Freeze Frame

Why Occupy Wall Street? Ask Orwell.

2011-10-18T15:24:00.000-04:00

By Jamie York

Why occupy Wall Street? Well, the short answer is that corporations have overthrown the United States. I had a teacher in middle school who spoke about the dangers of monopolies and how concentrated corporate ownership resembled a dictatorship. She was right. The richest one percent control trillions of dollars.

The more entrenched corporate conglomerates become in the systems of power, the harder it is to remove them. They control production, transportation and distribution of essential consumer goods and they have created a system to manipulate markets, create shortages, raise demand, raise prices, and avoid federal taxes. They WANT to tank the economy, and natural disasters, terrorism, and prolonged economic downturns help them do just that. It gives them the opportunity to privatize with impunity and create special emergency rules to speed up the process. They can keep people so afraid of losing their jobs that they are willing to accept wage and benefit cuts. New Orleans after Katrina was a test case for them. Huge federal disaster payments went to Halliburton and other contractors and sub-contractors, leaving nothing left for people to rebuild homes and small businesses. The money did not stay in the community where it was most needed, but lined the pockets of the rich and super-rich, the same people who want us engaged in permanent warfare and keep going back to Congress for more and more money under the pretense of stopping terrorism. The rich are not content with being rich; they want ALL the money. They want TOTAL control. They want a corporate dictatorship, a subservient, dependent citizenry where dissent can be easily crushed. They want Orwell's 1984 to become reality while they sit back on private islands, sipping Daiquiris and enjoying their riches while the majority of humanity goes hungry and suffers from curable diseases.

Corporations, like big banks, media and cable networks, weapons manufacturers, drug companies, agribusiness, oil companies, and so forth, are all owned by just a few conglomerates with widespread influence in elections, court decisions and policy. Corporate cash is funneled into the electoral system through paid lobbyists. And money buys policy. If corporations do not want their activities regulated, then they lobby the candidates and corporate-friendly judges who support their positions. Huge dollars are spent on our elections and the money trail remains a secret. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are equal to persons, with the same rights, even though real people cannot ever be equal to a corporation. This status gives them the Constitutional protection of citizens, but without any accountability or culpability. The result is that only one dominant message gets heard in the media and those who challenge corporatism openly are portrayed as kooks, as irresponsible trouble-makers who should shut up and buy things on credit, who should not complain about gas prices, relentless TV drug advertising, genetic tampering with the food supply, global warming, and the lack of diverse educational programming that Americans need to become informed citizens and voters. Americans are no longer aware of their own history as a people and nation because history is being transformed and scrubbed clean of dissent, of racism, of unions, of genocide, of imperialism. This is no accident. The most wealthy, powerful people in the country want people to have mindless entertainment, sports, comedy, games -- anything to keep them from learning, from organizing and challenging the huge and rapidly growing gap between rich and poor. Their advocates lobby that the history books and literature books used in schools should omit references to genocide against Indians, slavery, mass movements, labor strikes, and war dissent. By revising and erasing history, corporations believe they can better control people. If people do not learn about the reasons for a Bill of Rights, then those rights will not be missed as they are systematically eliminated by the courts.

Privatization of government services is a big theme in the mass media, although they call it "smaller government." A lot of news pundits talk about vouchers for charter schools, privatizing prisons, eliminating so-called state unions so teachers, nurses, police, firefighters, corrections officers, an so on, cannot negotiate for health and pension benefits or for matters concerning seniority and working conditions. Privatization means large transfers of public money to corporations. The Bush tax cuts and corporate bailouts were also huge transfers of wealth. The rich and super-rich, who have been shaking down consumers for years with little organized opposition, are emboldened by this and want as much public money as they can get their greedy paws on. Occupy Wall Street is a growing worldwide movement to challenge them.

The rich and super-rich do not pay taxes like working families do. Corporations not only use their political power to lobby Congress and get corporate-friendly laws on the books, but they own public relations firms to sugarcoat everything they do, including tax cuts and loopholes. "Oh, but we will create jobs. Give us the money. Trust us." Once they get the money they invest it overseas or hoard it. They have plenty of money to pay American workers a living wage, but corporate law states that they must make a profit for shareholders. This is their excuse for going overseas where they pay low wages without benefits or pesky environmental and safety regulations. And they do so without penalties of any kind, not even high import tariffs to bring their products back into the US. Strict regulations are necessary to control runaway capitalism, but there must also be enforcement and high fines and penalties to keep corporations in check. This is for the benefit of the majority of citizens, for the common good.

Corporations, with their media and public relations influence, helped instill in citizens a false idea that capitalism and democracy are the same thing. They aren't. Capitalism is an economic system, which can exist with a variety of social systems, but often requires use of force as it expands or if it feels threatened. Democracy, however, is an all-inclusive social system in which decisions are made by the majority of people acting in the common good and respecting the rights of the minority.

Why occupy Wall Street? Because we need a voice in what kind of a world we want to live in. Do we want to keep funding endless foreign wars or bring that money home and use it to create jobs? To create a single payer, cradle-to-grave health care system where every citizen is in and no one is out? This can be done by replacing the for-profit insurance mafia and by expanding Medicare to include dental and eye care. Do we want a safe, regulated food supply or are we OK with being Guinea pigs for untested, unlabeled genetically enhanced agricultural products engineered to increase yields and profits for the biotech seed industry? Do we want continued deregulation, or should we eliminate the Federal Reserve, the IMF and end unfair trade agreements like GATT and NAFTA? Should we re-regulate with tough new standards, stiff penalties and high import taxes for American companies that have taken our jobs overseas? Should we create a system of fair trade and hold corporations accountable when they break the rules? Should we eliminate private campaign funding and replace it with public funding, where candidates get fixed travel expenses and equal television and radio time to explain their positions?

Why occupy Wall Street? Because Wall Street has failed us on many levels, dangling high interest credit card applications like candy to a populace already saddled with unrealistic mortgages, low wages, high prices, and a lack of relief organizations to help people. ACORN was one of those relief organizations, set up by a fake journalist with a video camera and vilified by a bandwagon news media that reported the story and showed edited film, but did not do the independent reporting necessary for the truth to be told. And now ACORN is gone, no longer able to perform its humanitarian mission to serve the poor. Will private companies step up to perform the grassroots "boots on the ground" work in poor communities? Don't bet on it. Unless more liquor stores and Wal-Marts are considered relief organizations. Churches might help some by providing clothing and meals, but that is not enough.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a worldwide movement a long time in the making. The movement has either been ignored in the corporate media altogether or has been portrayed as a violent fringe movement. Now that it has spread to dozens of US cities and hundreds worldwide, the media are reporting on it some, but nothing compared to OJ, war cheerleading, and royal weddings. OWS became energized recently when Egyptians camped out for days in Tahir Square and brought down the Mubarak regime. It was a high-tech revolution with an outcome far from certain, but it was an inspiration to the millions of human beings who now desire a democratic, fair, equitable economic system. If violence takes place here or there, it is typically a reaction to police-state tactics that the rich and super-rich have in the past had no qualms about requesting. And political officials, loyal servants of the military/media/industrial complex, dutifully comply with requests for police or National Guard to move in on one pretext or another.

Why occupy Wall Street? Ask Orwell.

MSNBC full of crap about Libya

2011-04-02T13:23:00.004-04:00

MSNBC is so full of crap about Libya as a humanitarian mission. It's about oil, not Libyan freedom. China is far worse for repression, yet it floods our markets with cheap consumer goods and funds our huge debts from war spending and tax cuts for the rich, so we just turn our heads about repression in China. What hypocrites! It makes no difference which corporate political party occupies the White House, for the pandering to Big Oil continues unchecked. Of course, this is nothing new. Expansion and private control of resources has been our shameful legacy ever since Columbus set foot in the hemisphere. This is no way to share a fragile planet.

The Corporate Attack on Unions and Collective Bargaining

2011-03-02T16:02:00.001-05:00

By Jamie York

Corporations – emboldened by a 2010 Supreme Court ruling allowing them unlimited spending in U.S. elections, and bolstered by a pro-corporate Congress – are now poised to eliminate the right of union workers to bargain collectively for fair wages and benefits.

The right to strike is embedded in the American psyche. Americans overwhelmingly support the right to negotiate a fair contract for wages and benefits. Without such protection, employers can impose any hours they wish, hire and fire at will, and pay starvation wages with no health or retirement benefits whatsoever.

And this is their goal. Corporate lobbyists and their mouthpieces in Congress and the media know full well what the impact of the actions will be on U.S. elections. Without dues collected from unions, financial support for Democrats and Independents would drop, thereby providing Republican corporatists and Teabaggers with a better chance at victory. Deny the opposition campaign money. This is behind the attack on unions and you can bet that corporate strategist Karl Rove is the man behind the curtain.

The corporate media are framing this issue in Wisconsin and Ohio as “budget battles.” State union workers are portrayed as greedy and lazy even though their unions have voluntarily allowed wage reductions, benefit reductions, higher insurance costs, and fewer vacation and sick days for their members. Unions, responding to take it or leave offers from the states and private employers have often allowed these giveaways out of fear that they would lose their jobs if they did not cave in to their demands. But the media do not talk about this. Once collective bargaining is repealed and the contracts expire in a year or two, state workers and their families will be at the mercy of their state. States will be able to hire and fire at will, eliminate health plans entirely and pay minimum wage. More and more people will lose their homes when they cannot pay their mortgages or medical bills. Crime will go up and more prisons will have to be built.

All of this is wrong on so many levels. First, the attack on collective bargaining violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. People have the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Union contracts are bargains reached between employer and employees. They serve as a petition for a redress of grievances. If an agreement cannot reached, the union may vote to go on strike as an incentive for the grievance (bargaining) process to start anew. It makes no difference if the employer is the federal government, the state, or a private employer.

The attack on unions is also immoral and unethical. Hardworking teachers, firefighters, police, and a multitude of state construction and clerical workers, are all in a life-or-death struggle over collective bargaining. That is what this is. It is about livelihood versus bankruptcy. From being able to just make ends meet to being unable to afford life’s necessities. People who call themselves Christians cannot justify their faith if they also support the state imposing its will on the people. What would Jesus do, you ask? Would he support the imposing Goliath or the meek David? I’ll bet there are a lot of creative answers to this question in an attempt to reconcile oneself with the corporate overthrow of the United States.

Folks, this is Hitler’s dream. He envisioned a world of “state socialism,” a world in which the corporations, not central governments, make the rules of society. He was a big believer in unrestrained, unregulated, worldwide capitalism and many of his followers today do not even realize they are followers. But you can bet Hitler’s views live within today’s corporatists and their lobbyists and congressional lackeys.

So how can we “fix” the supposed budget deficits all the Teabaggers are whining about. First, end the Bush tax cuts on the rich. This will create revenue, a term that most Teabaggers do not understand because they are versed in the language of corporatism. Second, bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and use that money to help the states. There, the budget problem is solved. But leave the unions, the right to strike, and collective bargaining alone ye conniving bastards!

Insurance Lobby Media Strategy: Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

2009-08-02T09:05:00.000-04:00

By Jamie York

Bill Clinton told columnist Joe Klein that the biggest mistake he made with his health care reform proposal was his support for universal coverage (Time, 8/10/09, p. 35.). The insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists were ruthless and had a well-directed campaign against universal coverage. Clinton was blindsided and had thought he had no choice but to cower and try to sneak away from the fight as the lobbyists got their message across in the media while the voices of single payer advocates were drowned out. While Clinton may think that advocating single payer insurance was a mistake, I think it was his finest hour. His mistake was not that he supported single payer, but that he failed to stand up for single payer as logical and viable. He didn’t even try to fight the insurance lobby. “Hillary, “ he cried, “help me Hillary!” And so the insurance industry reformed itself and “managed care” came into being. At that time there were 33 million people without health coverage and today there are 47 million. So much for reform.

Today, as we witness the political fight over Obama’s health reform plan, it is clear that the insurance company lobbyists do not want any health care reform. Period. These companies pay out millions to get their point of view heard in the mass media, using any scare tactics they can think of. They are against Obama’s plan because they may lose some of their profits if the government insurance option turns out to be better and more affordable than their profit taking system. Obama, while admitting that single payer makes the most sense, turned against his senses and decided to play politics and get what he can get.

I am glad that the American colonists did not simply decide to get what they could get from the British occupiers. They declared their independence and fought for what they wanted. We don’t have the fight in us anymore, I guess. We send our kids off to die in foreign nations while the military contractors reap millions in profits. We sit and watch TV as one constitutional right after another is systematically rendered obsolete by imperial presidents like George W. Bush. We watch events unfold in news soundbytes not in in-depth discussion. If even half of us one day decided to skip work until we have single payer health care, we would have it. No question about it. Compared with the 19th and 20th century fight for better wages, shorter workdays, and for the right to organize labor unions, a general strike is about as American as you can get. Political divisions keep us from communicating and organizing, but when we get to the point where we see ourselves as human beings in a common struggle for things that make sense, for programs that work for the common good and general welfare, then we will begin to communicate with each other. There comes a point where the common good of the people must take precedence over unregulated profit taking. Health care is a birthright.

The insurance company lobby money is paying for a major PR campaign now under way to scare gullible seniors into thinking that the government will have them put to death if they have a terminal illness. This line is being spread around by the conservative bloggers and radio and TV hosts -- the usual unreliable suspects in the media. The truth is that Obama has called for more openness in discussing end of life wishes with doctors. Few people make their wishes known in living wills because the end of life options are just not discussed routinely now as they should be. Again, it is just common sense to be prepared so that your family is aware of your wishes, but the insurance lobby is using the old media formula that keeps Americans in tow time and time again -- repetition, repetition, repetition. If you tell a lie often enough and loud enough, it will soon be accepted as the truth. We are so gullible it is pathetic.

Twitter, #iranelection and the pitfalls of Groupthink

2009-06-20T21:35:00.006-04:00

By mediagonebad

While I wholeheartedly support genuine movements for freedom and democracy anywhere in the world, I find it interesting that so many Americans have jumped on the #iranelection bandwagon without taking the time to learn about Iran, its culture, its mullahs (supreme leaders), its wars, and its history with the United States.

Groupthink is a decision-making process that occurs when an idea is put forth and becomes publicly accepted without proof. Groupthink is like an intellectual snowball effect carried from person to person with little, if any, firsthand knowledge or scientific scrutiny. The effect of Groupthink is that it makes the quest for historical truth that much harder when people already accept a given idea as the truth. Ordinarily, one would gather information from first-hand sources, then form an opinion and subject it to examination and reexamination. Groupthink forgoes this process and leads directly to an opinion.

Fact: There has been no vote recount in Iran and the winner of the election is still in dispute. This is really all we can be certain about right now, so I cannot make a valid determination about what is happening in Iran in regard to the election results; rather, this is a quick-and-dirty examination of the process through which unconfirmed information received worldwide attention and force-fed public opinion.

There is some suspicion -- although this idea does not get through in the massive tweets -- that the George W. Bush’s CIA had a hand in supporting Mousavi, who now claims election fraud and victory over Ahmadinejad, even though no proof has been offered that either candidate won the election. The Supreme leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the mullah who has the real power in Iran, quickly declared Ahmadinejad the winner, then Mousavi supporters claimed the election was rigged and demanded a new election. State forces, controlled by Khamenei, then attacked a group of Mousavi supporters and #iranelection became the top trending topic on Twitter.

Twitter, a real-time microblogging site where users publish 140-character tweets that can be read anywhere in the world where someone has an internet connection, including on cell phones, can spread information rapidly. Users can attach links and photos and state a brief opinion. The hashtag #iranelection takes the Twitter users to a page where all of the tweets using that hashtag can be found. I left the page untouched and unrefreshed for just a few minutes and had a backlog of more that 1,000 tweets. It would be impossible for one person to keep up with this amount of information, but it gives you an idea how rapidly information -- true or not -- can be disseminated via Twitter, as well as Facebook and YouTube.

Youtube videos from Iran are often uploaded from cell phone cameras. The videos show various scenes, usually with some kind of action or violence. Sometimes there is Farsi being spoken in the background, but many have no commentary, so the viewer is left to decide what the scene depicts without actually having been there to witness it. Comments are then made about about the video and some people post links to the video on Twitter and Facebook. Once there, the videos receive additional commentary, then are reposted and retweeted countless times. Some are even broadcast via CNN, although, to CNN’s credit, they do say that the information is unconfirmed. Citizen journalism is a powerful tool, but the content must still be judged critically and confirmed.

According to Time Magazine (June 29, 2009), “it is impossible for an outsider, in Iran for 10 days, to sift through the governmental opacity, the contradictory demonstrations, and predict what comes next.” Yet, by reading a few Tweets and turning our icons green, we jump on the Groupthink bandwagon in cheering for Mousavi and “freedom.” But, when pressed, no one seems to know of any reforms Mousavi has advocated. No one seems to know what kind of president he would be or how he would treat his opposition. While Mousavi was Prime Minister, thousands of political prisoners were executed and hundreds of striking workers were jailed or beaten. Has he changed? Will he continue to assert Iran’s right to build a nuclear power reactor in spite of warnings from the United States and Israel? Will he assume more state power now in the hands of the religious mullahs? No one has these answers, but one thing is certain in the wake of the violence: the mullahs will go to great lengths to preserve their power.

Track Dogs

2009-05-03T21:47:00.003-04:00

By mediagonebad

[Occasionally I like to throw in an older piece just to get it into electronic format. These are from the pre-computer days when I used a Royal typewriter.]

Thoreau once wrote: "We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us."

Thoreau's words took on special meaning for me in April 1981, when I was hired as a trackman on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. I was elated. I had a job with good pay and good benefits.

After I had worked five years, however, my elation had turned to bitterness and anger. I no longer cared about the pay and benefits; I just wanted out. Of course, people said I was crazy for wanting to give up "such as good job," but I knew better. I had learned something about people and production and I felt that the C & O had ridden upon me.

For the first couple of years, I worked on an undercutter on my home division between Columbus and Portsmouth, Ohio. An undercutter is basically a large plow. It has hydraulic arms that lift the rails and ties about four feet in the air and then a plow blade is inserted. A powerful winch connected to a one-inch steel cable then pulls the plow, scraping out all of the ballast and dirt. The old, rotten ties are then replaced with new ones and new ballast is dumped on the tracks.

After two years of this, I transferred to the C & O Southern Region Rail Gang, a group of about 75 workers who travel from place to place replacing worn-out rails with quarter-mile strips of "ribbon rail." The transfer meant I would have to travel with the gang and live on the railroad's camp-cars at various sites in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. The first night I was with the gang, near Vanceburg, Kentucky, a co-worker was killed. According to the supervisor, he had been drinking, passed out on a "live" track, then was cut in two when a train came along. The camp-cars at that stop were parked on a side track right next to the main line, so we had to cross over the main line to get to the camp-cars.

The next morning, when we heard the news about the death, the supervisor gave us a speech about safety. Understandably, worker safety is a major concern on the railroad. "Don't crawl under trains" and "Don't step on the rails" were two important rules. Another was "No alcohol, drugs, dogs or women on the camp-cars."

As an incentive to work safely, the supervisor would hand out trinkets -- ink pens, money clips, belt buckles, coffee cups, "safe worker" hats, and the highly coveted C & O rain suits. There were never enough trinkets to go around, so names were drawn out of a hat.

Unfortunately, when a worker claims that he has been injured on the job, none of the foremen or supervisors believe it. Unless the injury is very obvious, like a partial foot amputation or a crushed finger, they try to coerce the employee into admitting he broke a safety rule -- that is, admitting that the injury is his fault, not the railroad's. "Come on, it's not that bad, is it?" "You can work the rest of the day, can't you?" "If you go to the doctor, I'm going to hold a BFI (Board for Investigation) on you for breaking a safety rule." I remember one morning that an employee told a supervisor he couldn't work because he had a bug in his ear. Apparently, a moth had decided to take up residence in one of his ears and would not come out, even after the supervisor poured several cups of water into the guy's ear. Finally, the employee asked to be taken to the hospital to have the bug removed, but the supervisor indicated that he should just keep on working. " You work with a bug in your ear," the employee replied. He was then taken to the hospital and the moth was removed.

It did not take me long to realize that the concept of "worker safety" was a relative term. From the company's perspective, a rail gang is a major expenditure, so the gang is expected to stay on its production schedule. As an incentive to finish jobs ahead of schedule, however, supervisors are given bonuses; the more money they save the company, the larger the bonus.

Supervisors do not live in the tiny camp-car rooms; they stay at motels, sometimes miles away from the camp-cars and the job site. They think nothing of working overtime on a Friday, when the men are eager to get on the road and spend the weekend with their families. Supervisors think nothing about having the men work overtime in thunderstorms or when the rail temperature is 120 degrees and there isn't a drop of drinking water left. All that matters is production. Production first, people last.

