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Republican Sex scandals old and new: The NeoCons Gaslight America. Why America and journalism needs standards

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In September of the same year, 1999, I received a call from Morgan. We had not talked in two years. She said she wanted to repair our relationship. I told her that depended on her telling me the truth about what had happened previously. John Fund came up. During the conversation Morgan told me she had aborted John's child. I refused to believe her. We were arguing about that when she received another call and put me on hold. I was on hold for a long time and hung up and called her back several times. That is the BEEPING on the transcript. Morgan did not answer but eventually she called me back and said, "Don't say anything, just listen," I did.

The Weasel Search Tape is ugly. Ignore the personal implications and look at what Fund is doing. Fund characterizes their relationship as a one-night stand, something that is obviously not true given the duration of the relationship even in 1999.. But Fund knew how to use lies, his political connections and the media to alter public perception. Over the next several years we were subject to ongoing assaults on our character and on every other part of our lives.

The term for this kind of manipulation carried out personally is Gas Lighting. In Effect, the NeoCons are Gas Lighting America.

In 2001 - 2002 Fund battered my daughter, nearly killing her. I was a witness over the phone; I saw her injuries. Silencing us became a political issue using political contacts and the media. Over the next several years period Fund persuaded Eric Alterman to write his attack on Morgan and myself. That appeared in The Nation. Mark Crispin Miller responded. Two other stories that might have told the truth were killed. The reporters received better paid jobs at the Wall Street Journal.

Fund used his influence to get Wendy McElroy, a woman who had made her living defending those guilty of various offenses, including domestic violence, a job at Fox as a columnist. She wrote an article supporting Fund in July of 2003.

Fund used a woman law professor from San Diego with whom he was having an affair to send out a letter, broadcast to journalists. The woman's name is Gail Hariot. Hariot put up a site for Fund as well while they were having an affair. The affair is documented by a letter Fund received on Morgan's computer while she and Fund were still living together.

The Society of Professional Journalists has a list of tenets, outlining the ethical obligations of journalists.

The events above would not have taken place if the tenets for professional journalism had been followed. The same lack of accuracy enables the NeoCons with Foley. None of the journalists involved except Miller followed these protocols outlined for professionals as specified by the Society of Professional Journalists

    - Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.
    - Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing.

To evade such standards NeoCons brought a constellation of nonprofits into existence, including the Federalist Society and the National Journalism Center. Their think tanks work hand and hand with these. In law, in journalism, and in politics, the NeoCons have worked to build their own institutions that allow them to change the rules of operation that were respected and adhered to by most professionals. They are treated as colleagues even though they distort professional standards. That is a mistake.

The National Journalism Center is the child of M Stanton Evans of Evans and Novak. John Fund was placed at the Wall Street Journal by Robert Novak in 1983, Novak is now generally understood to be a NeoCon himself.

The NJC is a project of the Young Americans Foundation and celebrates its stars, for instance Anne Coulter , David Horowitz and John Fund. On their links page you will find the Society of Professional Journalists. Evidently the standards for ethics are not enforced in journalism today. Each of these prominent graduates engages in the same pattern of unethical behavior.

Understanding the strategy used in Project Arkansas, an operation I first encountered through the lies Fund planted with me, and now with the Mark Foley event, which parallels that used against us, is the first step to enabling change. These are weapons of war, not to be confused with professional associations; their graduates must carefully watched since NeoCon political operatives come, in large part from their ranks.

The next means for countering the assaults on justice and our freedom is objective journalism. On the Internet an alternative media is coalescing and following the standards abandoned by the mainstream media. In the 60s underground papers rose to confront an establishment who had eliminated the voice of dissent and truth. Bloggers have become the first line of defense for the war on truth.

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Melinda Pillsbury-Foster is the author of GREED: The NeoConning of America and A Tour of Old Yosemite. The former is a novel about the lives of the NeoCons with a strong autobiographical component. The latter is a non-fiction book about her father (more...)
 
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