If anything illustrates the woeful state of the media and that the slashing of staff on an already dying print publication industry-it has to be the huge scam perpetuated by the right-wing which BR inadvertently reported was a huge rally of a million people in Washington apparently being ignored by the press.

I thought the claim was quite ridiculous (no fault to BR) but the very idea that a million could gather in Washington in one spot was patently ridiculous without a huge pre-planned organisation.

Toilet facilities alone would make this an impossibilty-unless the streets of Washington were running like a sewer..the traffic jams would have had the city impossible to enter.(how many buses would be needed to transport them there-or did they all walk ?)

But the New York Times went right ahead a published a photo that was an obvious fake.

This is an endicment upon the state of the US media-once the very best on the planet. American publications were noted for the large "fact checking" departments were a story would never appear in print unless every detail from numbers of people, spellings of names, dates and so on were doubled checked.

I rate this tale of the ridiculous felling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Bahgdad shortly after the Iraq War began. It smelt fishy to me and yet most of the world's media camped out in the hotel opposite went along with the complete lie and the photo-shopped pics that appeared that showed the same sets of people over and over again..with pics cropped to depict what was in fact a huge empty square with about 30 Iraqis bussed in by US troops to stage the phoney pic.
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The New York Times reported that "thousands" of protesters "filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall," while Fox News wrote that "tens of thousands" marched on Washington.

And from CNN: "The march leading to the Capitol stretched for blocks on the final day of the Tea Party Express' cross-country bus tour, which began August 28 in Sacramento, Calif. En route, the group hosted rallies in about 30 cities. An official crowd estimate was not available, but reporters at the scene described the massive crowd as reaching the tens of thousands."

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There's another big problem with the photograph: it doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Also worth noting are the cranes in front of the Natural History Museum (the second building from the lower left of the National Mall). According to Randall Kremer, the museum's Director of Public Affairs, "The last time cranes were in front was in the 1990s....

It appears that the photo was actually taken in 1997 at a rally for Promise Keepers, a group for Christian men. According to the group’s Web site, nearly 1 million people attended the event. Photos of the Oct. 4, 1997, event that were posted on various Web sites in 2003, 2008 and earlier this year show either the same picture or a similar photo that has identical tents and what appear to be TV screens in the same locations.

Conservative bloggers who originally posted the picture have backed down.

www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/stateme...ons-tea-party-prote/

Actually I never saw that photo.

I saw the time release video made by someone on ATS which clearly shows over 1.5 million at the event.

This "you have been had" story is in fact true - the photo was from a Christian event in the 1990s but was not carried by ANY of the Conspiracy Sites.

This is an attempt by OBAMA to save his skin - and VERITAS - you have in fact fallen for it.

Go to Abover Top Secret and look for the orginal thread where the time lapse video is. That was shot on Saturday and all the Still Photos come from that one which is in the air at the mid point where the march marched past.

There is a Propaganda War going on in the USA because OBAMA is so frightened of the massive opposition to him which is growing daily. His approval rating has fallen to below that of BUSH in the USA.

I fear that CIVIL WAR is really possible in some parts of the USA because of the poverty. They dont have a great benefit system like we have - people over there are living on the streets in their cars. SKY and FOX have covered many of these stories.

Several states are about to go under on 30 September in the USA - I have already posted about one state closing all its library provision from Oct 2nd. Cafornia has had to hold a GARAGE sale of equipment just to pay some wages. Central Government in the USA has run out of money.

This march was about the Finance Disaster - it will happen in the UK once BROWN announces the MASSIVE CUTS that will happen. He needs to save £90 billion a year to cover the interest ( BBC Newsnight ) that is alot of cuts.

The TUC have said there will be rioting in the streets when these cuts happen - so I am not laughing at the USA - it will be just as bad for us early next year when our financial year comes to an end.

High Streets in the UK are collapsing around us. Even live music is having to go free at grass roots level because venues have been empty all summer - many festivals have gone under as well unless they are established.

BROWN - BLAIR and BUSH have destroyed the World economy. We are now limping along. The worst is yet to come.

Don't get me wrong BR-I agree with most of what you say. My comment is more about the nature of the US media and the idea that the NYTimes would publish such a fraudulent photo which they never would have 10-15 years ago.

Then again they allowed Judith Miller to ramp up the Iraq War insanity on completely bogus interviews etc.

I was appalled when Clinton began the decimation of welfare in the USA by limiting it to 2 years in total in a lifetime. Welfare payments were in fact much higher than UK rates and that's always been one of the biggest jokes about so-called "capitalism"-the USA has never had it. It's been as socialist as much of Europe certainly since FDR's New Deal which ushered in the greatest era of prosperity the USA has ever seen.

Now it's been dismantled from Reagan onwards via Bush/Clinton/Bush and the juries out on Obama.

As for Nu Labour-it's Thatcherism on steroids and has been the greatest disaster for Britain since the bombs of WW2.

I'm not sure if David Letterman is screened in the UK but Tony Blair was on the other night..I reckon he's barking mad..his eyes glisten with insanity.

The US "establishment" has always been out to destroy FDR's legacy who they viewed as total class traitor yet he was the most beloved of all US presidents.

Veritas is correct for the reasons stated - it was a scam. Just try and google some of the march's details; you won't get them!

High Streets in the UK are collapsing. Several US states are about to go under...........says BR.

Yes, there is a world wide recession. But BR's warnings (albeit with sprinklings of fact) are OTT ane becoming tedious.

A friend of mine who lives in Washington was surprised to hear about this massive rally of over 1m people, and he wonders how such an event took place under the noses of a population which didn't see it. He pointed out that there would be widespread trafic chaos, a huge increase in litter and human toiletry needs, and a boom in local food sales. You could not fail to notice such a rally, but apparently people did.

Something's not quite right about the story.