One morning, while we were camped along the New River in West Virginia, there was no water left in the water tanker at the camp-cars, yet all of the water coolers had been filled with water. As we were putting bags of ice into the coolers, we noticed that the water was brown. A supervisor had decided that river water was O.K. for us to drink on the job that day. Production first, people last.

A rail gang is essentially a long assembly line and it can spread out for a mile or more. When a worker has to leave his particular job to get a drink of water or use the bathroom, production behind him sometimes comes to a halt until he gets back. The foreman in charge of that section then gets upset because the production line isn't moving. One day I was setting spikes and had to take a shit, so I stopped working and began looking around for an empty spike keg to take into the woods with me. (The C & O did not provide portable toilets at the job site, so the workers had to improvise; empty spike kegs, if the rim is not too jagged, make handy commodes. Luckily, on this particular day, the tracks were in the woods and not out in the open.) When my foreman saw me heading for the woods with the spike keg, he ran after me waving his arms like a madman and screaming that I had to get back to work. I explained to him that I was having a biological emergency and there was nothing I could do, but he didn't believe me. I then offered to bring some back to him on a stick so I could prove it; about 10 minutes later, the foreman saw me come out of the woods with a stick and told me to "get that damn stick outta here."

The C & O supervisors were also good at fascist-style intimidation. One time, at Prince, West Virginia, while the men were at the job site, railroad special agents, accompanied by West Virginia State Policemen and local sheriff deputies, opened or kicked in all doors on the camp-cars and brought in dogs to search for marijuana. They also let the dogs into unlocked private vehicles parked off railroad property along Route 41. No marijuana was found. Another time, near Richmond, Virginia, railroad special agents, along with Virginia State Policemen and Henrico County sheriff deputies raided the camp-cars just as the men returned from the job site and were getting cleaned up for dinner or a night on the town. A couple of employees were later reprimanded after the heavily armed police force found empty beer cans and a small amount of marijuana in their rooms.

Rail gang workers are not criminals. They are working men living away from home, trying to make a living for themselves and their families. The police came in as though they were expecting a battle. In the 19th century, as the railroads were expanding westward with the frontier, the men in rail gangs had a reputation for being hell-raisers. Wherever the gangs went, they became small towns, and drinking, gambling and prostitution were common activities in these rail towns. There was nothing else to do. On the job, these gandydancers (trackmen) were mostly black, Chinese and Irish. The armed foreman thought nothing of killing anyone who got out of line because there was always another worker waiting to take his place.

Today, although the people and control methods have changed, the C & O apparently sees its employees as these 19th century hell-raisers and treats them as second-class citizens. Supervisors in some industries at least try to communicate with employees, let them know what the goals are, and make them feel like they are accomplishing something as part of a team. I'm sure there must be good rail supervisors somewhere, but the ones I met on the C & O did not communicate with the men or talk about what was expected for the day. The supervisors did not honor seniority, but they practiced nepotism and general favoritism. If you were in the clique, they gave you the best assignments; if they had a grudge against you, you were given the worst jobs.

One day, while I had a back injury, I completed my light-duty assignment (cleaning the two bathroom cars) and then I went to a tavern to have a beer. I noticed my supervisor's blue car parked at one tavern, so I went in and found him drinking at the bar. Occasionally, he would pick up his two-way radio and give some instructions to a foreman. The men were working on overtime and he was running the rail gang from a tavern.

That incident stuck a nerve with me. In my experience, there was little job satisfaction because the employees were not encouraged to feel like part of a team -- and here was a supervisor drinking in a tavern while the men were on overtime. If we were hell-raisers, it was because we were treated like dogs by management. If we were hell-raisers, it was because there was little for a group of wound-up working men to do after work at the camp-cars but drink beer, play cards, or sleep.

We were usually camped on coal sidings in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest town, so it was often inconvenient to try to drive anywhere after work. In some areas, it was best to stay near the camp anyway, especially if you were black. One evening, near West Hamlin, West Virginia, I drove to a tavern (called the "White House") after work and found a black co-worker sipping on a beer at the bar. I sat down next to him and ordered a beer for myself. After a while, the bartender leaned over to me and whispered, "You better get your friend outta here." I took a good look around at the other patrons and I knew exactly what he meant. We finished our beers and left.

Sometimes it was even trouble to stay on the camp-cars because the local residents would come to us. The areas we worked in were some of the poorest areas in the United States -- in the heart of Appalachia. While the mountains and rivers along the tracks were beautiful, they were in stark contrast to the tar-paper shacks of the local residents. One evening a woman and a girl approached three or four of us as we sat on the walkway between the camp-cars. The woman was trying to sell her ragged, barefoot daughter, who looked to be eleven or twelve years old. Thirteen would have stretching it. There were no takers in our group, so they continued on to the next car. Who knows, maybe they found a desperate man with nothing else to do that day. On other occasions, I know there were takers.

We were good people in a situation where we had nothing to do in our spare time. Perhaps if the railroad had thought about providing a boxcar with exercise equipment, pinball machines and a Ping-Pong table, and maybe a car with a snack bar and a TV and VCR, it may have been more tolerable. Maybe then we wouldn't have burned those bathroom doors that chilly night near Beckley, West Virginia. Maybe we wouldn't have climbed to the top of that Kentucky coal tipple and fired bottle rockets at the company's dynamite shed. Maybe then the railroad's management style would have seemed more humane. Men without anything to do will find something to do.

I had read Walden before I went to work for the C & O and, after five years, I understood what Thoreau meant. "We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us."

Acknowledgments

Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, (New York: Collier Books, 1978), p. 75.

Restoring Freedom & Democracy post-Bush

2009-05-02T23:36:00.003-04:00

By mediagonebad

It is a matter of public record that in August 2001 George W. Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing stating that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization planned to use jet airplanes as weapons. Did Bush read the report? Did he read it and fail to act upon the information? Did he, by extension, allow 9/11 to happen by not acting upon the information in the PDB?

What would Bush have stood to gain by not acting upon this information, by not beefing up airport security immediately? This would have been the responsible course of action would it not? Well, consider first that the Bush family business is oil and weapons. A president whose family stands to gain financially from war might be less inclined to prevent one. Second, the Bush family world view supports Hitler’s view of unrestricted corporatism.

Under the 8-year Bush/Cheney regime, the United States of America was slowly and methodically overthrown by a small group of economic zealots who believed in the Bush/Hitler view of unrestricted corporatism, a group of zealots who brought the horrific future world foretold in the works of George Orwell to our national doorstep.

The government has spy satellites that can focus on a license plate. It has facial recognition software. It has a computer system that can pick out key words in private telephone conversations and emails, all without our knowledge or consent.

Under the Patriot Act, we allow the government to break into our houses and download our computer files without a warrant under the guise of finding supposed "terrorists." We allow the government access to our library records so it knows who is reading what.

We routinely accept government explanations for world events without even asking questions to determine if the explanations are based on truthful and valid assertions. We allow our government to assert its right to imprison and torture foreign detainees indefinitely as "enemy combatants" even though they have not been charged with any specific crime or act.

We allow our elections to be purchased by the rich and powerful while denying the poor and working class proper access to voting machines. We allow computerized voting that does not even print out a paper record in case a hand re-count is needed.

We allow our government to grant oil, chemical and mining companies access to public lands, where they extract the natural resources with little regard for the long-term environmental impact, water and air pollution, and global warming.

We allow our young soldiers to become occupiers and nation-builders in foreign lands, even though history has shown that such occupations inevitably fail as one oppressor is replaced by another.

And we allow corporate “military contractors” like Haliburton, Blackwater, and dozens of others, to make millions of dollars without any public accountability whatsoever. From kitchens to prisons, corporations have become a huge part of the war business, outnumbering even the “grunts,” the foot soldiers.

The new United States of America under Bush had nothing to do with the principles of freedom and democracy that the nation was founded upon. Rather, the new United States was all about unbridled imperialism, privatization and militarization. Public monies were shifted from the public sector -- which funds education, food programs, jobs programs, health programs and Social Security -- to the private sector, which includes big business, military contractors, big banks, and the stock market. In other words, the people's money was withdrawn from social programs and deposited into the bank accounts of the rich and the super-rich. And the people's money was gambled away in the largest casino in the world -- Wall Street.

This is the reality of the nation as President Barrack Obama was sworn-in, yet some misinformed folks on the far right think of Obama as a “socialist,” and they refer to him as “fascist” because Hitler’s world view is often referred to as “state socialism.” Such terms have so many different meanings that they have now become meaningless without a detailed definition of terms, so it is not surprising that these terms might confuse, say, a FOX News viewer. Scholarly definitions are not used on FOX News. FOX prefers catch-phrases that are easy for their audience to understand and repeat.

Hitler’s imperialist dream foresaw a powerful corporate state where a limited government functions primarily as a servant of the rich and powerful corporations that own the means of production, fund the nation's elections, control the military, and dictate its political decisions. Fascism, also known as “state socialism,” is not to be confused with Karl Marx’s “scientific socialism,” which holds that the people must own and control the means of production and that government must function first and always as a servant of the people. President Obama is a supporter of the capitalist economic system. Marxists are not.

Although the Bush regime is gone, many of its democracy-damaging policies remain in force. Perhaps Obama will overturn these policies, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime, citizens have a responsibility to defend our freedom and democracy. To do that we need to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and bring the troops home. We need to strictly regulate corporations and hold them financially responsible for breaking those regulations. We need to defend the labor unions and progressive organizations that became targeted for extinction under the Bush government.

Our responsibility is immense. Our responsibility extends to all citizens of the world who look to us as a beacon of hope for human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and justice. It we fail, the world fails with us.

We The People: Taxation, Spending, and Big Government

2009-04-20T21:10:00.004-04:00

By mediagonebad

Hardcore free-market Republicans often rail against “big government,” so let’s take a few minutes to figure out what the role of government should be in the United States.

What do we want from the federal government? What do we, as citizens, expect our government to be? What services do we want it to provide on our behalf?

The first thing about government is that we all want it to work for us, not against us. We do not want to be taxed excessively and we do not want to be spied upon like “big brother.” We want our elected officials to serve us honorably and we want our justice system to be fair and equal. I would venture to guess that few Americans would argue with these general points, no matter what their political beliefs.

Now, forget government for a minute. What do American citizens want America to be? Do we want the best health care and education in the world? Do we want retired citizens to have a guaranteed income? Do we want the strongest military in the world? Do we want clean energy? Do we want to do our part to end global warming? Do we want strong bridges? Do we want clean drinking water systems and good sewer systems? Do we want clean air to breathe? Do we want corporations to be able to do whatever they want without accountability or do we want them strictly regulated? Do we want corporations to have the same constitutional rights as individuals? Do we want a safe interstate system without potholes and other hazards? Do we want high-speed rail? Do we want safe food? Do we want equal rights for all, including the right to same-sex marriage? Do we want a minimum wage? Do we want a living wage? Do we want an unregulated mass media, with as few as five conglomerates controlling more than 50 percent of the news we get? Do we want more licenses for low-power radio and television stations? Do we want to permit torture techniques to be used on foreign prisoners? Do we want affordable housing? Do we want to ensure that the unemployed have an income until they find work? Do we want to bailout failing banks and large corporations?

Obviously, this list could go on and on and on, but for our purposes, we will end it here. These questions, when used to decide what role government should play, are where people part ways as Americans and become political opponents. There are those who look at a budget and scream “Pork!” when they see proposals for more unemployment insurance, a raise in the minimum wage, money to repair bridges on secondary highways, housing for the poor, more schools, local water projects, repair of inner city sewer systems, and so forth. Some people believe that the federal government should not be spending money for such things, yet they invariably support unlimited spending for war and preparations for war.

The problem with spending in general is, if we want something, someone has to pay for it. No one these days wants to take responsibility for increasing taxes, so the burden is passed on from the federal government to individual states, counties, cities, towns and villages. Revenue is created by increasing various kinds of taxes -- like fuel taxes, hotel taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, estate taxes, “sin” taxes, and so forth. People who call for no tax increases and limited federal government mean that they do not want to say they support taxes at the federal level. They are not putting the needs of America first, but are playing party politics. They are trying to win House and Senate seats by claiming that they support limited government and no tax increases, but these shady politicians know full well that there will be new taxes at the state and/or the municipal level. Otherwise, the United States would fall apart at the seams. Oh wait, it already is!

It is largely the Republicans who want to be known as the party that believes in limited federal spending and the Democrats who believe the federal government has a responsibility to spend money for things that most Americans want and need. Republicans want to give tax breaks to the rich and super-rich and Democrats want this exclusive group to pay more federal taxes, largely by plugging the loopholes that allow the rich to maintain overseas addresses in order to escape the responsibility of paying federal taxes at all.

The thing that all Americans who have been hoodwinked into narrow thinking by blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly need to be aware of is that taxation is a responsibility of civil society. If we want Social Security to be viable -- and it still is viable right now -- then we need to pay into the system and perhaps even increase the amount of federal withholding for Social Security. Those who call for privatization -- letting people choose to invest in the stock market instead of Social Security -- would ruin one of the best federal programs ever created. The needs of the majority of Americans outweigh the needs of a few rich bankers who would get even richer from privatization. At some point we have to say “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” And we say NO to privatization just as we would say NO to bank bailouts.

That said, we also must be responsible in the way our taxes are used. No question about it. We have to prioritize and plan. We have to save for projects that may not even be completed in our lifetime. For example, America’s infrastructure is old and in need of an upgrade. Many inner city and rural water and sewer systems, subways, bridges, roadways, housing projects, and railroads need replaced as soon as possible. These are long-term projects that may take 50 years or more to complete! Obviously, completing them is in the best interest of every single American, but are a nightmare for selfish politicians who want votes now and do not want to plan for the future or allocate funds for projects that may not be completed while the politician is still alive. America is slowly crumbling away and will continue to do so until citizens find the spine to think collectively and put all politicians on notice that the real needs of America and Americans must come first.

Now, I ask again, what do we want from our federal government? What do we want government to provide on our behalf? Does anyone not see how important the federal government is in our lives? We joke about it all the time -- taxes to study the mating habits of the South American swamp rat, for example -- but it all comes back to needs and priorities. No one wants to pay taxes for useless things and the working class are already taxed to the maximum, so the corporate rich and super-rich need to pay a greater share for the greater overall benefit of society. It is not the size of the federal government that matters, even if the federal government becomes the top employer in the nation and provides new public works jobs to tens of millions. What matters is that OUR federal government serve WE THE PEOPLE. That OUR federal government meets OUR needs -- not the short-term, selfish needs of politicians, political parties, war profiteers, and unscrupulous media commentators.

Why newspapers are relevant

2009-04-19T00:18:00.003-04:00

By mediagonebad

It seems that every new day brings another newspaper failure. So many people are getting their news from television and online sources that newspapers cannot compete. So they reduce the size of the paper, create online content, lay off and furlough employees -- anything to start operating in the black.

In the mid-1970s I was a student at Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood, Colo. Every day at the bus stop I would pick up a copy of the Rocky Mountain News (RMN). Its tabloid format was perfect for spreading out on a table in the student lounge; I even had room on the table for my coffee cup and a snack. The Denver Post, however, was a full-size paper that you had to open up and hold to read, which was more convenient for reading in a doctor’s office or sitting on the toilet.

I would often read the RMN from back to front, paying particular attention to stories buried on the inside. I found that the RMN had the Denver Post beat for the sheer diversity of the news. I found more national and international news in the RMN than I did in the Post and the features were always well-written and well-edited. I was particularly sad when the RMN went under in 2009 and I felt as though a piece of myself went under as well.

What is that attachment to newspapers? Why are readers sad when a paper goes belly up? After all, we pay for the paper, either through subscription or newsstand purchase. Advertising revenue is what keeps papers afloat and subscription and newsstand prices greatly undercut the true cost of the paper. I don’t know the figures, but my 50 cents would likely be $10 a day or more without advertising revenue figured in. How many readers would be willing to spend so much on a newspaper that will just be recycled at the end of the day? Probably none.

What news stories have the editors given us today? Part of the attachment to newspapers is the randomness, the surprise that awaits us as we turn each page. On the front page of the paper, there may be a quick index to the sections, but nothing to tell me what story I might find on page 32. There is nothing to click on and be transported instantly to that particular story. Every turn of the page is a surprise. I did not even know I would find a story about a new labor strike until I turned the page and found that the story impacted my life in some way. “Oh, I know people in that union,” I may have thought. So I read the story. I then contacted a friend and found out more information. An editor of a different paper may have decided not to run this story. The best papers print a diversity of stories simply because they are news. The editors believe in the public’s right to know and do not omit stories just because management or a prominent advertiser may disagree with it politically.

What will happen to news without newspapers, I wonder? Will the newspaper wire services, which still provide stories to all news outlets, still exist? If not, where will the news come from? Who will write it? Will they strive for impartiality or will they let the politics of their employer dictate what they write?

My Rocky Mountain News is gone and I am sad. I am sad not only because of the personal loss I feel, but also because of the loss that we should all feel -- the loss of news diversity. Somehow the void will be filled, but it will not be the same. As you read the packaged news on your Kindle, picking from a list which story you want to read, take a few moments to think about what you have given up for the sake of convenience. Your Kindle gives you content -- and room for your coffee cup -- but fifty cents or a dollar for a newspaper would have given you a surprise on every page. You would have learned something that you did not even realize you wanted to know about. And you can’t put a price on knowledge.

Obama has missed an opportunity to do the right thing on Cuba

2009-04-17T23:05:00.003-04:00

By mediagonebad

Obama’s much anticipated changes to U.S.-Cuba policy have turned out to be much ado about nothing. While changes in family remittances, unlimited travel to and from the island to visit relatives, and increased telecommunications are positive steps, the economic blockade remains intact. The “wet foot/dry foot” policy of instant citizenship for those who make the treacherous 90-mile trip to U.S. soil remains in place, as does the cruel, inhuman policy of using food and medicine as political weapons. So, too, remains the policy of interfering with the right of other nations to do business with Cuba.

Thus far in his presidency, Obama has proven to be a status quo politician interested in propping up capitalist banking and corporate interests while working people take a back seat. On Cuba policy, he is playing south Florida politics very effectively and will likely win some supporters in the next election cycle, but his slogan of “Change We Can Believe In” has been forgotten in regard to Cuba. Supporters of normalizing relations between the U.S. and Cuba must continue to encourage Congress to do what Barack Obama has failed to do. Sadly, Obama has missed an opportunity to do something positive and right for human relations in the world. I remain optimistic that Obama will come around. After all, he said we would not stand idly by while injustice happens in the world, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.

Special Prosecutor needed after release of "torture memos'

2009-04-16T22:58:00.002-04:00

By mediagonebad

The Obama administration did the right thing in releasing the "torture memos" from the Bush administration and they should be applauded for it. However, the Department of Justice failed to call for an independent special prosecutor to investigate the memos. Learning the truth is one thing, but failing to hold individuals responsible for wrong-doing is quite another matter. How do we justify letting public officials off the hook for possible crimes when common citizens are expected to either follow the “rule of law” or risk going to prison. Public officials should not be above the law or given immunity for crimes. In the coming days and weeks, we will learn more about these torture memos and how public officials violated the Geneva Conventions and International Law.

Dear Mr. President: You are 0-2. What's it gonna be?

2009-04-11T03:19:00.003-04:00

By mediagonebad

OK, Mr. Obama, you have my heartfelt congratulations! A Chicago grassroots organizer is now president of the United States. That is a major accomplishment in and of itself. It is early in your presidency and I am pleased that you have dealt with some of the worst offenses of the Bush administration through executive orders, but I must say that your larger policies concern me greatly. GREATLY.

First, there is the matter of privacy vs. warrantless wiretapping and electronic spying on Americans. Your Department of Justice, Mr. President, not only supports but goes beyond the Bush administration in preventing government accountability for willful violations of the law regarding COINTELPRO-style electronic eavesdropping. Your DOJ recently argued that the U.S. possesses “sovereign immunity” from misconduct lawsuits. Yet you pledged government accountability during the campaign. Strike one.

Then there is the matter of giving away billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to the same capitalist bankers that helped loot the public treasury in the first place. They must be laughing all the way out of the bank while our money goes to offshore accounts just as fast as they get their grubby hands on it. I got news for you: giving money to the banks is not going to stop the coming depression.

It seems to me that someone with ties to the Chicago grassroots community would bail out the unemployed and working poor first so that people do not lose their homes to the Wall Street thieves; to make sure that everyone has adequate food and access to health care whether they have a job with benefits or not. As you know, companies are laying off employees, eliminating health benefits, cutting back on retirement, and reducing hours in order to save money. What are people supposed to do? Starve? Turn to crime? Strike two.

