[Media-watch] New at ColdType

[Tony Sutton]

COLDTYPE.NET  - September 2004

EXCLUSIVE ­ A 54-page free E-Book
WAR OF WORDS
An excerpt from Chris Cobb¹s new book,
EGO and Ink - The Inside Story of Canada¹s
National Newspaper War
Chris Cobb¹s widely-praised new book Ego And Ink chronicles the creation and
launch of Conrad Black¹s National Post and the subsequent vicious newspaper
war  in Canada between the Post, the venerable Globe and Mail and the
Toronto Star.  Ego And Ink details a circulation battle in which millions of
newspapers were either given away or sold well below cost in cut price
subscription deals. Together, it cost the three newspapers more than $1
billion to articifially inflate their circulation figures.
Find WAR OF WORDS at http://www.coldtype.net
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Plus Two More Perceptive - and Funny - essays from JOE BAGEANT
DRIVING ON THE BONES OF GOD
It is 7 am, already hot as hell and another code red day. I am cresting
Mount Weather on Route 7 Virginia, driving into the face of a blood red sun
behind a pink sticky haze that makes commuting so ghostlike here during the
dog days of August. The code red is an atmospheric pollution rating, not a
Homeland Security alert. It means the air is not safe to breathe unless you
have to. 
Beneath the sandwich and cigarette wrappers on the floor of my truck,
beneath the road and down hundreds of feet within the earth a hidden city
awaits the Apocalypse: an underground city with apartments and dormitories,
cafeterias, a hospital and its own transit system ­ a battery powered
subway. It has TV communication, streets and sidewalks, a water purification
system, power plant and general office buildings. A small lake fed by fresh
underground springs ripples in its artificial lighting.
Ever since the Eisenhower administration, this has been the designated place
where the most important people in government will go in a nuclear emergency
or national disaster. Mount Weather is the hub of a nerve center of about
100 other Federal Relocation Centers, which guarantee that the really big
players in the game will escape, asses intact, even the worst disasters they
manage to create. In every likelihood, this ³undisclosed location² sheltered
Dick Cheney during 911. Employees say so, anyway.
Find DRIVING ON THE BONES OF GOD at http://www.coldtype.net

SLEEPWALKING TO BABYLON
In the war on terror, FBI agents at Norfolk, Virginia, airport took anal
swabs from a mechanical farting dog to make sure it didn¹t contain
explosives . . .
Each workday I commute toward Washington D.C. along Route 7, where patriotic
war slogans are spray painted on the overpasses, and homemade signs jut from
the median in support of our ³boys in Iraq .² Mud-splattered construction
trucks rip by with frayed flags popping in the wind, loaded with burly
bearded men and looking very much like the footage of Afghanistan or Angola,
minus the 50 caliber gun mounts.
Yesterday I saw my first stretch Hummer, painted in desert tan and carrying
half a dozen soccer mom types, which rather sums up the point I am trying to
make here. There is a distinct martial ethos, the tang of steel and the
smell of gun oil in the air around Washington these days, I swear it. Only a
blind microcephalic could fail to notice this systemic militarization of the
American culture, and the media¹s hyper-escalation of warrior worship.
Find SLEEPWALKING TO BABYLON at http://www.coldtype.net
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And don't miss our regular updates from ColdType's columnists, John Pilger,
Norman Solomon, Michael I. Niman, Uri Avnery and George Monbiot; and in our
OtherVoices section
Find ColdType columnists at http://www.coldtype.net

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