Editor:

            In regards to the September 28, 2007 issue, I felt mislead by your cover story — Rice: Find cleaner fuels Sec. of State urges countries to fight greenhouse gases. If it were framed in a more proper context, the article might have informed consumers of the Statesboro Herald that Condoleezza Rice served on Chevron’s Board of Directors from 1991-2001 or that Chevron even named an oil tanker after her until she assumed her previous position as National Security Advisor and Chevron thought it best to change the name.

            Your article might have mentioned Rice’s famous ‘mushroom cloud’ warning in 2003 or the WMD warnings of her colleague Dick Cheney, CEO of the world’s largest oil field services company from 1995-2000, in the time leading up to the invasion of Iraq and how those warnings served as a false pretext for the invasion of a nation possessing the world’s third largest reserves of petroleum.

            The article was purchased from the Associated Press, I noticed, but that fails to justify your distribution of such an irresponsible heap of words. The blatant hypocrisy inherent in the title – Rice: Find cleaner fuels Sec. of State urges countries to fight greenhouse gases comes as no surprise, though, when I reflect upon the current poor state of journalism in this nation and around the world, much of which is a result of large reliance upon organizations such as the AP that have been infiltrated by oil interests and other industrial interests of the world’s power elite.

            No matter the validity of the quotes and facts reported in AP articles, it is the manner in which their news is framed that’s deeply flawed. The AP lacks a grasp on the wider picture of U.S. foreign policy and as a result, the U.S. citizenry, I feel, doesn’t even seem to realize that we’re living in an imperial nation — a mere extension and repeat of British colonialism. And those at the apex of power within our government don’t care about fighting greenhouse gases but care for filling their pockets with blood-stained dollar bills.

            So, in closing, I ask that those at the Statesboro Herald do more than just support the status quo that’s been set by other incompetent rags across the nation. ‘Knowledge is Power’ as the saying goes, and you have the power to influence what people know, to spread light upon the injustices of the world and to raise the bar for what it means to inform the masses.

Matthew Mannila