Now I hear that you are asking Congress for more than $83 billion for continuing the Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I remember very clearly what you said during the campaign and I even made a ringtone out of it so everyone I am around is reminded as well: “When I am elected president I am going to end this war in Iraq and bring our troops home.” (Crowd cheers.) $83 billion will bring the total amount of money wasted on war up to $1 trillion.

One Trillion Dollars. That is One Thousand Billion Dollars! Or One Million Million Dollars! And there is no end in sight because you cannot fight a cowardly hit-and-run tactic like terrorism no matter how many people you kill and no matter how much money you spend in trying. Of course, the money enriches the military contractors who constantly lobby for more money. But the American people suffer; the Iraqi people suffer; and the Afghani people suffer. Osama bin Laden could have been captured years ago if Bush would have asked for the world’s help rather than insisting that the United States did not need help -- and then talking crazy about smoking evil-doers out of their holes. Bush was like a bad cartoon.

One Thousand Billion Dollars wasted while states scramble to find money to pay state employees, pay unemployment benefits, and pay for educating our children while teachers have to meet the unfunded burden of No Child Left Behind. States like Ohio are even looking at gambling to bring us out of of debt, as if the Wall Street gamblers have not done enough damage. Now the rich and super-rich casino operators will be holding us by the ankles and shaking us to make sure they get all of our money.

Casinos to pay for educating our children? What kind of craziness is this? Does this make sense to a Chicago grassroots organizer? Is this the way the United States should be operating? Isn’t there a more fair and equitable -- indeed, a more reasonable -- economic system that we could work toward? Shouldn’t we be making 5, 10, and 20-year plans in order to ensure that human beings are able to have a job, decent housing, health, dental and eye care, safe food, and clean air and drinking water? What has happened to our priorities in a nation that espouses freedom and democracy, yet leaves its citizens’ dreams at the mercy of the market?

Socialism may seem like a dirty word to the Wall Street bankers, casino operators, military contractors, FOX News anchors, and other assorted con men and thieves who now thrive in the every-man-for-himself jungle of international capitalism. But a nation can have both personal freedom and genuine democracy and take care of citizen needs. It’s not that hard. You nationalize the banks, utilities, oil companies, health care conglomerates and other major industries then run them in the public interest, not for private profit. You eliminate the profit-taking at the top and reinvest at the bottom. Imagine a wellness-based single payer health care system free of insurance tycoons who now have the audacity to step in and change a doctor’s orders because it would interfere with their profits? No more of that nonsense.

This does not mean that the United States become the Soviet Union. No one wants that. We make our own brand of socialism based upon our long-held belief in liberty and justice for all. We do not restrict personal freedom; we expand it. We welcome those immigrants now living and working in our nation by giving them the opportunity for citizenship. We pay everyone a living wage, provide expanded Medicare for all citizens, make sure that schools are fully funded, and we invest in green technologies to provide millions of jobs and get away from fossil fuels. We invest in rebuilding our dilapidated water and sewer systems, our bridges, our railroads, our inner cities. We develop high-speed rail. We use science to find new ways to improve our lives through research and development. We change outdated laws that now keep many non-violent offenders in prison and we use community policing and community corrections to focus on genuine rehabilitation rather than prison warehousing. We get government out of citizens’ bedrooms by permitting marriage unions between same sex couples.

Which road should a Chicago grassroots organizer choose? A road to individual prosperity and full-employment or the same old road where the rich man plays while the little man pays? We can rebuild our infrastructure or watch it crumble as roving gangs go from neighborhood to neighborhood stealing whatever they can. We can rethink our priorities on taking care of ourselves as citizens or we can watch our prisons become the number one industry in the nation. We can develop new green transportation now or do nothing as gas prices skyrocket to $10 or more per gallon.

Strike three? Let’s be real before you swing at the next pitch. The United States is a mess and there are no easy solutions or quick fixes. This ain’t McDonald’s. Social and economic change takes time and a willingness to sacrifice now so that future generations will not have to. Rebuilding infrastructure takes time, perhaps even more than one generation. Can we accept a way of life in which we may not see the benefits in our lifetime? It takes time to convert from a “me” society that leads the world in the consumption of fossil fuels to a “we” society that has a low carbon footprint. Until we can produce millions of electric commuter cars, we may even have to ration gas at some point, making sure that fuel goes to farmers and distribution outlets before personal use in automobiles.

Many sacrifices, some of which are unpredictable now, must be made so that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren can live in a humane nation that prioritizes its needs and produces to meet those needs. If we fail to act soon, our children will be living in a fascist dictatorship where nothing is provided or guaranteed by government, including Social Security; where fuel is unavailable and food is not affordable for most people; where brown-outs and blackouts are commonplace as the electric grid fails from the lack of upkeep; where clean drinking water is unavailable because polluters have lobbied against regulations that impede their profit-taking; where few people can afford health insurance and those without the ability to pay up front are turned away by armed hospital guards. This is not science fiction. This is a glimpse at the future unless we, collectively, as citizens, demand of our leaders that we take a different road now.

Which road should a former grassroots organizer choose? The count is 0-2.

Moratorium on GE foods

2009-04-03T22:13:00.002-04:00

By mediagonebad

[Stop Monsanto's draconian bill now in Congress. HR875 is disguised as a food safety bill but it would give AG companies the power to virtually control agriculture. http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum959.php ]

Genetically Engineered foods, also known as GEOs (genetically engineered organisms) and GMOs (genetically modified organisms), which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says are essentially equivalent to conventional foods and therefore do not require mandatory labeling or pre-market testing, can now be found in 60 to 75 percent of all non-organic supermarket foods.

Concern over the use of GE products, however, goes beyond the need for safety testing and product labeling. The concern to all of us should be directed toward the corporate scientists creating these products for AG employers such as Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Aventis Crop Science, BASF, BIO, Zeneca Ag Products and Novartis. While most of us generally view technology as beneficial to humankind, we must always keep in mind that there is no scientific ethic in place that tempers the application of science only to those areas that may benefit humankind.

Companies that produce and use GE products spend millions of dollars on advertising campaigns trying to convince consumers that their products will benefit humankind. They say that GE products are needed so we can end world hunger, improve public health, create sustainable agriculture and improve crop yields and crop hardiness, but the possible devastating consequences of using GE products are not mentioned in their ads.

We all want to end world hunger, but in so doing, we also want our products to be safe for human consumption. Therefore, we must allow scientists to test these new creations before the AG companies rush them out into the marketplace. This is just common sense, something the AG companies do not have these days. They see dollar signs and that is their motivation.

The companies engaging in GE alter the genes of living plants, animals, humans and microorganisms, patent the new life forms, then sell the resulting food, seed or product for profit. When gene-altered crops are introduced into the natural world, however, they may wreak havoc upon traditional crops by creating genetic contamination of non-GE crops.

It is impossible to predict how these new life forms will reproduce, migrate and mutate, so it is also impossible to predict what the end results will be for the food supply. According to FDA logic, if it looks like a tomato, smells like a tomato and tastes like a tomato, then it must be a tomato. But how will a tomato altered with a fish gene effect non-GE tomatoes in 10 years? In a hundred years? In a thousand years? In a million years? Will GE tomatoes begin to develop eyes and brains? No one knows. As wind, bees, birds and insect pollinators begin carrying GE tomato pollen to other species, what results will occur? No one knows. What effect will GE tomato pollen have on beneficial insects such as bees, butterflies, ladybugs and soil microorganisms? No one knows. What new toxins, allergens, viruses, pathogens and antibiotic-resistant infections will be created accidentally? No one knows. If this sounds like science fiction, then perhaps it is, because no one knows what effects GE will have upon the natural world. No one knows what long-term consequences GE may have upon the food supply and the environment because these products are being created recklessly and rushed into the marketplace without benefit of proper safeguards, testing and controls.

Readers should keep in mind that GE technology is not the same thing as traditional cross-breeding or hybridization, which mixes only the genes of the same or closely-related species. Genetic engineering mixes the genes of unrelated species -- such as fish and tomatoes, bacteria and soybeans, and humans and pigs -- that would likely never be intermingled in the natural world. Genetic engineering produces new life forms and these new life forms are now in our food supply.

And what's worse, these life forms have gotten into our food supply without scientific evidence that they are indeed "safe." Valid scientific procedure is a rigorous process of examination and re-examination using experimental control groups, but this process is conveniently omitted by the AG companies The only evidence that these new life forms in our food supply are "safe" is the claim by GE producers that no one has ever gotten sick or died from using them, but there is no way to verify this claim because there is no labeling required for these products and therefore no follow-up.

GE products can now be found in infant formula, soda, pizza, chips, cookies, cereal, candy, vitamins, ice cream, pasta, sauces, breads, oils, juice, sweeteners, animal products, yogurt, cheese, sour cream, butter, detergents, salad dressings, frozen dinners, milk, and many other products made from genetically engineered soybeans, corn, canola, papaya, potatoes, tomatoes, flax, sugar beets, yellow crookneck squash, radicchio, cotton, zucchini, rBGH dairy products, processing aids and enzymes. Without product labeling, consumers have no way of knowing which products contain GMOs and, as a result, consumers are denied the opportunity to make informed choices about the food they eat. The GE producers are against any labeling because they argue that GE is "safe."

Unless AG companies are stopped in their tracks by an international moratorium on GE products, they may soon become the new landlords of life on Earth by monopolizing the global market for seeds, food and medical products. GE companies are lying to consumers about the safety of these products and they are lying to farmers about their necessity.

Maybe it's time we did something about it. For starters, we can write or call our congressional representatives and ask that our tax dollars not be used to fund GE research at universities. We can also start buying products that are made from certified organic ingredients. Just because we humans have the technical ability to create new life forms and to clone existing ones does not mean we should be using these technologies except with great caution and with proper scientific controls. Our human greed for capital gain in the present should be stifled by a greater desire to make our impact on this planet as minimal as possible. Besides, we haven't even learned how to get along peacefully with our own species, so why should we be creating more?

Twittering Media

2009-03-30T17:09:00.009-04:00

*** TOPICAL TWEETS ***

by @mediagonebad

Cable News

When I see military aficionado Wolf Blitzer on CNN, I turn to MSNBC.

When I see military aficionado Chris Matthews on MSNBC, I turn to Democracy Now!

O’Reilly and Limbaugh are toads. Ignore them. Let them be toads, hopping & eating bugs. Don’t pick them up and let them pee on your hand.

Dear Fox News: You think big national media ask the right questions? Really? They sure didn’t in lead-up to Iraq occupation.

Dear Fox News: Why do you hate anything that resembles democracy? Repeat after me: “Media diversity is a good thing.”

Dear Fox News: Big corporate media have failed us time and again. It is refreshing to see smaller, less self-serving media asking questions.

C’mon President Obama, stand up to the cronyism, to the good ‘ol boys (including Coultergeist) on Fox News. This is the change we need.

Ethics

Biggest problem is separating news from advertising and entertainment, for example ads with fake news anchors.

Note to Journalists: Be independent; be skeptical of what politicians, generals and analysts say; provide background, history and context.

Media ethics: be grounded, not star-struck or enthralled by savvy opinion-brokers; be independent and let the chips fall where they may.

Nothing wrong with having a point of view. We all have them. Personal bias finds its way into news.

Media & Public Relations

Public relations and news are so entwined that anyone who has the bucks can hire a PR firm and use the media to create a desired reality.

Remember the branding/selling of the Iraq war? Mushroom cloud. Chemical and biological weapons. Grave danger.

Remember the lead-up to Iraq war? PR “sold” the war through repetition by journalists.

Nothing wrong with citizen journalists, but fact-checking is a concern for all journalists.

Corporations enjoy a lofty position in the media. Citizens don’t. Citizen voices get drowned out by big-spending advertisers and agencies.

The airwaves belong to the public. Deny license renewals to broadcasters who act as shills for the military/industrial/media complex.

For open government 2.0, why not stream everything? Every panel, every House & Senate committee, every hearing. Get it all out there!

Branding

Financial crisis-speak. Nothing else like it. Where has the money gone? To the “war on terror,” to the corporate contractors in Iraq.

Toxic assets. We hear this term a lot lately. Is it something we are all supposed to know about? I must have missed this in economics class.

Branding the economic crisis: Blame it on AIG, on bonuses, on Obama. Just don’t blame it on the greedy Wall Street capitalists/gamblers.

Can PR change public opinion regarding A.I.G. ? PR campaign would try to shift blame for the payouts from execs to govt. officials.

Social Media

Analyzing both old and new media, trying to make TV - the most powerful educational force ever - more responsive to citizens.

Good writing is good writing, whether it is in a magazine or on Twitter.

10TV in Columbus, Ohio, is great example for SM communication between staff and the public.

Independent Journalism

The Free Radio Act, HR1147, would permit more licensing of low-power FM radio stations. LPFM will promote democracy & stimulate economy.

We have to get our news from a variety of sources. In the end, much political news writing IS opinion.

We need many voices in the chorus of democracy!

Democracy is a chorus of independent voices and an informed electorate.

National News Council

Do we need a national news council to point out where media fails and succeeds, where ethical standards are followed or ignored?

I think we start with a respected group like AEJMC and build from there, adding old & new media & ad reps. Incentive=recognition

Perhaps the organizing group - AEJMC or SPJ - could take apps from ppl interested in serving a year. Huge undertaking, yes.

The Insurance Mafia

2009-03-13T19:52:00.010-04:00

Support the National Health Insurance Act (HR 676)!

By Jamie York

When Bill Clinton was in his first term as president in 1992, he vowed to revamp the health care system in the United States. He held up a single insurance card and said that under his plan every American would have one of those cards. It was to be the only insurance card a person would need because Clinton was advocating a single payer health care system and every American was to be covered. In addition, that card was to be imbedded with a memory chip that would hold all of one's medical records, including medical history, test results, digital XRAYs, Pet Scans, MRIs, dental and optometrist records -- anything that pertains to one's well being. Present your card to a health care provider and you will be taken care of. No other insurance needed.

Clinton's plan immediately drew intense fire from the multi-billion-dollar insurance industry, so, rather than stick up for single payer as rational and viable, he backed down with his tail between his legs and asked Hillary to work with the insurance industry and come up with a new plan. Of course, this secret new plan, conceived behind closed doors in consultation with insurance industry tycoons, soon became known as "managed care." Hillary's managed care plan is really nothing more than an ineffective cost-containment plan and has nothing to do with providing quality health care coverage for every American. There are still more than 33 million Americans without any coverage whatsoever and the quality of health care in 2009 is even worse than it was when Clinton first became president.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush and Al Gore talked about the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, but neither candidate dared to mention a single payer health care system and no reporters stepped up to challenge them about it. Clinton made a lot of enemies when he held up that single payer card and his administration never fully recovered from it. Similarly, in 2008, as Barack Obama was running for president, he initially said he supported single payer health care, then began talking about health care “reform,” which is a code word for same-old same-old. In a March 26, 2009, town hall meeting, Obama said that he wanted to reform the system that is already in place. Like Bill Clinton, Obama cried “uncle” on single payer.

When I think of the insurance industry, I think about a Mafioso requiring small business owners to pay them protection money in order to gain immunity from violence. What is the difference between paying the Mafia for protection from violence and paying an insurance company for protection from illness? The only difference I can see is that the Mafia are regarded as criminals and their activities are illegal while insurance companies operate freely as legitimate businesses and their activities have become accepted.

Today, we are expected to pay for protection against illness, motor vehicle accidents, fire, flood, theft -- you name it and some insurance Mafioso will accept your money for protection against it. If, after buying food and paying our bills and taxes, we cannot afford to pay for such protection, then we could be denied emergency health care services or we could be left literally with nothing but the clothes on our backs. To me, the idea of paying the insurance mafia for health care protection is particularly unnerving because I believe that food, shelter, health care and education are essential for human survival and should be considered birthrights, not simple privileges for those who can afford them. For most people, there is little left after we pay our monthly bills, yet insurance premiums keep going up. The premiums I paid to my former health care HMO -- Kaiser Permanente -- doubled during the Clinton administration, so I then dropped Kaiser for a Prudential plan that had cheaper premiums but required more out-of-pocket payments in case of illness. As long as I didn't get sick and have to pay high out-of-pocket expenses, I could pay the monthly premiums. After changing jobs, however, I was without insurance coverage for nearly a year, then I enrolled in an employer's Blue Cross plan with a very high deductible, but I soon received a letter informing me that because I hadn't had continuous insurance coverage they would not pay for any pre-existing conditions until I had been enrolled in their plan for one year. It was an important reminder to me that insurance companies are in business to maximize their profits.

While I am in favor of a health care system that is free from the cradle to the grave, I also realize that in a capitalist economy, health care is not a birthright but is a privilege under the terms of the free market. Pay the insurance mafia or do without. Proponents of the current health care marketplace argue that a "socialized" health care system will somehow take away their freedom of choice regarding which doctors they see and which treatments are offered. But under managed care, as more physician practices are gobbled up by corporate chains, it is nearly impossible for many patients to see the doctor of their choice and the treatment options for most standard procedures are often dictated by the chain, not by the doctor. How many of us have heard the familiar mantra: "I'm sorry, Dr. Jones is not available on those days, but I can get you in to see Dr. Smith in two weeks." Under single payer, the doctor-patient relationship will come first, as it should. Hospitals are also hiring their own staff of doctors -- called "hospitalists" -- and are excluding many local family doctors from having hospital privileges. If you have to be admitted to the hospital, your own doctor may not be able to see you there and the hospitalist may not order the tests you need in order to save money for the hospital.

A single-payer health care bill now before Congress is HR 676. This bill, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), would give every American expanded Medicare coverage that would also include eye care, dental and long-term health care. A federally-regulated single payer health care system will not be a free system -- we will be taxed for it -- but it will provide efficient, streamlined health care for all Americans by eliminating the profit-taking and high administrative costs of the mafia system. It will save billions of dollars. Of course, the insurance mafia and their supporters in Congress and in the media will go to great lengths to scare the public away from single payer. They will scream “socialism!” They will wave the flag and argue that privatization equals free choice while single payer equals a return to "big government." The truth, however, is that in the current private system -- the mafia system -- 35 percent of health care costs are administrative. These administrative costs include marketing, insurance company profits, CEO salaries, pre-authorization panels and billing clerks. When a doctor orders a test on a patient -- a CT or PET scan, for example -- the cost of the procedure is inflated to pay these high administrative costs. Single payer will help to streamline the health care system by eliminating the administrative "middle man" from the doctor-patient relationship; as a result, the cost of exams will be lower and doctors will be free to practice medicine without bureaucratic interference from the insurance mafia.

It is time to end the reign of the insurance mafia and put single payer on the national agenda. The mainstream politicians and the collaborative "lapdog" media are not going to bring up the issue of single payer, so it's up to the public to support HR 676 and tell their representatives to back it also.

What would YOU do?

2009-02-02T22:17:00.002-05:00

By mediagonebad

Suppose you have a health insurance plan such as Mail Handlers and your employer, the Veterans Administration, required you to opt-out of Medicare if you took it. You pay your premiums, your co-pays and your prescription costs. You visit your doctor regularly and you have lab work. Then maybe you have an X-Ray and visit the emergency room. You may even have surgery which requires a hospital stay and your plan pays 80/20 after you meet a certain deductible. Things are basically going O.K. and you have managed to keep up with the costs and pay your bills.

You may go on like this for years and your premiums keep going up. You are retired, stay active, and don’t think too much about your insurance. After all, it has been there for you when you needed it.

Then BAM! You have a stroke or another illness that requires a hospital stay and extensive aftercare and physical therapy. It may even require time in a nursing home. THEN you discover that you have to fight with your insurance company for therapy your doctor orders because your claims are denied by the health insurance company’s doctors. THEN you discover that you do not have any nursing home or long-term coverage at all! And all of these years you thought you had decent insurance and thought it would be there for you when you needed it most. You didn’t even think about having to buy a SEPARATE policy to cover long-term care. It never crossed your mind because you thought your health insurance was SUPPOSED to cover you when you got sick, no matter where you had to go. You thought your insurance company would always be there for you, then BAM! It isn’t.

WOW, your former employer made you opt-out of Medicare when you retired back in the early 80’s and now you find out that Medicare takes much better care of patients than your insurance does. And there is nothing you can do about it now that you are 85 years old. You can be angry. You can cry in your Ensure. Or you can tell your story and inspire others. You can fight back and push for cradle-to-grave single payer health coverage for all Americans.

What if you have no recourse but to pay out-of-pocket for your long-term care expenses with the risk of losing your house and all of your assets? What would YOU do?

