St. Patrick's Day quake strikes L.A. (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly  UPDATED

VIDEO: FOX News' local L.A. affiliate  gets hit by quake while mocking leprechauns

KTLA Channel 5 News anchors Chris Schauble and Megan Henderson dive under their Hollywood prop desk when a 4.4-4.7 earthquake rumbles through Los Angeles. Then to add insult to injury, safety-minded Schauble is mocked mercilessly by his children when he gets home.

The mischievous leprechauns are upset (SB)

A large quake struck Los Angeles at 6:25 am on March 17, 2014 just as St. Paddy's Day celebrations were being prepared for throughout the city. While earthquakes are happening everyday, California has recently been struck by a large offshore temblor (a 6.8 or 6.9) and many minor aftershocks. This was only a 4.7 centered near Westwood, site of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus. [The Shamrock Shake has now been downgraded to 4.4 and relocated closer to Encino. But the sort of scale still in use to measure seismic activity during monster movements is more misleading than a leprechaun's charm! A 7.0 is 10 times more powerful than a 6.0, for example.] See more from the US Geological Survey stationed in Pasadena at Caltech: earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes

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  Imp (thenewwildgeese.com)

  VIDEO: Mocking leprechauns, FOX News hit by large quake
• Leprechauns: Facts about the Irish trickster fairy (Live Science.com) Leprechauns are a type of fairy, though it's important to note that the fairies of Irish folklore were NOT cute Disneyfied pixies; they could be lustful, nasty, capricious creatures whose magic might delight you one day and kill you the next if you displeased them.
• Does morning quake mark end to LA's quake "drought"?

Mainstream Media: "Shadows of Liberty" (video)

Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; DemocracyNow.org; ShadowsOfLiberty.org

Freedom of speech? Not in mainstream

The documentary "Shadows of Liberty" had a very quiet US premiere at the National Conference for Media Reform in Denver. The mainstream media made sure of that. Using individual cases of journalists whose attempts to tell startling stories about why things really happen only to be muzzled by corporations and the US government, the film shows how a corporate-controlled media silences the truth about issues ranging from war to labor abuses. In one instance, CBS refused to re-air an investigation by the prize-winning journalist Roberta Baskin on Nike's use of sweatshop labor in Vietnam.

 
Democracy Now! (SoundCloud, Twitter: @democracynow) is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on more than 1,100 TV and radio stations. Help support.

National Conference for Media Reform

LONDON - WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief Julian Assange, CorpWatch's executive director P. Chatterjee, documentary filmmaker Jean-Philippe Tremblay, and the Bertha Foundation's director of legal advocacy Jen Robinson discuss disintegrating press freedoms in the mainstream media following the private UK premiere of SHADOWS OF LIBERTY. This powerful documentary takes an intrepid journey through the dark corridors of the American corporate media landscape, where global media conglomerates exercise extraordinary political, social, and economic power. They have the power to make war, prevent peace, and affect policies of every kind. The overwhelming collective power of these firms raises troubling questions about democracy.
 
The film features Danny Glover, Amy Goodman, Julian Assange, Dan Rather, Daniel Ellsberg, David Simon, Roberty McChesney, Roberta Baskin, and Dick Gregory, among others. Get involved in media reform; subscribe to newsletter or follow on Facebook (Shadows of Liberty -Movie) and Twitter (@Shadows_Doc).

• VIDEO: Honest Israeli talks about Israel/Palestine