with a reader a day

Kansas City, MO - infoZine - Philip Stephens is the author of a novel, Miss Me When I'm Gone (Penguin/Plume, 2011); a collection of poems, The Determined Days (The Overlook Press, 2000), which was a finalist for the PEN Center USA West Award; and a chapbook, The Signalmen, the recipient of the Hanks Chapbook Award from the St. Louis Poetry Center. His poems are included in American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000), Phoenix Rising: The Next Generation of Expansive Poetry (Word Press, 2005), and Blank Verse (Ohio University Press, 2007), and they have appeared in The North American Review, The Oxford American, and The Southwest Review, as well as other publications. His prose has been published in The Oxford American, Bomb, and Best Music Writing 2004 (Da Capo Press, 2004). His most recent poem appeared in Mead, and a short story, "You Don't Belong Here," is forthcoming in Kansas City Noir (Akashic, November 2012). He lives with his wife and two sons in Kansas City, Missouri. Tasha Haas writes fiction and teaches English, creative writing and children's literature at Kansas City Kansas Community College. She has more than twelve years experience teaching at the university level, and has also conducted workshops in fiction, poetry, and experimental writing at local arts centers, public libraries, and elsewhere. She taught fiction writing as an adjunct instructor at the University of Kansas for eight years, and has also worked free-lance as an editor and writing consultant on novel, memoir, non-fiction, and poetry manuscripts. In addition to her new book, Certain Dawn, Inevitable Dawn, published by Woodley Press in December 2010, Tasha's writing has been published in several literary magazines including Conjunctions, Coal City Review, Flint Hills Review, South Dakota Review, Stickman Review, and elsewhere. She earned her M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Bowling Green State.

This event features music by Run Little Rabbit.

What: Riverfront Readings featuring Philip Stephens and Tasha Haas When: Friday, March 9th, 8:00 PM Where: The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania, KCMO

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March 2012 Riverfront Readings at The Writers Place

In an about-face, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said Saturday that he was sorry for lambasting as a "prostitute" a Georgetown University law student who spoke publicly in favor of the Obama administration's policy on contraception coverage.

Limbaugh published the apology on his website, a day after President Barack Obama telephoned the student, Sandra Fluke, to say he stood by her in the face of personal attacks on right-wing radio. The apology came as several advertisers said they were leaving the program.

"For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke," he wrote. He then reiterated his opposition to the Obama administration policy, which requires health insurance plans to cover contraceptives for women.

On the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday editions of his show, Limbaugh attacked Fluke, alleging she was sexually promiscuous, politically motivated and "an anti-Catholic plant."

Fluke had testified to congressional Democrats in support of their national health care policy that would compel her college to offer health plans that cover her birth control.

"My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir," Limbaugh said on his website. "I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices."

Attempts to reach

Fluke had been invited to testify to a House committee about her school's health care plan, which does not include contraception. Republican lawmakers barred her from testifying during that hearing, but Democrats invited her back and she spoke to the Democratic lawmakers at an unofficial session.

The issue has been debated in the presidential race, with Republican candidates in particular criticizing the Obama plan's requirements for employers such as Catholic hospitals. Democrats - and many Republican leaders, too - have suggested the issue could energize women to vote for Obama and other Democrats in November.

Limbaugh was not swayed by Fluke's statements before the House panel.

Read more:
Limbaugh apologizes for string of 'insulting word choices'

CFOs are a pretty conservative lot, when it comes to the march of investor relations toward social media. In the case of one relatively new type of dissemination --- video --- to get out the word about that most sensitive of disclosures --- an earnings restatement --- it seems it may pay to stick with the good old press release.

"Announcing a restatement online via video is likely to benefit firms only when top management apologizes for the restatement and accepts responsibility by making an internal attribution for the error," according to a study in the March/April issue of The Accounting Review. "When management apologizes but denies responsibility by making an external attribution," the study goes on, "announcing a restatement online via video is likely to have unintended negative effects on investors."

The results in the magazine, published by the American Accounting Association, may not be too surprising. After all, as the AAA says in a press release, that "for all its vaunted powers, video can present special hazards for a company when those powers are most needed -- namely when there is bad news to report."

Digging Into the Details

But the degree of work that went into the research, and some of the details with in the findings, are worth considering.

"Managing the response of investors to events as negative as restatements is a formidable undertaking. Doing so via video over the Internet makes it all the more formidable," according to Frank D. Hodge of the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, who carried out the study with W. Brooke Elliott of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Lisa M. Sedor of DePaul University.

The study -- titled "Using Online Video to Announce a Restatement: Influences on Investment Decisions and the Mediating Role of Trust" -- note that the General Accountability Office has estimated that restatements reduced market capitalization of companies by $36 billion over a three-year period.

Restatements have a long tradition of causing difficulties for investors -- a tradition that grew along with the number of restatements in the years after Sarbanes-Oxley took effect a decade ago.

The study in The Accounting Review, however, makes a start at quantifying the damage, both in cases of the company taking responsibility, and cases of it placing responsibility elsewhere. Asked to gauge the trustworthiness of CEOs accepting responsibility via video for their companies' flawed financial statements, for example, professional managers gave the CEOs an average rating of 6.15 on a one-to-seven scale (with seven being highest.) Asked to rate a chief who blames external accountants, the managers bestowed an average of 4.0.

Admitting Versus Ducking

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YouTube No Substitute to Press Release to Restate Earnings