How to Hold Obama's Feet to the Fire

2009-01-25T11:35:00.003-05:00

By mediagonebad

Before 9/11, George W. Bush was not a popular president and he received much criticism early in his presidency. After 9/11, when the nation was trying to rebound emotionally from this tragedy, Bush’s approval rating went up. Why? After 9/11, the mass media did not challenge him on his facts and allowed him free range to pursue his agenda -- a permanent “war on terrorism,” the occupation of Iraq, approving torture, secret CIA prisons, an end to habeas corpus, and widespread spying on Americans. Criticism of Bush was viewed by the media brass as being unpatriotic and dissenting opinions thus received little air time. Red, white and blue banners decorated the screens of the 24-hour cable news networks and the news anchors wore their new American flag lapel pins. The only “debate” on the news was between the right and the far-right.

Today, with the Obama presidency less than a week old, the President has issued executive orders to close the Guantanamo gulag, ban torture, grant more access to federal documents under the Freedom of Information Act, freeze pay for White House staff, provide for more openness in government, and to end the abortion “gag rule.” Most of the debate today centers around Obama’s economic stimulus plan. Although a central theme in the Obama campaign was to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home, the tanking economy and home foreclosures are the main focus right now.

Writing directly to our representatives and to the president is one way to make our views known, but that does not hold the president’s feet to the fire. To do that, we must hold the electronic media’s feet to the fire and demand that they present a wide range of views. Write to the cable news networks that set the tone for national and international news. Try blogging and micro-blogging on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace to help bring democracy to the media. We can even -- if we are bold enough -- record a video editorial from our home computers and post it on YouTube. Remember, the Executive Branch is supposed to be equal to the Legislative and Judicial branches. Bush basically turned the presidency into a kingdom and we can take some solace in that fact that Obama has at least dealt with some of the more troubling dirty deeds of the Bush administration. But there is much more work to be done….

McCain campaign using smear tactics and lies

2008-10-17T22:36:00.003-04:00

By mediagonebad

Although I support Ralph Nader's independent campaign for president, I am concerned at the vicious lies being issued against Barack Obama by the McCain campaign. Most disturbing of all is the ridiculous notion that Obama is linked to some vague Islamic plot to rule the world and that he is somehow linked to terrorism. McCain advisers know this is false, but they hope that the media will assist them in making this a campaign issue and, by repeating the accusation over and over, will scare just enough people to swing the election in McCain's favor.

The McCain campaign is also using a guilt-by-association smear concerning Obama's "link" to 1960s domestic terrorist William Ayers. Although Ayers, who is now a university professor in Chicago, committed terrorism 40 years ago when Obama was just eight years old, he and Obama both served on the board of directors of an education reform group in the 1990s. This is the angle the McCain campaign is using in saying Obama "pals around" with terrorists. If the truth doesn't work for you, just make things up! What a sleazebag McCain is!

The other smear is against Acorn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which boasts 400,000 member families in 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the U.S. Acorn is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that works on social justice issues such voter registration, access to affordable health care for all, fully funded public schools, immigrant rights, fair and affordable housing, and a living wage for all. Acorn works with other organizations that share common goals, including even local and state governments.

Acorn pays workers an hourly wage to go door-to-door in low and moderate- income neighborhoods and register people to vote. Acorn workers can also be found at shopping centers, grocery stores, and other public places where people gather. Acorn's voter registration mission is to ensure that as many people as possible participate in the democratic process. Each voter registration card collected is verified and those that are clearly fraudulent -- such as a registration for Mickey Mouse -- or cards found to be suspicious are flagged for election officials. All voter registration cards, including obvious fraudulent ones, are required by law to be submitted to state election officials. All organizations that register voters receive fraudulent cards, including Acorn. A lazy Acorn worker who wanted a paycheck but did not want to earn it honestly could theoretically make up names and put them on voter registration cards -- as could a voter registration worker from any organization. This sort of action tars the whole voter registration process and Acorn supports the prosecution of any member found guilty of voter fraud.

For some reason, the Republican Party has targeted Acorn in a media smear campaign, but Acorn as an organization has done nothing wrong. These frivolous accusations are nothing but a distraction during a time that should be used for serious democratic political debate among all presidential candidates, including Ralph Nader (independent), Bob Barr (Libertarian), Cynthia McKinney (Green), and Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party), as well as Obama, McCain, and others. Because Acorn registers voters in poorer neighborhoods, the Republican National Committee assumes that these new voters will be democrats and they would like to see as many democrats as possible lose their right to vote or become discouraged and not show up at the polls at all. The Republicans are setting up Acorn to be the scapegoat in case McCain loses the election. The targeting of Acorn is laughable and the publicity will certainly increase their ranks once people learn about Acorn and its mission to help uplift disenfranchised Americans, ensure democracy, and therefore provide for the betterment of our society.

For a new Constitutional Convention

2007-08-09T11:35:00.000-04:00

By Mediagonebad

The United States is in one hell of a mess. And the mess is so big that our politicians and their corporate sponsors cannot get us out. That just leaves us, the citizens, to pursue this awesome responsibility, this all-important duty.

The people of the United States need a new declaration of independence from our government. We need a new constitutional convention to put forward ideas and platforms that reaffirm our commitment to a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." And we need the people power of direct democracy to give every citizen a chance to participate and vote on proposals. Our democracy has been hijacked by a band of right-wing ideologues and zealots who believe -- just like Adolph Hitler -- in worldwide corporate hegemony rather than democracy.

The Executive Branch of our government has -- without the consent of the governed -- strayed from its separate but equal position and has taken on the role of an imperial kingdom. After six years of the Bush administration, our Constitution is in grave danger and our rights and freedoms are being rapidly curtailed by a Congress and Justice Department that sheepishly follows wherever Bush leads because its members do not want to appear too critical of the self-described "war president" while troops are in the field. Rather than defending the Constitution, both major parties are engaging in political posturing.

Let's review some of the highlights of the Bush administration:

(1) Florida election fraud in 2000.

(2) Dick Cheney's super-secret 2001 energy task force. The public is still in the dark about who attended and what was discussed.

(3) In August, 2001, Bush ignores daily briefing report entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." The report stated that bin Laden might use planes as weapons.

(4) Hours after 9/11, while commercial flights were grounded nationwide, Bush allowed some 200 members of the bin Laden family to fly to Saudi Arabia without even being questioned by the FBI.

(5) The invasion of Iraq was sold to Congress on a whole pack of lies regarding Iraq's military capabilities. We were supposed to be in eminent danger. We were supposed to fight them over there so we wouldn't have to fight them over here, as if terrorism were an actual nation instead of a cowardly hit-and-run political tactic to get attention.

(6) Private "military contractors" like Blackwater and Haliburton provide support services, security, and even go on armed missions in Iraq alongside the troops. It is not clear who these private contractors are accountable to. The generals? The Congress? Their stockholders? No one?

(7) The passage of Patriot Act I, Patriot Act II, and the National Security Agency wiretapping program curtail civil liberties and allow the NSA to bypass the FISA courts and sanction warrantless wiretapping.

(8) The White House exposes Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband's statement about yellowcake uranium in Niger. Bush had stated that Iraq was trying to obtain this material from Niger and Joseph Wilson proved that this was false. Valerie Wilson worked in the CIA as an expert on nuclear weapons.

(9) Ohio election fraud in 2004.

(10) Bush states "We do not torture," but admits that "enemy combatants" may be subjected to extreme measures in order to gather information. Yet even the International Committee of the Red Cross says we do, in fact, torture prisoners. The Military Commissions Act sanctions torture of "detainees" and ends the writ of Habeas Corpus, which is at the very root of democratic government. Nothing in this bill protects American citizens from being kidnapped by their own government, sent to secret prisons without a trial, and tortured.

(11) Federal judges dismissed for political reasons rather than performance.

(12) In Presidential Directive 51, Bush asserts that in a "catastrophic event" he can take over all aspects of government, including even state and local government. In the event of a major labor strike, for example, Bush can use this directive to declare "martial law" and send the National Guard into American cities.

(13) Bush and Cheney claim executive privilege and fail to honor Congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony. Bush wants witnesses to speak to prosecutors in secret and off-the-record. Bush uses signing statements to specify which parts of a bill passed by Congress he does not accept or will not abide by.

(14) The presidential pardon of convicted felon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who had inside knowledge of the inner workings of the White House that Bush and Cheney did not want exposed, effectively bought his silence.

(15) War spending reaches $12 billion a month.

What a mess! Corruption. Fraud. Secret government. War profiteering. Warrantless wiretapping. A nation that purports to be free and democratic simply does not engage in such criminal activities unless something is very, very wrong. For the president and vice president, impeachment is the necessary Constitutional remedy. For the systemic problems, however, a new constitutional convention may be our last best hope before Bush leads us into war with Iran and more chaos.

Honoring our war dead

2007-07-16T10:48:00.003-04:00

By Mediagonebad

History will one day portray George W. Bush as a criminal and a warmonger who desired the power of a king to decide law, declare war, curtail civil liberties, and erode the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Bush, Cheney, and their corporate constituency -- the "neocons" -- are presently protected by a timid Congress, a sympathetic Supreme Court, and by a mass media busy distracting the public with sports and entertainment rather than engaging the public with diverse viewpoints on policy issues. We are the citizens.We are the ones who should be deciding policy. We are the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Yet we are routinely left out of policy decisions.

When Bush is finally exposed for the criminal he is and his role in fabricating evidence for the Iraq war is finally exposed, what punishment should he receive? Impeachment? Prison? And what of the thousands who died or were injured by guns, bombs and IEDs? What of those who underwent torture or were placed in secret prisons for no other reason than they were picked up somewhere because their names sounded similar to a suspected terrorist? No case review. No counsel. No trial. No rights.

And how do we ensure that all of the victims of Bush's wrongful war be remembered for more than merely following orders from above? Will the dead be immortalized on a wall like Vietnam vets? Will the wounded be provided lifetime medical and mental health care, or will they -- like Vietnam vets -- be ignored to become destitute and homeless?

Even though the war is wrong, no one need die in vain if we replace life with life. We can plant memorial trees or gardens to provide life-giving oxygen through photosynthesis. Or perhaps we can do something unconventional and experimental, something unseen that may help restore the ocean reefs on a planet that has already lost 20 percent of its coral reefs, which are critical to Earth's ecosystem. The Reef Memorial Project places a memorial bronze plaque on a new concrete reef ball -- a circular-shaped form designed to simulate underwater reefs. (Also see Reef Ball Foundation.) The concrete forms are then shipped to the area where the reef is being built and are then offloaded into the water and stacked alongside other forms, thus forming a reef. Families and friends can participate in this process at any point -- from constructing the forms and polishing the plaques to holding a memorial service onboard the ship as the forms are offloaded. The hope of this project is that these concrete reef balls will become living rocks that provide food and shelter for reef plants and aquatic life. As the war spending exceeds $10 billion a month, Congress could certainly find the money to purchase a memorial reef ball for every soldier killed in Iraq.

Can there be a greater personal memorial than helping to sustain the planet that sustains us? Whether we plant a tree, a community garden, or help build a reef, we are honoring our heroes. Bush and Cheney did not honor them when they dragged them into a war based on a pack of lies, so we honor our war dead by honoring life, by ending the war, by taking our country back, and by ensuring that no president ever again achieve the power of a king. We ARE the government.

America's Road to Fascism

2007-03-16T16:26:00.005-04:00

By mediagonebad

Is the United States on the road to fascism? Below are some defining characteristics of fascism based on the work of Dr. Lawrence Britt (Free Inquiry Magazine, Volume 23, Number 2), who studied the common characteristics of fascist regimes in Italy, Germany, Spain, Indonesia, Portugal, Chile, and Greece. I have applied Britt's characteristics of fascism to the United States and the Bush and Obama administrations.

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism. This is best understood as displays of flags and simplistic patriotic slogans, symbols, lapel pins, bumper stickers, and so forth. After 9/11, George W. Bush used catch-phrases -- like "we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" -- that were repeated over and over by members of his administration. This is meant to separate "them" (the bad) from "us" (the good) so we can feel good about ourselves as we bomb or starve them into submission to Big Oil.

In 2009, the Tea Party, organized by FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey, became a populist conservative movement favoring limited federal government, fewer taxes, deregulation, immigration enforcement, and rejection of global warming science. Members spanned a range of political views spurred on largely by Tax Day protests. By the mid-term elections in 2010, the Tea Party ran several candidates on the Republican ticket, including Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sharron Angle of Nevada, Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin went on a national speaking tour on behalf of Tea Party candidates. Overall, the Tea Party did not fare well in the mid-terms, but their views affected mainstream Republicans like John Boehner of Ohio and Jim Demint of South Carolina. Overall, the Tea Party slogans in the 2010 mid-term election helped shift the Republican Party even further to the right.

2. Disdain for the recognition of human rights. The Bush administration argued that human rights can be ignored in certain situations because of the "need" to gather information. Constitutional law can be side-stepped. The Geneva Conventions can suddenly be ignored. Torture, indefinite incarceration, and political assassinations become acceptable. The concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, the documented torture at Abu Ghraib, and the policy of extraordinary rendition of prisoners to secret prisons in third countries are current examples. President Obama has bolstered this policy by supporting indefinite detention of American citizens, who can be whisked away and imprisoned in third countries without any recourse or due process of law. The U.S. Constitution is being undermined without a whimper from the mass media.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a unifying cause. After 9/11, Arab-Americans and Muslims suddenly became targets of hate speech and racial profiling simply because of their race or religion and not because of any link with terrorists. Even wearing a tee-shirt with Arabic lettering can be cause for detention at airports. Anti-immigrant rhetoric has also been stepped up and Mexican immigrants are blamed for the economic woes created by the massive war debt.

4. Supremacy of the military. Like Hitler declared himself the German "fuhrer" or "leader," George W. Bush declared himself "the war president" and "the decider." And like the German Reichstag gave Hitler dictatorial powers to control the German army, the U.S. Congress gave Bush dictatorial powers to conduct the so-called "war on terror." Military service has become glamorized and military spending has increased while the national debt spirals out of control. Domestic entitlement programs suffer, including, even, the medical after-care of wounded soldiers. Recruiters aggressively target vulnerable working-class high school kids with promises of money and college.

And private corporations like Haliburton and Blackwater are becoming more than "military support contractors." They are becoming private armies in and of themselves that go on armed missions just like the Army and the Marines. Just what are these missions, anyway? Are these militias operating legally under the U.S. Constitution? Is Congress fulfilling its Constitutional duty to regulate and discipline them? If not, then who is in charge of them? The President? The Pentagon? The CIA? Or is Vice President Cheney and his super-secret "energy task force" (Big Oil) now in charge?

5. Rampant Sexism. Dr. Britt notes that fascist regimes are male-dominated and that the state takes an increased role as the guardian of the nuclear family as an institution, with women as second-class citizens. Fascist regimes tout vague terms like "family values" and become more strict regarding divorce, abortion and homosexuality. Organizations that help single parents and the poor with a variety of services, like ACORN and Planned Parenthood, have been under continous attack. A smear campaign against ACORN forced it to close, so it no longer provides voter registration services or assistance with heating bills.

6. Controlled mass media. The media in the United States are not controlled by the government, per se, but the owners go along with military censorship of war reporting and fail to provide opposing views. Public officials and press secretaries have daily "talking points" that serve as an echo chamber. Each official repeats the same terminology. For example, in the build-up to the occupation of Iraq, members of the Bush administration repeated the imagery of the "mushroom cloud" to convince the public that Iraq was an imminent threat to U.S. national security because it "wanted" nuclear weapons. The media did nothing to challenge the assertions or to demand proof -- even when then Secretary of State Colin Powell presented cartoon drawings to the United Nations as "evidence" that Iraq had mobile chemical weapons labs.

7. Obsession with national security. After 9/11, people were driven into a frenzy over getting revenge and eliminating an exaggerated common threat -- terrorism. New color-coded "threat" levels, prominently displayed by the national media news networks, added to the atmosphere of fear and confusion. Although terrorism is a real and despicable political tactic, it is also rare and often random.

8. Religion and government become intertwined. Christians do not live in a reality-based world and this is really the heart of America's road to totalitarian fascism. Politicians know that religion has long been used to manipulate people and to convince them that what "faith-based" government does is moral and just. Opponents are not just adversaries, but are considered traitors who are committing heresy. Christians are an easily controlled group because they are issue-oriented and vote according to dominant electoral "themes" like opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Bush loyalist Karl Rove was very good at manipulating this group. [Author Chris Hedges wrote a fine book called "American Fascists," which goes into much more detail about god and government.]

9. Corporate power is protected. Ever since the first permanent settlement at Jamestown in 1607, the corporation has been more important than the individual. Within weeks after Jamestown set up a crude government, the first of many slave ships began arriving to provide the new settlers with slave labor. Now, 400 years later, abject slavery has been replaced by wage slavery. The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are "persons" and are thus protected by the First Amendment. The problem with this is that corporations, because of their great financial power, can never be equal with real flesh-and-blood citizens when conflicts occur. When Oprah Winfrey criticized the beef industry on national television, Texas beef industry representatives sued her for libel and took her to court. She ultimately won her case, largely because she had the financial resources of her own to mount a legal challenge. The vast majority of citizens cannot fight back. Corporate power has become so huge and international that it has swallowed up the three branches of government and leads the military charge to grab the world's oil.

In January 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission affirmed corporate personhood and ruled that the federal government may not restrict political spending by corporations wanting to sway voters in elections. Corporations may spend whatever they want in order to influence voters.

The greatest challenge to corporate greed has been the Occupy movement, a worldwide movement of people occupying public spaces and setting up democratic encampments that even provide meals and health services. The corporate masters and their militarized police forces are trying to break this people's movement by coersion and by force. In the U.S., the Occupy movement has shut down major seaports with the support of dock workers' unions. Corporations do not like challenges to their power and they will fight back violently, as any detailed study of American history shows.

10. Labor power is suppressed. Labor unions have been largely busted up and workers are losing ground on wages and benefits while housing and health care costs soar. Large numbers of people have become disenfranchised from the old American dream of economic prosperity with equality and justice for all. Jobs are being outsourced to foreign nations where safety rules, environmental laws, and child labor laws do not exist. Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists buy favors and votes in Congress and get tax cuts and multi-billion-dollar no-bid contracts for military support services. The mass media is a part of this corporate power structure and does a piss-poor job of speaking truth to power and standing up for citizens. The media do not expose the societal harm that corporate abuses cause because their parent companies are involved in this fleecing of the public.

11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts. Academic intellectuals and opponents of government policy are treated as unpatriotic "liberals" or as inarticulate whackos in the media while government officials are basically provided with an open microphone to lie at will without any challenge to their assertions. Reporters ask sheepish, softball questions and accept the responses as truth. Serious debate is stifled by omission and artists like the Dixie Chicks are vilified for speaking out.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Under the misnamed "Patriot Act," the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI were given broad new powers to spy on Americans. Constitutional and civil rights began to erode. Giant telecommunication companies willingly provided personal information on thousands of Americans to the FBI. With more than two million Americans in jails and prisons -- many for non-violent crimes such as violating drug laws -- prisons are increasingly becoming privatized factories-with-fences to provide cheap labor to manufacture products for corporations.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Scandal after scandal is beginning to unravel while the Bush administration circles its wagons and dishes out pure spin to the media. Bush has always appointed his close friends to high government positions and they support his policies regardless of the law. When confronted, Bush claimed "executive privilege" as president and commander-in-chief. Obama has solidified this. Once such power is achieved, it is not given up, no matter what the Constitution says on the separation of powers.

14. Fraudulent elections. Elections can be rigged by increasing the registration requirements in key states, by reducing the number of voting machines in key districts, by changing the times when the polls will be open, by kicking eligible voters off the roles, by making ballots more confusing, and by eliminating paper records of voting so that all recounts will have to be done by hacker-vulnerable computers. These are all tricks used in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 to give Bush the presidency. The 2010 Supreme Court ruling also comes into play when corporations became free to spend unlimited money to influence elections and, in November 2010, Republicans took back the House after a particularly nasty year of negative commercials in which truth did not matter.

Many of these fascist characteristics have been building slowing over a number of years through both Democratic and Republican administrations. But the reign of George W. Bush has taken these characteristics to dangerous new levels. If we value our constitutional freedoms, then we must do everything we can to challenge him on multiple fronts. After Bush's recent visit to Guatemala, Mayan priests performed a purification ceremony to rid their sacred sites of the evil spirits left behind by Bush. If we intend to pursue any measure of justice for his abuses of power and for his crimes against humanity, then he needs to be arrested and brought to trial. And Obama, whose election gave high hopes to many and who won a Nobel Peace Prize based on this hope, should be marched out of the White House in leg irons for allowing crimes against humanity to continue on his watch.

The worldwide trend over the past 40 years has been toward mass privatization brought about by some kind of societal event, such as a civil war or a natural disaster, in which civil liberties can be suspended while economic law is re-written to favor unfettered capitalism. The war on Iraq was an example of this. Saddam Hussein's government was taken down by force while economic laws were re-written by foreign corporate interests in order to extract Iraq's wealth one contract at a time. This can happen in any country at any time -- even in the United States as citizens divide and hostility grows. Keep in mind that there are those who want to eliminate the Constitution and impose laissez faire capitalism no matter what the human toll.

The dumbassification of America

2007-02-23T10:50:00.001-05:00

By Mediagonebad

Resistance is futile, America. We have already been assimilated. Not by a foreign enemy or by random terrorists, but by our own military/industrial/media complex that drums thoughts into our heads through repetition, repetition, repetition…. In other words, through the systematic dumbing-down of America.

I don’t know who came up with the term dumbassification -- I first heard it from Chuck D of Public Enemy -- but the term seems to fit the passive response of an otherwise intelligent people who have been hoodwinked and pacified by an internal group of Americans who want unrestricted corporate domination over all aspects of American life. A corporate state where American citizens -- and, indeed, the entire world -- are subservient to this military/industrial/media complex.

The process of dumbassification begins right in our homes every time we turn on the television and are literally bombarded by commercial messages that chip away at our self-esteem by telling us we will be wallflowers without this or that personal hygiene product; that men will not be real men unless we drive this or that truck; that we will not have a love life without this or that erection medication; that our children will not be happy and content without the newest toy or gaming system. Buy, buy buy. Consume, consume, consume. Don’t think about the consequences. Don’t worry about global warming. Don’t ask under what labor conditions our products are manufactured in China and elsewhere. Just Buy! Don’t worry about genetic food. Just believe that Monsanto genetically engineered that corn to be good for you! Why make them test it and label it? Just trust them! Dumbassification!

In the schools, dumbassification is a process of social control that leads to the loss of our national identity and history. The great labor struggles, walkouts, and sit-down strikes leading to the movement for an 8-hour workday may get a page or two in a history textbook, but the meaning, the context, and the downright importance of these struggles to today‘s world are all but forgotten. Same thing is true with slavery. Ever since the first European colony was formed 400 years ago at Jamestown, Africans were kidnapped from their homeland and forced to work so that their white neo-colonial masters could make profit with cheap labor. They were given “Christian” names and robbed of their language and their identities. In order to control their behavior, they were beaten, whipped, raped, and hanged. There were white slaves as well, but they retained their given names, whereas blacks were listed on the manifest simply as “negro, negro, negro….” The term “nigger” -- the N-word -- was a derogatory word used to keep the workers down, to deny them of self-esteem and self-worth. Today, however, the term is used in the hip-hop generation almost as a term of endearment. “Wazzup, nigga?” is a term heard in high school hallways and seen in facebook postings everywhere, but what is wrong with using terms like brother, sister, friend, comrade or bro? What is wrong with using words that do not disrespect all those who died at the hands of masters and bosses? Dumbassification! The schools have helped dumb-down American citizens, who have forgotten their own national identity and history.

And, or course, in 2002, we were told over and over that we must go to war in Iraq for our own national security because Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.” Through media repetition, people can be conditioned to believe anything. It’s like if one source tells you that you are growing a tail, you can simply dismiss it as an error. If two sources tell you that you have a tail, you might start to wonder about the concept. Then when three sources tell you that you have a tail, you are apt to turn around and look. This is exactly how we have become assimilated and it is why we are such pushovers when it comes to the constant media drumbeat for war. The corporate masters have taken the fight out of us by suppressing the spirit of the founding fathers who declared independence from British rule and later formulated a Constitution and Bill of Rights. Bush and Cheney tell us we are on a mission to spread democracy and to protect ourselves from terrorism. They tell us that, to do so, we must give up some of those rights and freedoms that all citizens should consider a birthright. And yet we silently comply while they abandon habeas corpus, eavesdrop on telephone conversations, read mail, and intercept the email of law abiding citizens. Dumbassification!

In spite of Bush and Cheney’s claims to the contrary, the Iraq war has been lost. L-O-S-T. There is no democratic government in Baghdad and there will not be one as long as foreign troops occupy Iraqi soil. The Bush administration -- and now the Obama administration -- cannot be trusted to end war, let alone hold unconditional regional peace talks with all parties and neighboring nations, including oil-rich Iran. They want war because the corporations they represent want war and reconstruction profits. And we let them! Dumbassification!

There is not even the pretense of democracy in Iraq today. The “blue finger” elections were nothing but a sham for the media to buy into. The Bush administration has brought militia heads to power, along with gangsters, murderers, looters and rapists of all sorts. There is no way to win this war because there is no internal process for democracy to grow. Iraqis will keep fighting and Americans will keep dying as long as our government insists on occupying Iraq. More troops will not help and will likely make matters even worse.

All Americans need to understand this. Bush claimed that our troops would stand down as Iraqis stood up. Well, they are standing up, and this is apparent each time atrocities are committed against Iraqi families, each time doors are kicked in and the men are either shot or taken to secret prisons. From the moment the tanks rolled into Baghdad and the military rushed in to secure the oil fields but did nothing to stop rampant looting of national treasures, the war was over and not winnable. And then when the pictures of abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib surfaced, any lingering respect among Iraqis for the Untied States evaporated. And the entire world, which once looked up to the United States as a civilized nation where human rights are highly regarded, saw that Abu Ghraib was not the actions of a few soldiers on the night shift, as the Bush administration contended, but was official U.S. policy regarding the treatment of prisoners and was authorized by the highest levels of government. The media spin machine sometimes refers to Abu Ghraib as “torture-lite” as if that makes forced nudity, sexual degradation, sleep depravation, stress positioning, waterboarding (simulated drowning), somehow more palatable and acceptable. We should be outraged and demand independent investigations to prosecute the government officials responsible for approving torture no matter how far up the chain of command they have to go. But we don’t. We would rather watch silly mind-numbing television “reality” shows and not think about it. Dumbassification!

Bush was a president who fancied himself as some great military leader, but his actions took the world back into the dark ages. Bush and Cheney have basically overthrown the Untied States, stacked the courts with their own judges, and rendered Congress ineffective as a balance of power. Now the Obama administration is quietly chipping away at more Constitutional rights. The National Defense Authorization Act, which Obama signed, allows the indefinite detention of American citizens without constitutional due process of law. Unless we become outraged and stop this process of dumbassification, we will find ourselves living in the Orwellian world of corporate fascism. No rights. No privacy. No guns. No independent media. And no hope.

What will it take to wake up the assimilated Americans? What will it take to get us to leave our television sets and occupy the National Mall or participate in a nationwide general strike? How do we overcome our passive response to a power-grabbing, corporate-controlled government beholden to the corporate dollar? By voting in staged elections financed by the richest 1%, which tries hard to limit the voting rights of the 99%? It is not in our nature or history to lie down like whipped dogs, yet that is what we are doing. Dumbassification!

An ethical way to end the Iraq war

2007-02-15T18:48:00.000-05:00

By Mediagonebad

The Network of Spiritual Progressives is proposing an “ethical way to end the Iraq war” and is now launching a major print campaign. The proposal is presented in three parts: 1) recognizing that the Iraq war is wrong and that presidential repentance is necessary; 2) calling upon the Arab league to replace U.S and British forces; and 3) rebuilding Iraq, launching a global “Marshall Plan,” and recognizing that generosity beats domination as a strategy for homeland security.

I disagree with the first part of the proposal calling upon President Bush to repent before the U.N. I believe that impeachment for lying to Congress will provide the proper measure of justice for now -- unless he is later indicted for war crimes, of course. If we allow Bush to get away with impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors and for the mass murder of tens of thousands or people, then why should anyone obey the laws of society? And what message is the Bush administration sending to kids when it refuses to sit down and talk with adversaries face-to-face? That it is OK, perhaps, to simply walk up and slap someone upside the head without provocation?

I mostly agree with the second and third parts of the proposal. Iraq should be turned over to the Arab League so U.S. and British forces can leave Iraq. “Fellow Arabs know the language, understand the culture, and especially the religion of the people of Iraq far better than do our own soldiers,” the proposal states. U.S forces are “perceived as modern-day imitators of the crusaders who once devastated Muslim countries.” The proposal wants U.S. and British forces to withdraw as Arab forces take their place. This could be a long process and I would prefer that the withdrawal be immediate, complete, and unconditional, but I could compromise on this point if a cease-fire could be achieved first.

Part three of the proposal calls for rebuilding Iraq and creating a global “Marshall Plan.” The new plan should “commit 1% of the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. each year for the next 20 years toward the goal of eliminating global (and domestic) poverty, homelessness, inadequate health care, inadequate education, and for repairing the environment.” This approach, the proposal states, could have a secondary benefit in that a policy of generosity would replace the policy of domination and control and would eventually rebuild “respect and trust in the U.S.,” which is vital to homeland security.

Although I personally do not agree with the wording of the proposal, I would endorse it because this is the kind of common sense approach that we should be discussing instead of letting the powers that be and the mass media control the terms of the debate and ignore citizen action and input. Among the original signers of the proposal are Rabbi Michael Lerner, Howard Zinn, Rev. Tony Campolo, Sister Joan Chittister, Donald Gelphi, S. J. , the Revs. John and Susan Gregory-Davis, Rabbi Stephen B. Jacobs, and Marshall Berman.

Planetary SOS: It's do or die, folks

2007-02-10T12:17:00.000-05:00

By Mediagonebad

Global warming requires immediate action by the United States -- the most wasteful, polluting country on the planet. And, sorry folks, this action will require major lifestyle adjustments that will shake up the very foundation of government as we now understand it.

Throughout the Clinton and Bush administrations, global climate change has been ignored, given mere lip service, or has been actively challenged and misrepresented by the highest levels of government. Politicians are beholden to their corporate benefactors -- especially corporations that produce or depend upon oil -- so politicians tend to appease these corporations and bow to their desire to discredit global warming as legitimate science.

Some may argue that the damage has already been done and that the dire effects of global warming cannot be stopped. This may well be true. But the United States has a responsibility to the world to take the lead and make the sacrifices necessary to reduce greenhouse gases as much as possible.

First, we need to understand that the interests of the planet must take precedence over the national interest and, especially, over the corporate interest. We must begin producing all-electric and vegetable-oil-based vehicles and phasing out the gas-powered combustion engine for all but vehicles that can run on biodiesel or a similar vegetable-based fuel. We must also phase out coal-fired power plants and dangerous nuclear power plants and replace them with clean solar, wind and hydroelectric power generating plants. This will require that auto manufacturers be willing to produce those vehicles for the public good rather than for their own private profit. It will also require hundreds of new factories to build commercial-grade solar panels, wind generators, blades, and so on. Gas stations will have to begin selling vegetable-based fuel and converting to battery charging stations. This must become the number one priority in the country and citizens may be inconvenienced for years.

Now, let's back up a little. None of this is going to happen without a fundamental change in the way we allow our government to operate, without an all-out war on global warming. Obstructionist, pandering politicians of any party must be booted out. The American people -- not the government -- need to claim our role as the real decision-makers in this nation. We need to understand that corporations, operating for profit under an unregulated free market, are not going to address global warming in a timely fashion and on the scale needed. Never. But we need to set goals and create a series of five-year plans right now. Tomorrow may be too late.

This war on global warming will need to divert funds from the massive military budget in order to make it happen. There will not be any outsourcing to China or anywhere else and every sector of society must be involved in one way or another. In all likelihood, the oil companies -- which are now the driving force behind the war in Iraq -- will be nationalized in the public interest to ensure that oil is available throughout this societal transformation. Prices may rise and rationing may occur at some point, so the new war on global warming will most impact those of us who are around at the beginning of this transformation.

This is a planetary emergency and nothing is going to be done about it unless the citizens of the United States take the lead and force the societal changes necessary to accomplish it. This nation has the ingenuity, the work ethic, and resources to get it done, and there is no reason why we cannot create full employment, national health care, and a living wage for all in the process. But we need a collective consciousness, not political polarization and self-interest. If we cannot achieve that, then there is no hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on the rapid scale needed to offset climate change.

We need people -- like Molly Ivins said in her final column before her death -- we need people out in the streets banging pots and pans. We need tens of thousands of people living in a tent city on the National Mall in Washington, D.C, inconveniencing the normal routine of Congress. We need sit-down strikes. We may even need general strikes to disrupt business-as-usual throughout the country. This is serious, folks. It's do or die.

The Oil Barons: Chasing the Dollar into the 21st Century

2007-02-02T13:04:00.000-05:00

By Mediagonebad

"Indians chase the vision, white men chase the dollar," writes Lame Deer, a traditional Sioux medicine man. "Americans are bred like stuffed geese -- to be consumers, not human beings. The moment they stop consuming and buying, this frog-skin [dollar] world has no use for them."

In the 1800s, the Indians were nearly wiped out by the westward expansion of the American frontier. The prize then for the US was land for farming, logging, mining and railroads, and the methods used for displacing Indians were brutal and genocidal, as hundreds of thousands of buffalo -- the main food supply for many Indian tribes -- were shot and left to rot in the sun. The Indians who did not succumb to starvation were relocated and forced onto smaller and smaller parcels of land. Every Indian treaty signed by the United States was broken by the United States. The treaties provided temporary appeasement while the aggressive expansion continued unchecked.

Strike first. Eliminate the opposition's ability to resist. Use whatever means are necessary to win. Claim divine intervention to soothe the God-fearing naysayers. These tenets of the Manifest Destiny doctrine are centuries-old tactics and have been used in North America and throughout the world. Under the Manifest Destiny doctrine, the United States has the divine duty to spread its version of political, religious, and free market "truth" throughout the world, and it does so by claiming this mission to be in its "national interest." From the Indians to the Mexicans to the Koreans to the Iraqis, those who resist are conquered. Even the Moon and Mars have been conquered, if only symbolically at present.

But the 21st century prize for the United States is oil, and the strategic importance of oil to the American economy is the driving force behind today's Manifest Destiny. Bush's war on Iraq, a nation already weakened by economic sanctions and disarmed by a 1991 war and by continued United Nations weapons inspections, is a brazen -- and many would say criminal -- grab for oil that fits perfectly with the extraterritorial nature of Manifest Destiny.

The United States is purporting to support a western-style democracy in Iraq, and, of course, freedom from the tyrannical dictator known as Saddam Hussein. When we dig under the rhetoric and look at the context, however, the Iraq war is an annexation, a colonization, a hostile takeover of a sovereign nation that happens to have 10 percent of the world's remaining oil reserves. And one of the great ironies of the war on Iraq is that the Bush family business just happens to be oil and weapons, which makes the war for oil a win-win situation for the Bushes. No oil-producing nation, nor any nation with the military or ideological power to stand in the way of US Manifest Destiny, is safe from military intervention, regime change, and hostile takeover. The excuses used to justify intervention almost sound legitimate to the casual observer: The Indians needed "civilized." The Iraqis needed "freedom." But Manifest Destiny dictates that both Indians and Iraqis, as non-Europeans, are incapable of self-government.

Like the red-skinned Indians, the new enemies of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny -- the "terrorists" -- are portrayed by the mass media as brown-skinned Arabs. After a group of Saudi extremists flew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11/01, Bush's declaration, "you are either with us or you are with the terrorists," brought the Manifest Destiny doctrine once again to center stage. First-strike, unilateral military intervention is easier for the public to swallow in the vague context of a "war on terrorism," of "us vs. them," of "good vs. evil." In President Bush's own words, it is the destiny of the United States to "change the world," to rid the world of "evil-doers." What he means, of course, is that he will defeat all of those who oppose US imperialism's divine claim to planet Earth. In any realistic historical context, however, Bush's view of Manifest Destiny would be considered just as extremist, dangerous, and ruthless as any dictator the world has ever known.

The Republic of Cuba, however, has been a thorn in the side for US Manifest Destiny. Ever since 1959, when Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, in the name of Cuba's workers and farmers, led the Cuban Revolution and overthrew the corrupt Batista regime just 90 miles south of Key West, Florida, the US has unsuccessfully tried to overthrow Cuba. From the Bay of Pigs invasion to exploding cigars to germ warfare to an economic blockade to blatant acts of terrorism against hotels and airplanes, the US government, in collusion with a bloc of wealthy Cuban-American exiles in Miami, has sought to destroy the Cuban Revolution. At every meeting of the UN human rights commission, the US exerts its mighty influence over voting members to ensure that Cuba -- by just one vote in 2004 -- is condemned for human rights violations. Another tactic is to list Cuba as one of seven countries that support terrorism. Is Cuba -- a sovereign nation that treats food, housing, education, and health care as human rights -- on Bush's short list for military action and "regime change"?

Perhaps now is the time to replace the doctrine of Manifest Destiny with a new humanist doctrine, a doctrine more in tune with a rapidly growing world population and a dwindling supply of natural resources. A doctrine more in tune with global warming, air pollution, and contaminated drinking water. A doctrine more in tune with the need of all human beings for food, shelter, education and health care.

"I am trying to bring the ghost dance back," writes Lame Deer, "but interpret it in a new way. I think it has been misunderstood, but after [110] years I believe that more and more people are sensing what we meant when we prayed for a new earth and that now not only the Indians but everybody has become an 'endangered species.' So let the Indians help you bring on a new earth without pollution or war. Let's roll up the world. It needs it."

Note: For more information, see my entire compilation at Manifest Destiny -- From sea to shining sea...to global domination

Who killed the electric car?

2007-01-09T20:17:00.001-05:00

By Mediagonebad

The best-kept secret in zero-emission vehicles is the electric car. While auto manufacturers, oil companies and the federal government act as if this technology is light years away, General Motors has already designed -- and destroyed -- the best electric cars in the world.

The EV1, manufactured by GM, had all the power and speed that we are used to in our cars and had a range of 75-130 miles between recharges. The car used no gas or oil and the only maintenance on them was battery care, tire and brake care, and filling the windshield fluid reservoir.

In other words, EV1s were the perfect car for city driving and short commutes. With proper marketing, they could have been very popular and would have put a lot of people back to work in this country, but only 800 cars were built and they were for lease only. As a result of a GM lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the cars were rounded up from the lessees and crushed. The Bush administration, with its insider ties to Big Oil, supported the GM lawsuit and called for more research money for hydrogen fuel cells, a promising technology that is many years behind electric car technology.

"Who Killed the Electric Car?" is a documentary released by Sony Pictures Classics. It is the story about the EV1, California's zero emission mandate, the lawsuit brought by General Motors and others against CARB, and the subsequent recall and destruction of the EV1s. Buy it, rent it, share it, and then DO something. Electric cars have been around for more than 100 years, so this technology, more than any other in existence now, can quckly reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere if we find the political will to manufacture and mass market all-electric vehicles.

The auto manufacturers and oil companies have long withheld the mass development of this technology from humanity and it is my belief that this is the main reason we now find ourselves facing the crisis of global warming and the prospect of a new world war. Energy is very important, but we all need to understand that science has already proven that energy is free, abundant and clean and that our current energy policies are all wrong and unnecessary. The profit-hungry energy companies, motivated only by money and power, do not want to do what is in the best interests of humankind.

An Inconvenient Truth

2007-01-09T20:08:00.000-05:00

By Mediagonebad

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is one of the most important films ever made. Gore's presentation makes a very compelling case for the reality of global warming and underscores the urgency for action in the United States, the world's most wasteful consumer society.

Arctic ice is melting at an alarming rate and will soon present a danger to islands and coastal areas. Polar bears are already drowning because the shrinking ice sheets prevent them from reaching their winter food supplies. Black bears are reportedly not hibernating in some areas and spring flowers are blooming in mid-winter in the northern U.S. World climate patterns are changing more rapidly than anyone could have predicted.

The Bush administration has been in absolute denial regarding global warming and has even muzzled NASA scientists by editing their work so that global warming appears to be some lunatic fringe theory rather than a fact. Bush's ignorance regarding global warming does a grave disservice to every living, breathing creature on the planet.

See the film and share it with others, then DO something. Change to compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Wash your clothes in cold water. Turn down the thermostat. And most importantly, write to your representatives and demand that they address this as an urgent matter affecting all life on Earth.

Lessons from Vietnam

2006-09-28T10:27:00.000-04:00

By Mediagonebad

We may see ourselves through rose-colored glasses and convince ourselves that we are right and they are wrong, that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys.

But are we really morally superior to anyone? We reacted to terrorism by becoming terrorists ourselves when we attacked Iraq. We responded to beheadings by becoming torturers ourselves. Their religious fanatics want to kill us, so our religious fanatics want to kill them.

We are reactionaries. We think in the short-term and do not consider the long-term consequences of our actions. We do not consider alternative actions through grassroots discussion as a genuine democratic republic would do, but we let the media corporations and paid lobbyists set the agenda and control the debate. Alternative views are ignored in this country.

Some neocons advocate the use of nuclear weapons in the Arab East, but the use of nukes anywhere will virtually ensure that Washington and Omaha will burn as well. That is an insane argument, a suicidal argument.

The real fight is for freedom, democracy, and liberty under law here at home, not in some foreign land.

Catholic Priest and Vietnam activist Philip Berrigan dictated the following from his death-bed just one day before he died on Dec. 6, 2002:

“I die in a community including my family, my beloved wife Elizabeth, three great Dominican nuns - Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert, and Jackie Hudson (emeritus) jailed in Western Colorado - Susan Crane, friends local, national and even international. They have always been a life-line to me. I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself. We have already exploded such weapons in Japan in 1945 and the equivalent of them in Iraq in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1999, and in Afghanistan in 2001. We left a legacy for other people of deadly radioactive isotopes - a prime counterinsurgency measure. For example, the people of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be battling cancer, mostly from depleted uranium, for decades. In addition, our nuclear adventurism over 57 years has saturated the planet with nuclear garbage from testing, from explosions in high altitudes (four of these), from 103 nuclear power plants, from nuclear weapons factories that can't be cleaned up - and so on. Because of myopic leadership, of greed for possessions, a public chained to corporate media, there has been virtually no response to these realities…” [From Common Dreams.]

Philip Berrigan is best known for his opposition to the Vietnam war, which he expressed by destroying Selective Service Files, pouring blood on nuclear missiles at a General Electric nuclear weapons plant, and similar acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. He served seven years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy, burglary and criminal mischief. His motivating philosophy-- that we humans cannot serve both love and war -- has stood the test of time and deserves a reading today:

“When a people arbitrarily decides that this planet and its riches are to be divided unequally among equals, and that the only criterion for the division is the amount of naked power at its disposal, diplomacy tends to be essentially military, truth tends to be fiction, and the world tends to become a zoo without benefit of cages. And war tends to be the ultimate rationality, because reason has been bankrupted of human alternatives….

Our lives, to be agencies of peace, must stand the scrutiny of both God and man, and by man I mean not our peers, but the billions of people suffering from war, tyranny, starvation, disease, and the burden of color prejudice. In our better moments we may pity them, but sentiment has yet to stop bombing or feed starving children. They will hold us to our acts, and if these acts will not bear human analysis, we will be judged and condemned and withstood in the same coin.

If disengagement from the violent aspects of the ‘system’ is one side of peacemaking, service of truth and human rights is the other. As Pope John used to say, ‘Love ought to be the motive, but justice is the object.’ This is a very large order, calling for people who know humanity by principle and by experience, who are as pained by the plight of starving millions in India as by the sufferings of our own poor, by Chase Manhattan Bank investments in South Africa as by the ruthlessness of Detroit car manufacturers, by napalmed Vietnamese children as by rat-bitten Harlem kids. For as they see it, people are one before they are many, they are a man before men, not objects to be manipulated, exploited, cursed, or killed.”

[By Philip Berrigan, Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.]

We will not be silenced

2006-09-10T15:07:00.000-04:00

By Mediagonebad

"We will not be silenced" is a T-shirt campaign to spread the message that all of us who believe in freedom for all, democracy and social justice cannot afford to be silent now. “We will not be silenced” is a multi-language statement attributed to a student-resistance movement in Nazi Germany called The White Rose. It is not a statement of action, but a statement of purpose intended to inspire acts of resistance and dissent against a corrupt government that abuses its power, lies, tortures, kills, and abandons the rule of law.

I think everyone who believes in the Constitution should be wearing one of these shirts anywhere people congregate. Bit by bit, yard by yard, the professional politicians now in power are working hard to render the Bill of Rights obsolete, and the shirt’s message is that we, the people of Earth, will speak up to preserve our rights and freedoms. We will not be silenced.

Someday, these professional politicians and their corporate benefactors have got to go. Democracy should be from the bottom up, not from the top down. Maybe someday we will see public financing of campaigns so all candidates have an equal share of the monies and cannot use personal money or donations. Maybe someday we will have more term limits so no one person gets to be all-powerful in any position. Imagine campaigns actually focusing on social issues and solutions!

I believe the Wall Street multi-millionaires who control the military/industrial/media complex have launched a war against the American people. They have long wanted to drive down wages and eliminate benefits, cut corporate taxes, break up the remaining unions, resume COINTELPRO covert spying on Americans, and further rob the public treasury and Social Security to finance extremely profitable weapons production. Through the imbeciles in the Bush administration, they have found a way to advance their agenda.

The people advocating increased domestic surveillance pine for the days of COINTELPRO, a 40-year counterintelligence program that targeted individuals like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and groups like the Socialist Worker's Party, the Black Panthers, and yes, the Democrats. The Watergate break-in helped to expose the enormity and scope of the program. Some of the tactics used by the FBI included break-ins of offices and homes, illegal wiretapping, the infiltration of union and political groups, advocating violence at peaceful antiwar rallies, and workplace harassment.

If anyone thinks that there will be oversight of domestic spying now or that it will be used just to root out potential terrorists, then think again. Stick with FISA. It was set up after COINTELPRO was exposed and it works just fine. The so-called “war on terrorism” is a hoax designed to instill fear, exert social control, and keep the American people in check. Imagine a government so insecure in its rhetoric that it must resort to spying on its own citizens in order to protect itself from them.

We the people have been systematically dumbed-down by education and the mass media and the corporate rulers have us right where they want us -- at each others' throats instead of trying to organize, rebuild democracy, and fulfill the American dream for all. Divide and rule. Make us believe it is "us vs. them" while the super-rich further rob the public treasury and Social Security and drive the United States into Third World status. Bush is a criminal, no better than bin Laden, and I hope that they both answer to the world someday. Bin Laden attacked the US without provocation and Bush attacked a sovereign Iraq without provocation. They are both terrorists.

And we will not be silenced.

Students: Organize for meaningful social change

2006-08-27T21:49:00.000-04:00

By Mediagonebad

Americans have no sense of history. We see the news headlines presented in the mass media, yet we have no understanding of historical causation, no understanding of how past events shape present events. The only historical knowledge we have is the information spoon-fed to us through the schools and the mass media, information often intended to steer us toward a linear way of thinking about history.

For example, Saddam Hussein is portrayed today as an evil dictator who ruthlessly gassed his own people, yet there is no mention that the nerve gas was used with the full knowledge of our government at the time. Officially, the government objected to the use of gas against the Kurds, but it took no action to prevent its use because it, like Saddam Hussein, was concerned with the "Kurdish problem." The knowledge of the U.S. as a silent partner in the gassing of the Kurds provides important historical context, yet the media -- in typical fashion -- censor the news by omission.

Americans have been so dumbed-down by poor education, shallow news reporting, mindless entertainment, wasteful consumerism, and, now, by the greatly overblown fear of terrorism, that we allow our government to systematically alter the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The Bush administration claims, for example, that the secret wiretapping of Americans -- Americans not even suspected of crimes -- is constitutional. If we were properly educated in history, millions of us would be marching in the streets, walking off the job, and striking until our government rescinded all infringements upon the Constitution and expanded protection to ensure that this not happen again without the full knowledge and consent of the people.

The most important lessons that high school students must learn these days are critical thinking and historical causation. These concepts can be easily integrated into any class, but ignoring them will leave every child behind at a time when we need the younger generation to take control of the nation and restore genuine democracy so that we set a good example for the developing world and become good neighbors and trade partners instead of conquerors and bullies, so that we learn to solve problems through communication and consensus-building rather than warfare.

After 9/11, we rushed into war in Afghanistan -- one of the poorest nations on Earth -- in order to capture Osama bin Laden and destroy the Taliban. But we did neither. Instead, the Bush administration fabricated evidence and blatantly lied to the American people in order to invade Iraq. This is not the way our government is supposed to function, but our representative government has become beholden to the big corporations rather than to the people.

It is up to you, the youth of America, to actively work for meaningful social change. Perhaps, as a first step, practice Civics 101 and demand that military recruiters be denied access to your school during school hours. You can also form after-school discussion groups and political action groups. You can organize community teach-ins and marches. You can write articles for your school paper. And you can talk with your parents and grandparents about the lessons of Vietnam, Watergate, and COINTELPRO. You can even ask your school to invest in low-power community radio to provide music and news to the community near your school. Until the schools learn how to teach, educate yourselves.

Finally, consider these words from Pastor Martin Niemoller: "In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me -- and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Iran for Rednecks

2006-04-18T03:01:00.000-04:00

Cast of Characters
Dale Earnhardt Jr. as Iran
Junior’s car as Iran’s nuclear sites
Jeff Gordon as the U.S.
Gordon’s pit crew as the U.S. military
NASCAR as the United Nations
Other drivers as other countries
The fans as the U.S. mass media

Pretend for a minute that Dale Jr. wins Daytona. While Junior is celebrating his victory, Jeff Gordon complains to NASCAR that Junior has been illegally altering his car’s engine. NASCAR and other drivers know this is not true, but Gordon keeps insisting that Junior is breaking the rules and ought to be punished. The fans believe what Gordon says even though they can offer no proof to back up his claims and Gordon gets upset because NASCAR is not doing anything about it. Gordon then gets his pit crew and surrounds Junior’s car. He tells the fans that he will destroy Junior and his car no matter what NASCAR says. The fans all cheer except for a few dissenters in the back who cannot be heard over the noise.

Open letter to FCC Chairman Martin

2006-04-16T21:48:00.000-04:00

April 16, 2006

FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street SW
Washington, DC 20554

Television is the most powerful educational tool in history and could be used much more effectively to keep the general population informed. The airwaves belong to the public, but this great educational tool is being squandered away by private corporations interested only in profit. Meanwhile, the informational needs of the public go unmet.

Consider the state of the union today from a citizen's point-of-view:

1) U.S. troops are occupying Iraq in a war that could have been prevented if television news had been used in the public interest. In the lead-up to the war, virtually all of the national news stations and cable stations banged their drums for war. Voices of truth who knew that the war was based on lies from day one had no mass media forum to express their views other than the internet.

But the internet alone is not enough. Television could have been used as a national forum for inquiry and education about Iraq, but the corporations have so much control over news content that it becomes easy to simplify and manipulate the news through sheer repetition. How many times did we hear Condoleezza Rice's references to the "mushroom cloud"?

The manner in which news is presented should be a critical part of the FCC licensing process. All news and news-related programming offered by CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS are hosted by moderates (presented as "liberals") and/or conservatives. Genuine alternative positions are rarely presented. More programming like Democracy Now should be widely available because this is what genuine public interest programming looks like when stacked up against the formula programming offered by the mass media barons. The media corporations will not provide public interest news programming on their own, so it will be up to Congress and the FCC to ensure that the public interest standard is met.

2) Political campaigns are presented in the media as popularity contests -- all style and no substance. Television could be used to educate the public about the past record, financial ties, and opinions of the candidates, but all we get are slick PR commercials and attack ads. These ads should be stopped and replaced by nonpartisan, factual candidate information spots and unscripted televised debates that allow unscreened audience questions.

3) Pharmaceutical companies are big businesses that provide a lot of advertising revenue to stations, but there is no way for consumers to find out about preventative medicine techniques or alternative therapies unless they do their own research. All we get are a barrage of ads promoting this or that drug product and stating possible side effects. Drug advertising is a disservice to the public and to the medical profession and increases consumer prices for these medications.

4) It is important to keep the internet as it is by not allowing private corporations to carve it up for their own profits at the expense of alternative news and information. As it is today, the internet is the last bastion of democracy in the United States and it must be defended strongly by the FCC against the corporate broadband wolves.

In 1934, the FCC was given a broad mandate to grant licenses in order to promote “the public interest, convenience and necessity” and “full power to investigate and study the business of existing companies." As a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, however, I believe the 1934 public interest mandate is not given nearly enough weight and that the FCC Commissioners ought to examine the cause-and-effect relationship between corporate ownership of the mass media and the absolute failure of these corporations to provide critical news and information in the public interest.

The Life or Death Struggle for Unity

2006-04-01T01:54:00.000-05:00

The world’s population is growing at a rate of about 74 million each year. By 2050, there will be approximately 9 billion people living on our world -- maybe more -- each with hopes and dreams of family, friends, good health, decent housing, and a living wage.

The consumer nations, led by the United States, must change their selfish, wasteful habits or this planetary population growth will be unsustainable. There will be an increase in greenhouse gases, further complicating an already dangerous global warming. There will be a reduction of both tillable land and drinking water resources. The oil supply will dwindle and prices will skyrocket. And because of today’s corporate greed and irresponsibility regarding agriculture, untested, nutrient-deficient GE crops will lead to an increase in hunger and increased vulnerability to new diseases and famine.

If there were a chance that the people of the United States would rise up and take back the power of the people, then maybe there would be room for optimism regarding the future. But we are too preoccupied by the rampant disease of warmongering, wasteful consumerism, and the lack of political will for planning. We are too divided over our red and blue states to realize that we need to unite around the very planet that sustains us. This is the common bond we share with all people and all nations.

The United States has a shameful record on recycling and reusing, as consumer goods such as televisions, VCRs, printers, furniture and appliances are often dumped into landfills. It has become cheaper and more convenient to simply throw away rather than repair. Computer printers, for example, have become so cheap that when an ink cartridge runs out, some of us throw the printer in the trash and buy a new one, as the replacement cartridge may cost more than the printer. Of course, some cartridges are refillable, but information about refilling them is omitted from the printer documentation.

The secret message behind all of this is buy, buy, buy and spend, spend, spend! Corporations are so out of control in their greed for profit that the needs of the future are not even considered. And Americans are so uninformed by a corporate media that focuses on news as entertainment rather than as a public forum for serious discussion that the possibilities for a change of priorities look bleak. It is imperative that we unite for the sake of the planet. It is imperative that we take back our public airwaves. Our very lives depend on it.

Big, Fat Smiley Faces!

2006-03-31T06:26:00.000-05:00

During a recent public relations speech in West Virginia, a woman in the carefully screened audience commented to President Bush that the media do not report the good things the Bush administration does.

In her mind, I suppose, hearing stories about violence in Iraq, the New Orleans fiasco, and presidential misconduct shows the Bush administration in a bad light. She wishes the media would report more good stories.

That’s it! We need more happy stories! We do not need an independent media that reports the truth, holds politicians accountable, and lets the political chips fall where they may. We do not need stories showing the gruesome reality of the Iraq war or showing fallen soldiers coming home in coffins. We do not need to know that, as a result of Bush’s war, tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, including innocent men, women and children. We do not need to hear evidence that shows the president has lied repeatedly to the American people and to Congress. We do not need to know about Bush’s war on dissent and his approval of the unconstitutional wiretapping of American citizens. We do not need to know about the administration’s plan to produce -- and use -- a new generation of nuclear weapons.

As if the media do not have enough built-in filters that toe the administration line and keep citizens ignorant, now we need stories with big, fat smiley faces to show that they meet the goodness test! The war is going just fine and the troops are exited to be promoting American democracy in Iraq! The economy is strong because Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthy are creating new jobs! These are the happy stories that show the Bush administration in a positive light. Never mind that growing numbers of demoralized Iraq veterans are joining antiwar protests. Never mind that the new jobs being created are low paid service jobs that do not provide benefits. The administration knows that if you repeat your message and catch phrases often enough for gullible Americans, they will believe anything. According to Hermann Goering, Hitler's designated successor in the Third Reich, "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

So, to the West Virginia woman who wants big, fat smiley faces masking the truth, I would say that the world is in a far more dangerous position after George W. Bush used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to launch a vague war on a tactic and then decided to use preemptive warfare in Iraq. There are no smiley faces big enough to hide his crimes against humanity.

Hands Off Iran!

2006-03-14T21:58:00.000-05:00

Just like the build-up to the Iraq war, the hypocritical U.S. Government and its media allies are creating an artificial sense of urgency regarding Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney said that there will be “meaningful consequences” if Iran does not change its present course. “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” Cheney said.

Sound familiar? Remember the constant media drumbeat in 2002 and 2003 regarding Saddam Hussein and Iraq? Remember the accusations that Iraq was supporting terrorism? Remember the bogus assertion that Iraq was responsible for 9/11? Remember the imagery of the “mushroom cloud” and the U.S. insistence that Iraq had a vast stockpile of chemical weapons? Of course, the former United Nations weapons inspectors were saying at the time that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but this point of view was drowned out by the loud drumbeat for war. There was no meaningful diplomacy during that time because the Bush crime family had already decided upon war.

So why all of the interest in Iran now? Is it really about nuclear proliferation, or is that just a smokescreen for something else. After all, Bush recently made a nuclear technology pact with India, a pact that sends signals throughout the world -- and to the Iranian leadership -- that nuclear proliferation is O.K. and that the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty doesn’t mean anything. In fact, the U.S. is planning a new generation of nukes, so it has no right to criticize other nations. So what is really going on?

It so happens that Iran -- like Iraq -- is a major oil producer and is in a strategic location for the long-term U.S. plan to control the Caspian Sea oil reserves and build pipelines through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran. There will be a pretense of diplomacy as the United Nations tries to find a solution to the Iranian situation that will satisfy the United States, but a solution acceptable to the U.S. will not be found, so the Bush regime will launch a unilateral military strike. Who can doubt it? The campaign to sway public opinion has already begun. The oil-mongers are at it again, no matter what the human and environmental cost.

Constitution? What Constitution?

2006-03-13T22:06:00.000-05:00

History will regard the 109th Senate as the most corrupt ever.

In the same way that President Bush fixed the facts to fit his neocon war plans in Iraq, the Republican leadership in the 109th Senate uses its power to short-circuit meaningful debate and independent investigations of presidential wrongdoing.

On March 13, 2006, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), called upon the Senate to censure President Bush for ignoring the Constitution and misleading Congress and the American people on the use of warrant-less wiretapping. Bush loyalists claim that the president has the right to circumvent existing statutes and to use whatever means he sees fit in the so-called “war on terror.” One chief loyalist, Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH), even wants to introduce legislation making Bush’s warrant-less wiretapping on American citizens legal in order to cover the president‘s past illegal actions. What a sham!

Senate Majority Leader Frist (R-TN) wanted to force an immediate vote on the Feingold resolution with no discussion on the Senate floor, a tactic that seems just plain wrong in a supposed constitutional democracy, but the resolution will likely be sent to the judicial or intelligence committee, where the Republican majorities will quietly squash it.

It is unlikely that the Feingold resolution will get any support from a single Republican. As for Democratic support, well, let’s just say that the Democrats in the 109th Senate are spineless jellyfish and have been known to buckle under to the Republicans. A clear violation of the U.S. Constitution is not even enough incentive for more than a handful of Democrats to consider censoring Bush during wartime.

Feingold did what needed to be done in order to preserve the integrity of the Constitution and President Bush deserves censure -- and eventual impeachment -- for his illegal actions.

Democracy and Capitalism are not synonyms

2006-01-11T12:20:00.000-05:00

The Republic of China is growing increasingly apprehensive about the massive debt associated with the U.S. dollar, so it is reportedly shopping around for a new currency such as the Euro or Yen.

It doesn't take an economist to figure out that the consequences of this in the U.S. would be immense. Cheap Chinese products now line the shelves of department stores, convenience stores and gift shops all over the country, so if the government imposes tariffs on Chinese imports -- as it has threatened -- then prices will rise and the economy will suffer greatly.

China is mastering capitalism, but it remains a repressive society that does not practice democracy. When Chinese students began a pro-democracy movement at Tiananmen Square, the government acted quickly to squelch it. The famous photograph of the man in front of a tank is a worthy symbol of the pro-democracy movement, but the government arrests people who speak out and thus maintains its power and control by fear and repression. At the same time, business is booming, thanks largely to low paid workers and child and prison labor.

In the U.S., capitalism has propelled the nation to the largest economy in the world and its Constitution and Bill of Rights has long served as a beacon for immigrants. But democracy and capitalism are not synonyms. Hitler understood capitalism well and envisioned a worldwide corporate oligarchy in which the individual exists to serve the state.

Although Hitler is dead, his concept of capitalism is not. George W. Bush -- whose grandfather, the late Senator Prescott Bush, supported Hitler financially through business dealings -- also understands capitalism and has, through tax cuts for the rich and a war in Iraq, created massive debt that has been absorbed largely by China and Saudi Arabia. In so doing, Bush has taken billions of dollars out of the public sector and put it in the private sector and the result is a lower standard of living for the middle class. Forget the poor.

Corporations, emboldened by Bush policies, are cutting health benefits and pension plans for workers, yet they are making record profits. In civil society, illegal wiretaps are being used to spy on Americans. Repressive tactics are on the rise and are slowly, almost imperceptively, replacing democratic principles while citizens are being entertained and distracted by the corporate media.

President Bush has obtained a level of presidential power that usurps Congress and is appointing pro-business judges to control the Judicial Branch. Capitalism is working well for the rich, but they are not satisfied with being rich; they want to be richer.

Ever since 9/11/01, Bush has used the "war on terror" as an excuse to erode civil liberties and constitutional protections for individuals. He has authorized intelligence organizations to capture "enemy combatants," deny them access to representation, and to torture them without regard for the Geneva Convention. He has also authorized a policy of "extraordinary rendition" to hold prisoners in other nations so they will not be subject to humane protection under U.S. law.

Bush is making up rules as he goes along and his supporters join in lock-step. But there is no way to win a war on terror because terrorism is a tactic, not a nation. The war is being used hypocritically to impose Bush's will on other nations as he hopes to propel the United States toward unbridled world dominance. Dissent will not be tolerated, even if that means using nuclear weapons. Bush is a danger to humanity. Hitler would be proud.

Good Morning National Security Agency!

2005-12-18T10:03:00.000-05:00

Wakie, wakie N.S.A.! I have another blog entry for your review.

There is a chill in the air this morning and just knowing that President Bush authorized the N.S.A. to spy on Americans adds to that chill.

We have returned to the days of Cointelpro when the F.B.I. secretly infiltrated antiwar groups, political parties, black power organizations and even women's rights and environmental groups. They used direct infiltration by agents posing as members, but also used wiretaps and break-ins to collect information on individuals and organizations. Some individuals were put on blacklists so they could not obtain employment, even though these individuals had broken no laws and committed no crimes. All they did was support their country through progressive causes and exercise their constitutional right to dissent when the leadership in Washington took the country in the wrong direction.

Same thing is true today, but new technology allows the N.S.A. to use electronic keyword searches to eavesdrop on private telephone conversations and to intercept emails. The N.S.A. is also active in using agents to infiltrate progressive organizations, take video of rallies, and get the license plate numbers of people attending rallies and marches.

Shame on the N.S.A. for spying on Americans! The real danger to the United States is not terrorism from the citizens, but is the criminal policies of the Bush administration. Spy on the White House and expose the corruption there! The Bush administration -- with the help of Congressional leaders with their heads up Bush's rear end -- is shredding the constitution and Bill of Rights so Bush, Cheney, Rice Rumsfeld, and a growing list of international corporations, can cash in on weapons sales and line their pockets with Iraqi oil revenue.

Is this what America is supposed to by about? Killing and more killing? The rich get richer and the poor get nothing? Let us start being good neighbors in the world community by ending starvation and treating curable diseases. Let us close the gap between the rich and poor. Let us spend our tax dollars on schools and jobs here in the United States. Let us bring the troops home now and end this so-called war on terrorism. There is so much good we can do in the world if we can get our nation on the right track. Wakie, wakie N.S.A.!

Democracy-building for Neo Cons

2005-09-14T08:47:00.001-04:00

We found out too late that the war in Iraq was based on a pack of lies -- that it was not about WMD, al Qaeda, or 9/11 -- so you claimed that the war was about "building democracy" in Iraq.

O.K., let's look back at our own history so citizens realize what we are in for if we allow this horrific war to continue.

The first step in democracy-building is ethnic cleansing, a process that is well under way by the Shiite majority in Iraq. In our own nation, you will remember, we tried hard to exterminate the American Indians. When that failed, we tried to eliminate their main food supply, the buffalo. That weakened them enough that we could round them up and put them on reservations.

Of course, you can't build democracy without someone to do the manual labor, so you will need at least 200 years of abject slavery in order to ensure that the majority gets to live the good life while the ethnic minorities remain poor. You can keep the slavery going in different forms, such as wage slavery, indefinitely.

Perhaps the most sacred part of the democratic process is voting. One man, one vote. Of course, you will not want to allow women to vote for about 150 years (if ever). If you notice that any minority group starts gaining too much power in a particular area, just re-draw the voting districts. Make it as inconvenient as possible for minorities to vote by allowing them fewer voting booths so they will have to wait in long lines to vote. When you can afford it, invest in electronic voting machines that do not leave a paper record of the vote. These can be tampered with without the voter ever knowing it.

There you have it, ladies and germs. When you want to invade a sovereign nation under the guise of spreading democracy, you are deceiving yourselves if you think it will be quick and easy, or that it will even be democracy. You will always be seen as foreign invaders, as murdering pirates going from ship to ship. But democracy really isn't what you want, here or anywhere else, is it? You want total political and economic control. You want all oil and mineral rights. And there is nothing that you will not do to get your way. Nothing. No one is safe. Even your own citizens.

Which kind of extremist are you?

2005-09-12T10:18:00.000-04:00

One of these days, the levees around New Orleans will finally be raised and strengthened to handle a Category 5 hurricane, but land developers are already salivating over the "new" New Orleans.

They imagine a New Orleans of pricey hotels, condos, and shopping districts. The single-family homes will be bulldozed and replaced with high-rent apartments so landlords can further gouge the pocketbooks and dignity of the working class poor employed in the tourist and service industries -- waiters, cashiers, nurses aides, receptionists, cooks, delivery drivers, and so on. Instead of becoming a model city that pays a living wage to its citizens, that cares about the health and welfare of its citizens from the cradle to the grave, the "new" New Orleans will likely become a showcase for the very worst of modern capitalism. Greed.

The Garden district and Bourbon Street will still be the main tourist draw because of the name recognition, but the real character of the city lives in a gumbo mix of French-speaking people, families of former slaves, and Latin Americans and, if they are driven out by high rent, then Bourbon Street will be nothing more than an old facade. A page in a history book.

Cities are for people, for human beings of all colors. Cities should be planned logically so people can live near shopping centers, markets, and mass transit routes. City buses should be all-electric, biodiesel, or hybrid, to keep air pollution to a minimum. All employers should have to pay a living wage. National health insurance should provide for all health and dental care needs with a special focus on preventative medicine and patient teaching. Building codes should be strictly enforced in areas prone to natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. No exceptions for casinos and special interests.

I have heard people say that we are all extremists. Some of us believe that the Earth and human society exist for humankind, for all the people who inhabit the Earth, and that we should strive to live together, better ourselves, and share the planet with as much justice and harmony as possible. Others believe that the Earth can be divided up and owned, that its wealth can be exploited for the personal riches of a few while millions suffer from starvation, poverty, lack of clean drinking water, lack of health care, lack of housing, and lack of education. The real question then becomes: Which kind of extremist are you?

As images from New Orleans have reached the rest of the world, offers of assistance have come from many countries, including some of the poorest nations on Earth, such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Venezuela offered a financial contribution to the Red Cross and offered to sell discounted gasoline through its Citgo stations to areas affected by the hurricane. The cash donation was accepted but the offer of discounted gasoline was refused by FEMA.

The Republic of Cuba, a Caribbean island nation with extensive hurricane experience, offered to send some 1,500 doctors to the Gulf coast. Because of US hostility toward Cuba, however, this offer was rejected by FEMA. At a time when the US may be facing a public health crisis beyond anything we have seen, these doctors could have been saving lives. Which kind of extremists control FEMA?

There's trouble a'brewin in the southland, folks. We don't need a war on terrorism; we need a war on poverty. We need a living wage movement. The land developers in the "new" New Orleans do not want the refugees back. Texas doesn't want them either. (Just ask Barbara Bush.) What will happen when the refugees start to return home as soon as the flood waters recede, even though government officials say they can't? Will the police or the National Guard be ordered to stop them at some razor-wire checkpoint? These are interesting questions -- food for thought, if you will -- that lead us back to our original question: Which kind of extremist are you? It's gut check time.

FEMA seeks media censorship

2005-09-09T10:22:00.000-04:00

The news reporting out of New Orleans has been better than we have been accustomed to. Some reporters have been getting in boats, going into neighborhoods, and have even helped save lives. Their cameras have shown us the bloated bodies bobbing in the toxic water, the joy on people's faces as they are rescued from their homes, and the sadness as a beloved pet is left behind. Even Geraldo Rivera broke down into tears at the convention center over the treatment of people stranded there without food or water and the lack of a response to assist them. This is the kind of reporting that shows us the stark, glaring truth and allows us to speak truth to power.

During the build-up to the Iraq war, this kind of reporting was AWOL. Reporters accepted the Bush administration's war justifications without dissent. No tough questions. No demands for proof. No pictures of war-torn bodies or flag-draped coffins. No complaints about censorship requirements for imbedded reporters. The government was able to control the war news to its liking by controlling the media. War looks very clean and sanitized -- and hard to oppose -- through the many filters of censorship.

In New Orleans, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is now asking the National Guard not to allow reporters onto boats and to prevent them from photographing dead bodies. FEMA claims it is to protect family members from seeing a loved one on TV, but the photographers have done a good job of documenting the horror with wide-angle and distance shots, not close-ups that would identify the victims on national television. FEMA is using this censorship as an excuse to restrict reporting, which, they hope, will result in less criticism of the Bush response to the disaster. Control the media; control the story.

It is very important to have witnesses in New Orleans, whether they are from the national media, local independent outlets, or individuals with video cameras. People need to document what is happening there at all stages of the disaster, right through the reconstruction process.

A "public works" president must help New Orleans

2005-09-01T12:27:00.000-04:00

George W. Bush, who slashed funds being used for New Orleans levee construction to help pay for the Iraq war, can do little to help the long-term humanitarian disaster created by Hurricane Katrina.

Imagine a city of 1.5 million people thrown into sudden unemployment and homelessness. Bush released federal disaster funds to help relief agencies with search and rescue, health, and security, but a much needed National Guard is stretched thin with 40 percent of the troops and most of their equipment in Iraq. Bush ordered seven Navy ships from Norfolk, Virginia, to Louisiana, a voyage that at best speed can take nearly a week.

In the short-term, time is critical. The human body needs water in three days or the vital organs begin to shut down. Today is the fourth day and the news networks keep interviewing federal officials who state the list of relief supplies that are "on the way." Yet from the pictures I have seen of crowds gathered in dry areas and people waiting to be rescued, I do not see anyone with water. Even in the field triage areas set up near the superdome. You would think there would be case after case of water there for people. You would think there would be portable toilets set up near these staging areas. You would think there would be water patrols or helicopters taking water to the neighborhoods while people are waiting to be rescued from rooftops. Drinking water should be available everywhere by now. There should be no more double-talk by bureaucrats.

And bussing people from New Orleans to Houston seems like an incredibly slow, wasteful process. Bus them to the airport and get them on planes. Get them on cruise ships. Stop wasting time negotiating with these companies. Bush could simply say he needs this equipment and he needs it now. This evacuation cannot be put off.

People in New Orleans who hamper the effort or who are caught looting guns, robbing others, or breaking into houses and pharmacies must be arrested. Stealing for food and survival is one thing, but stealing for fun or monetary gain hampers the relief effort to the extent that relief workers are afraid to go into the neighborhoods. This is where the National Guard could be of help if they were readily available and not off fighting an illegal war in Iraq.

What happens when the city is evacuated? How will people live and survive? Will there be 1.5 million refugees wandering the nation? Bush talks about getting people's lives back to normal. Does he mean back to the same impoverished conditions when they return?

If Bush wants to help New Orleans in the long-term, he can't do it as the war president, he must do it as the public works president -- even if the secret Skull and Bones Society revokes his membership and takes back his decoder ring.

First, the levees in New Orleans will have to be repaired and raised under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers. Then clean-up crews will have to be hired and whole neighborhoods likely must be torn down. More workers can then be hired to build modern, energy-efficient, sustainable housing. In the meantime, until public works employment is available, all displaced workers from the Gulf states must get federal relief aid.

This is not just about rebuilding houses, infrastructure, and creating short-term jobs. The people of New Orleans need a long-term stake in their city and in their future as they rebuild their lives. They do not need any more low-income housing projects, those disgusting symbols of poverty from the 1960s. The new New Orleans must be a showcase for the country and the world. For example, instead of using traditional shingles on new housing, use the new solar roofing designs that produce electricity. Thousands of grid-tied solar roofs will greatly reduce the city's dependence on fossil fuels and will eliminate electric bills for the residents.

It is fine for Bush to ask people to donate to the Red Cross to help with disaster relief, but he must repeal his tax cuts to the rich to pay for this massive public works program. Yes, the rich are going to have to get off their corporate welfare and pay for this. And pay for it they must.

Pat Robertson: TERRORIST

2005-08-25T23:24:00.000-04:00

When 700 Club president Pat Robertson advocated the assassination of democratically-elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Robertson became an advocate of terrorism.

There is no difference between an Islamic extremist advocating violence against U.S. citizens and a Christian extremist advocating violence against foreign nationals. Both fit the definition of a terrorist.

The reaction to Robertson's statement was quite interesting. Most working people just thought he was nuts, but the U.S. government said he was speaking as a "private citizen." Other Christian extremists jokingly downplayed his comments and focused on his age and his propensity to speak before he thinks. Still others called his comments "anti-Christian," yet chose to divert attention to Chavez, citing as fact that he committed "election fraud." (Egads! One wonders if they have ever heard of Florida or Ohio.)

Hugo Chavez was democratically elected several times and the opposition -- funded by the United States -- claimed election fraud. In 2002, Chavez underwent an intense recall vote under international observation, including former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center, yet Chavez was elected again with 58 percent of the vote. No evidence of fraud was found.

Chavez won because he appeals to Venezuela's poor workers and peasants. He promised to use a percentage or his nation's vast oil wealth to begin literacy programs, provide access to health care, find a workable land reform solution, and to make economic pacts with other Latin American nations. While Robertson was busy untying his tongue, Chavez was in Jamaica, where he signed an agreement with Prime Minister Percival Patterson.

The agreement increases the supply of Venezuelan oil through Petrocaribe, a Chavez oil program than will save Caribbean nations about $1 billion per year. Jamaica will get up to 22,000 barrels of discounted oil at a cost of $40 per barrel to be financed with low interest loans. This is an example of fair trade that the world could use more of. During an earlier stop in Havana, Cuba, Chavez spoke of increasing poverty in the United States as oil prices climb, and announced his government's desire to sell gasoline directly to poor, organized communities. Chavez said this would reduce costs by cutting out the middle men.

Pat Robertson is no crazier than Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice. Venezuela accounts for 10 percent of U.S. oil imports and the Bush administration is not happy about a renegade leader using oil profits for human needs. This sets a bad example in the world. It makes the rest of the greedy bastards look like the greedy bastards they are.

Now, what to do about Robertson? He was speaking on the 700 club, not at home on his front porch. He was speaking as a Christian broadcaster, not as a private citizen, and the FCC has control over his broadcast license. Everyone should demand that ABC pull his show off the air and that the FCC revoke his license. The next step is to go after his advertisers and let them know they have a terrorist on their payroll.

Because Robertson advocated the violent death of the president of a sovereign nation, the Dept. of Homeland Security also needs to investigate his statement to determine if terrorism charges should be filed against him. According to my dictionary, he is a terrorist.

The Anti-war movement grows in Crawford, Texas

2005-08-11T07:40:00.000-04:00

Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq, is holding vigil outside the Bush compound near Crawford, Texas. She wants to ask him why her son had to die for a lie. And other mothers who lost children in Iraq are joining her. There were no WMD. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was an elaborate hoax foisted upon the world by Bush and Blair.

While Sheehan and the anti-war movement in Crawford, Texas, await scant media coverage, the corporate media focus on sports, entertainment, celebrity news, and, of course, on crime stories. Our sons and daughters are dying in Iraq, yet we go on with our lives as if there were no war.

Consumers are shopping and buying. The smell of cotton candy and popcorn permeate the air at county fairs. NASCAR is in full swing. The NFL preseason is beginning. Wolf Blitzer is talking his usual blather and Bill O'Reilly wouldn't know the truth if it crawled up his ass. Christians trot off to church every Sunday, mistakenly believing that Bush is one of them.

I heard a woman on a C-SPAN call-in show say that she did not want the war in her living room. This is a post-Vietnam mantra repeated by right-wing pundits who blame the media for turning public opinion against the war. The media did its job during Vietnam and brought us the stories -- gore and all -- so we could see at least a glimpse of what was happening there. And yes, thankfully, public opinion had a lot to do with ending the Vietnam war -- another war in which we should never have become involved.

More than 1800 families in the US have made the same sacrifice that Cindy Sheehan has. More than 10,000 Iraqi families have made similar sacrifices. Yet here we are going about life as usual without having to think about the war. We are disaffected by it except when the media manipulates us like puppets. Thank you, Cindy, for reminding us that there is work to be done to bring the troops home safely and to make sure Bush doesn't get us involved in another bloody scheme. For more information or to write to Cindy, visit http://www.meetwithcindy.org

Anti-semitism vs. civil criticism

2005-06-20T00:57:00.000-04:00

Staunch defenders of Israel have created an interesting defense strategy so that critics of the Israeli government cannot speak against it without being accused of "anti-semitism."

"Anti-semitism," by definition, means prejudice against Jews. This definition is very straightforward and clear. It does not say anything about the Israeli government, which, like the United States government, is a civil order. When I criticize the brutal actions of the Israeli government, my many Jewish friends know that I mean no harm or criticism or prejudice toward them. They know I support the Israeli peace and justice movement and that my many criticisms of Israel are directed toward the Sharon government and its regional policies. I am practicing civil criticism. Same as I do here in the USA.

The term "anti-semitism" is often used incorrectly as an umbrella term to cover civil criticisms of Israel. How convenient! When former CIA analyst Ray McGovern gave his testimony at the informal Downing Street Memo hearing, he spoke briefly about Israel and recalled how he once suggested to his CIA boss that Israel may have financed 9/11, after which his boss called him anti-semitic for making that suggestion. Washington Post hack Dana Milbank used this off-subject remark to try to discredit McGovern's otherwise credible statement regarding the subject of the hearing -- the Downing Street Memo.

McGovern was in no way demonstrating prejudice toward Jews. He was making a comment of civil criticism that other intellectuals have made about 9/11 conspiracy theories involving the Israeli government. McGovern's only mistake was that he spoke off-topic on a hot-button issue and gave the critics an opening for a personal attack -- and his best defense now will be the dictionary. The worst thing he can do is to cave in to his critics or back down from his statement.

Personally, until convincing new evidence comes to light -- perhaps through a new independent 9/11 commission -- I still think Osama bin Laden and Saudi Arabia were involved in the planning and financing of 9/11, but McGovern is entitled to his opinion and he may have had access to secret information not available to ordinary citizens. There are a number of theories regarding Israel, including McGovern's, that a Google search can lead you to, but I just do not see the documentary proof at this point. Israel is already a chief U.S. ally and a heavily armed state -- perhaps even with nuclear weapons -- that can quickly respond to any emerging nuclear, chemical, or biological threat from its Arab neighbors without outside assistance. We owe it to ourselves to keep fighting for an independent 9/11 investigation. The Bush commission may have been bipartisan, but it was not independent, and the results turned into a whitewash and a cover-up of the truth.

From Downing Street to Deep Throat

2005-06-03T12:28:00.000-04:00

The Downing Street memo has received scant coverage in the U.S. media since its May 1 release, yet the criminal implications for a sitting president make Watergate seem like a school-boy prank by comparison.

The Downing Street memo is the official minutes of an August 2002 meeting between British PM Tony Blair, members of British intelligence MI-6 and various members of the Bush administration. The memo reveals that the Bush administration fixed the facts to shape its Iraq policy before going to war and in so doing deceived Congress and the American people. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, nearly 1700 GIs have died, and thousands of brave, dutiful troops have been wounded or permanently maimed as a result of this horrific lie foisted upon the public by the Bush administration.

More than a month has passed since the memo has been released and few media outlets have mentioned it, let alone investigated it. Could it be that they are protecting the president?

Now, of course, we have Mark Felt, the notorious "Deep Throat," the person who confirmed the validity of information for Woodward and Bernstein after the Watergate break-ins (a small part of a much larger Counter Intelligence Program -- COINTELPRO -- against a number of progressive organizations, political parties and antiwar groups). Mark Felt was very much a part of COINTELPRO. He was convicted, and later pardoned by President Reagan, for illegal domestic spying on the antiwar Weather Underground. Also during the 1970s, Felt directed the violent FBI campaign against the American Indian Movement during the Wounded Knee standoff in 1975, after which Leonard Peltier was framed and imprisoned for the murder of two FBI agents even though the FBI has since admitted it does not know who actually killed the agents. (If anyone can provide more info. on Felt's relationship with AIM during this period, please email me or respond to this article.)

The media are portraying Felt as either a hero or a goat for his role as a whistleblower during the Watergate affair. Some commentators go so far as to say that Felt "brought Nixon down," when, if fact, it was Nixon's own criminal activities that brought him down, not Felt. There has been little mention of the illegal spying and wiretapping that the FBI was involved in during that period or what lessons we can learn today as the PATRIOT ACT takes over where COINTELPRO left off. If Felt is deserving of recognition -- and I believe he does deserve credit for speaking with the press, even if he just confirmed information as opposed to providing it -- maybe his recent "coming out" will spark more discussion of our constitutional rights and will inspire others in the Bush administration to grow a spine and speak truth to power. That should be some consolation for his family.

Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!

2005-05-16T15:44:00.000-04:00

A new campaign called a BUY-cott (the opposite of a boycott} is now under way to encourage motorists to buy their gas at Citgo stations.

Why Citgo, you ask?

Media critic and author Jeff Cohen explains: Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. Venezuela is the only top oil-producing country in the world with a president -- Hugo Chavez -- who was elected on a platform of using his country's oil revenue to benefit the poor by providing health care, literacy, education and subsidized food to the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn't have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That's why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And that is also why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.

Of course, Cohen continues, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUY-cott is for those of us who don't have a practical alternative to filling up our cars. So get your gas at Citgo and help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.

(To find one of the 14,000 Citgo gas stations near you copy and paste the following link into your browser: http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp

Jeff Cohen is an author and media critic (www.jeffcohen.org)

George W. Bush, you are under citizen's arrest!

2005-04-08T21:17:00.000-04:00

George W. Bush, you are under citizen's arrest! You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in an international court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, the International Court of Justice will appoint an attorney for you. Do you understand these rights?

George W. Bush, you are being charged with violating the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and with violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.N. Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and international law.

George W. Bush, you are being charged with committing the following heinous crimes against humanity:

1) Waging an unnecessary "first strike" war of aggression on and occupation of Iraq -- an independent and sovereign nation already ravaged by a 1990 invasion and 10 years of harsh economic sanctions -- resulting in the death and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of American GIs.

2) Condoning the use of cluster bombs, the use of depleted uranium artillery, and ordering direct attacks on civilians and civilian facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

3) Concealing factual information from the public, fabricating evidence, and lying to Congress, the United Nations, and to the American people about the reasons and rationale for invading Iraq.

4) Authorizing assassinations, executions, kidnappings, the illegal detention of individuals, and condoning the physical torture and psychological coercion of prisoners.

5) Using racial and religious profiling, domestic spying, and the secret arrest and imprisonment of individuals, who are being held without access to counsel, due process of law, or appellate relief.

6) Refusing to disclose the identities, locations, and charges against individuals who have been arrested, imprisoned, or detained indefinitely by the U.S. government in the United States.

7) Producing fabricated news reports to publicize your agenda and for paying newspaper columnists and television pundits to support your policies.

George W. Bush, these are serious charges. You are being charged as a war criminal for acts of genocide against innocent men, women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although you did not use Nazi gas chambers in your genocidal wars, you did use modern-day equivalents -- including cruise missiles, laser-guided missiles and cluster bombs -- to cause the indiscriminate death and disfigurement of your fellow human beings. Rather than call upon the world's help in apprehending Osama bin Laden and the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, you chose instead to use the attacks politically in order to secure two Caspian Sea oil pipeline routes through Afghanistan and Iraq that have been long-coveted by your closest friends and allies -- the Big Oil companies. (As you know, the third pipeline route is to go through Iran, a nation that you have also been threatening with "regime change.")

George W. Bush, it is my duty as a loyal citizen of the United States and supporter of the U.S. Constitution to place you under arrest. You, along with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell, are to be remanded in The Hague pending trial before the International Court of Justice.

The Media Whores

2005-03-16T16:50:00.000-05:00

We've all seen the pundits on local and national news programs, captivating us with their million-dollar smiles and their award-winning personalities. They are mostly white and mostly male and can be found on any television network, including the cable news channels. One thing they all have in common is that their news stories and commentaries could well have been written by the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency, a public relations firm, or a Hollywood entertainment writer.

They are the media whores.

Just as MSNBC seems slightly more palatable than the "fair and balanced" Fox News, some of the media whores seem more professional and believable than others, but all are bad for journalism. They do not ask the tough, probing questions that try to get at some semblance of truth and hold a politician's feet to the fire, no matter which party they represent; rather, their questions are shallow and mushy, completely lacking in political knowledge and context. Many times, their pale cheeks red, white and blue with patriotic pride, the media whores gush out in agreement with their sources. The effect of this is nauseating to the audience and the legitimacy of news suffers in the end.

Where are the stories that matter? Where are the stories that show us the devestating effects of globalization, malnutrition, hunger and disease? Where are the stories that show us the effects of homelessness, layoffs, factory closings, unemployment, poverty and high health care costs? Where are the stories that show us what other cultures are thinking and doing? Where are the stories that show us the reality of war, which includes tremendous human suffering, loss of limbs, blindness, decapitation and death? Where are the stories that show the world as it is and do not sugar-coat it or accept imposed government censorship?

Instead, we get Britney Spears. We get Michael Jackson. We get the feel-good chitter-chatter of Katie Couric. We get the lies of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. We get a half-hour of network news each evening, with serious, professional, believable anchors. We get "video news releases," propaganda pieces produced to look like news stories, yet designed to promote specific government policies and agendas. These segments are often aired on news programs without comment and without mentioning that they were produced by the White House or other government agencies.

We get Robert Novak, the columnist who on July 14, 2003, illegally revealed the identity of an active CIA operative, yet is still writing columns. We get Jeff Gannon -- aka, pornographer James Guckert -- a fake news reporter who obtained White House press credentials under a false name, sat in on dozens of White House press briefings, and asked softball questions that made the Republican administration look good.

We get "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" news coverage from our local "newscenter." We get up-to-the-minute weather reports from our local "stormcenter". We get all the latest sports scores. We get game shows, survivor shows, crime shows, sit-coms and soaps out the wazoo. We get commercial after commercial after commercial and now, even, the half-hour infomercial. But why didn't we know how angry Osama bin Laden was about our military bases in Saudi Arabia? Why didn't we know what President Bush knew long before Sept. 11 -- that terrorists were planning to use commercial planes as bombs?

After Sept. 11 -- as the Bush White House made its cartoonish war plans to "smoke evil-doers out of their holes" in Afghanistan -- the media whores aided this war policy without reporting or acknowledging any alternative courses of action or without investigating the historical root causes of the World Trade Center attack. The media whores have become propagandists for U.S. war policy and largely do not tolerate dissenting opinions. They have become whores for a government that supports "good" terrorism (when the U.S. does it) and condemns "bad" terrorism (when other nations do it).

Before the "preemptive" war on Iraq, the media whores swallowed each government lie about Iraq being an imminent threat to the U.S., possessing weapons of mass destruction, and supporting Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. No serious debate. No discussion about the 1983 handshake and meeting between Reagan's special envoy Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein, which took place after Hussien had used chemical weapons. No raised eyebrows. No probing questions. Only the smiles and personalities of these government lapdogs. Only flashy propaganda graphics and entertainment.

But why call them media "whores"? Isn't there a nicer term, a less offensive term? Well, sure, there are indeed nicer, less offensive terms that are used all the time in media criticism, but when television news anchors, commentators and correspondents sell the soul of ethical journalism for a salary, and thus deprive millions of citizens of the opportunity to see and hear independent news reporting, then "whore" is the most appropriate term under the circumstances. When media pundits suppress the facts about the causes and consequences of war, then "whore" is the most appropriate term. When paid media pundits would rather drool over the technology of the latest attack helicopter or "smart bomb" than to discuss civilian war casualties and GI deaths, then "whore" is an appropriate term for them.

It is not media objectivity -- as some claim -- that we need to be concerned about; it's background and context. Today's mass media cover only the present and they do not travel back in time and show old film to establish background and context for the viewer. For example, when George W. Bush says something outlandish that contradicts what he has previously said, the media rarely pull up the old film to expose his new words as a contradiction or an outright lie. They just show the new film and get pundit reactions to it. In the world of the media whores, the past does not exist. This is one of the chief ways that reality is manipulated and controlled by the media. Thankfully, the Daily Show with John Stewart takes the time to dig up the old film and show the audience what it is missing from mainstream news.

Why should citizens have to wait for the Daily Show or for an occasional call-in program on C-SPAN or wait for a documentary on WORLD LINK TV in order to become better informed? If our free press were really free, then the news providers would be practicing independent reporting. The airwaves belong to the public. Isn't it time the public ensures that the airwaves are used for the public good by denying license renewals to broadcasters who act as pimps for the messages of the Military/Industrial complex?

We need a diverse, independent media -- and we need it NOW!

Hands Off Social Security!

2005-02-10T07:02:00.000-05:00

Mass media reporting on the all-important Social Security debate is turning out to be mere stenography. The media, as usual, are reporting what Bush says about Social Security as though that were the truth. The media are not doing enough independent research to either substantiate or disprove Bush's claims. When Bush says that Social Security will be flat broke by 2042, this lie is presented as fact in news stories. As we all learned during the build-up to the Iraq war, if a lie is repeated often enough in the media, it becomes accepted as the truth.

Social Security is a well-run federal program. Millions of retirees, survivors and people with disabilities rely on Social Security. The Bush plan will result in benefit cuts for recipients who rely on it, yet brokerage firms will reap big, new profits from management fees and commissions. Besides, we already have individual retirement accounts in which people can invest: They are called IRAs.

We, as a society, have to think about the greater good. We cannot allow people to withdraw their portion out of the Social Security system and gamble with it in the stock market. If any changes are needed in Social Security, then the rich and super-rich should have to pay more into the system so it will be there for the working men and women whose lifetime of labor made them rich in the first place. They owe us that much.

The overthrow of the United States of America

2005-02-04T09:23:00.000-05:00

The United States of America has been successfully overthrown and the vast majority of citizens do not even realize it. This ignorance is a testament to the enormous influential mix of television news punditry and public relations. The formula is simple: Just repeat your message over and over in the mass media, denounce your critics as deranged and unpatriotic...and the meek will follow.

The new United States of America has nothing to do with the principles of freedom and democracy that the nation was founded upon. Rather, the new United States is all about unbridled imperialism, privatization and militarization. Public monies are being shifted from the public sector -- which funds education, food programs, jobs programs, health programs and Social Security -- to the private sector, which includes big business, military contractors and the stock market. In other words, the people's money is being withdrawn from social programs and deposited into the bank accounts of the rich and the super-rich. The people's money is thus being gambled away in the largest casino in the world -- Wall Street.

The United States is no longer a genuine republic, although it continues to identify itself as a republic. In reality, the new United States is a corporate monarchy governed by the principles of state socialism. George W. Bush, like his father and grandfather before him, is a state socialist who believes in Hitler's imperialist dream of a powerful corporate state where a limited government functions primarily as a servant of the rich and powerful corporations that own the means of production, fund the nation's elections and dictate its political decisions. (State socialism is not to be confused with democratic, or scientific, socialism, which holds that the people must own and control the means of production and that government must function first and always as a servant of the people.) Another word for state socialism is fascism.

With the overthrow of the United States, the horrific future world foretold in the works of George Orwell is now at our doorstep. The government has spy satellites that can focus on a license plate. It has facial recognition software. It has a computer system that can pick out key words in private telephone conversations and emails.

Under the Patriot Act, we allow the government to break into our houses and download our computer files under the guise of finding supposed "terrorists." We allow the government access to our library records so it knows who is reading what.

We routinely accept government explanations for world events without even asking questions to determine if the explanations are based on valid assertions. We allow our government to assert its right to imprison and torture foreign detainees as "enemy combatants" even though they have not been charged with any specific crime or act.

We allow our elections to be purchased by the rich and powerful while denying the poor and working class proper access to voting machines. We allow computerized voting that does not even print out a paper record in case a hand re-count is needed.

We allow our government to grant oil, chemical and mining companies access to public lands, where they extract the natural resources with little regard for the long-term environmental impact, water and air pollution, and global warming.

We allow our young soldiers to become occupiers and nation-builders in foreign lands, even though history has shown that such occupations inevitably fail as one oppressor is replaced by another.

So, the United States of America has been slowly and methodically overthrown by a small group of economic zealots who believe in unrestricted corporatism. Now what? What can citizens do to take our nation back from these bastards when our state and national legislators do not even realize that our republic has been replaced by a monarchy? Well, the first step to taking back is fighting back. To do that, we must defend our labor unions and progressive organizations as they become targeted for extinction by the Bush monarchy. We represent the majority of citizens and if we stick together and fight together, we will win together.

Our responsibility is immense. Our responsibility extends to all citizens of the world who look to us as a beacon of hope for human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and justice. It we fail, the world fails with us.

Open Letter to the Ford Motor Company

2005-02-02T16:20:00.000-05:00

William Clay Ford, Jr.
Board of Directors
Ford Motor Co.
P.O. Box 685
Dearborn MI 48126-0685

Dear Mr. Ford:

After reading disturbing reports that the Ford Motor Co. was planning to destroy the all-electric Rangers it produced for fleet and lease customers, I am pleased to hear that the company reversed its position. Although I drive a gasoline Ranger, I have heard nothing but good things from owners of the electric Rangers and I would certainly be interested in an all-electric Ranger myself.

With world oil reserves dwindling rapidly -- and some estimates predicting a supply of just 20 to 40 years at the present rate of consumption -- it makes sense from a business perspective to begin phasing-in both all-electric and fuel cell vehicles now. Unfortunately, the corporate mindset of today is to secure the world's remaining oil reserves, especially ANWR and the Caspian Sea area, for the U.S. market, even if this means the deaths of many thousands of people in Iraq, Iran, and other Middle Eastern and Southwestern Asia nations under one pretext or another. Oil profits will be very high in a seller's market as supply dwindles and demand increases, but we, as a society, need to get beyond the quest for profit and focus on the post-oil world. Now is the time to begin planning to ensure that the remaining oil is available for agriculture and other critical areas. Rather than consume all of the oil until the last drop, now is the time to bring all-electric and fuel cell vehicles to the mass market.

The Ford Motor Co. is in a position to either go along with the flow or to be bold and innovative. While hybrid vehicles like the Ford Escape are helpful, they do not break away from fossil fuels and represent a last-grasp effort to hold on to a bygone world. Hybrids may help to buy a little time, but the result will be the same: The world is running out of oil! The sooner that auto makers understand and accept this, the better for all of us.

The United States of America is on the wrong road and our national leaders are taking us right over a cliff. This is a tragic consequence of the drive for profit above all else, including common sense. It seems to me that the Ford Motor Co, would relish the idea of marketing a line of clean, quiet, efficient vehicles such as the all-electric Ranger. But I would implore you to not stop there.

Think. Create. Inspire. Maybe others will follow and the world will be a better place.

The Bush Coronation

2005-01-21T11:40:00.000-05:00

As the rich and righteous celebrated the coronation of King George II yesterday, thousands more lined the parade route and turned their backs on Bush as he and Laura drove by in their limousine. Large, yellow ImpeachBush.org banners were visible to television cameras all along the route and C-SPAN covered a portion of International Answer's antiwar rally live until 3 p.m.

Earlier, several members of the antiwar group Code Pink were arrested for merely unfurling banners during the "no dissent allowed" swearing-in ceremony. Most were released shortly after being arrested while others, including Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin, were held in custody longer.

As Bush was being solemnly sworn in, 49 percent of registered voters around the the nation were also solemnly swearing to themselves, but if there is any good news in all of this, it is that we are now past the halfway point of the Bush reign. During the next four years, of course, Bush plans to shift even more public monies from the public sector to the private sector by attempting to privatize Social Security. And he no doubt plans to invade other sovereign nations under one false pretext or another, perhaps with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at his side if her nomination is confirmed by the Senate. Meanwhile, the Republican neocons will be quietly grooming brother Jeb Bush to be the next presidential candidate, unless the U.S. Constitution is amended to permit a third term for King George II. These bastards have no shame and no allegiance to anyone or anything but the almighty dollar.

Demonstrations are fine, but the most powerful weapon that citizens have over the corporate oligarchy and the entire military/industrial/media complex is the "General Strike." A general strike is a pre-planned work stoppage that causes a virtual shutdown of all major factories, transportation routes, mines, mills, shopping centers, banks, and so forth, with the sole purpose of effecting a change in government policy. Hit 'em where it hurts: their wallets. A general strike is a rarity because it is difficult to organize and requires a substantial number of participants to be effective. It is safe to say that many millions of people would have to be feeling quite desperate before they would participate, so economic conditions would have to degrade substantially before a general strike could become a political weapon.

Until then, demonstrations and civil disobedience are the best political tools we have to work with. The next major demonstration will take place on March 19, 2005, the second anniversary of Bush's Shock and Awe occupation of Iraq. Citizens will be organizing marches and other events throughout the country, so consult your favorite alternative media source for more information on a location near you. (Many locations will be listed on sites like http://www.antiwar.com/antiwar-actions.htm , http://www.answercoalition.org , and http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.php )

Crime Scene Investigation: Iraq

2004-11-17T06:25:00.000-05:00

Fans of the TV series "Crime Scene Investigation" understand the importance of scientific evidence in solving crimes. Witness statements, along with forensic evidence found at the crime scene, are used to build a case against one or more suspects and to eliminate others as possible suspects.

The most important crime scene in the world today is Iraq, where the United States launched a war of occupation against a sovereign nation in violation of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. According to an October 2004 study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the onset of the war in March 2003. The study, which does not include the more recent fatalities in Falluja, found that 95 percent of the 100,000 civilian deaths are due to air strikes and artillery.

The prime suspects in this illegal war of occupation are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz. Justice will not be served until these perps are escorted out of their offices in handcuffs, leg irons and belly chains to stand trial before the World Court. The suspects, in order to build their case for a unilateral, preemptive war in Iraq, lied to Congress and the American people. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It did not have long-range missiles. It had no re-constituted nuclear weapons program, no chemical weapons factories, no mobile labs or stockpiles of chemical weapons. The United Nations inspections had been working just fine and there was no need to go to war.

The suspects used repetition in the mass media to whip up a climate of fear among the American people. They built their case for war on old intelligence, fabricated intelligence, artist renditions of non-existent mobile labs, false speculation about aluminum tubes, and -- worst of all -- they conjured up images of nuclear clouds in order to scare the American people into supporting the war. The suspects said the war would be a vital part of some vague, undefined "war on terrorism" and would bring freedom, democracy and liberation to the Iraqi people.

But war is the ultimate form of terrorism and, while we can speak of the 100,000 dead Iraqis and the 1,200 dead American GIs, the real crime scene in Iraq can best be seen in the living wounded. The dead are quickly buried and out of our sight, but the wounded show the constant reminders of what happens when shards of metal rip through human flesh. We can see the missing eyes, ears and limbs. We can see the half-faces. We can see the burn scars, the twitching. We can see urine flowing through the catheter tubing. We can see the crutches and wheelchairs. And, of course, some illnesses -- such as those caused by depleted uranium weapons -- may not begin showing up for months or even years after exposure.

After all of the evidence is logged in, the present death, destruction, and torture in Iraq is far greater than the past crimes against humanity committed by Saddam Hussein, and the Iraq war may one day rival the horror of the Jewish holocaust. The world desperately needs a mass movement to prosecute the criminal perpetrators of the war and to bring the troops home now!

The results are in: Bush wins

2004-11-03T07:59:00.000-05:00

It appears that USA voters have chosen the warmongering buffoon over the windsurfing intellectual.

Ralph Nader was right all along. It should come as no surprise to progressives that Kerry failed to differentiate himself politically from Bush or to go after Bush. In the months leading up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration lied to the American people and to Congress about the reasons for going to war. Bush committed impeachable acts, yet Kerry failed to grow a spine and go after him on this. Kerry correctly said that Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time, but he -- like Bush -- said that the troops must "stay the course" and somehow "win" the occupation of Iraq. More than 1,100 US troops and 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of Bush's illegal war, yet Kerry -- again, like Bush -- had no definitive plan or timeline to bring the troops home.

Another fatal mistake that Kerry made was his failure to promote single payer health care for all Americans. People are sick and tired of what passes for a health care system in this country, yet Kerry did not capitalize on this sentiment. Instead, he offered a confusing mish-mash of proposals that voters could not understand or get behind.

Instead of going on the offensive with a clear platform that the majority of Americans could relate to and get behind, Kerry let Bush define the media debate. Bush did not need to have a platform. All he had to do was keep "on-message" by labeling Kerry as inconsistent and weak. Bush and Cheney forced Kerry to be on the defensive, always having to refute charges that he would compromise the nation's security and increase taxes on small businesses.

I will be surprised if the United States of America survives the next four years of a Bush presidency. Bush voters, concerned mostly with themselves and their pocketbooks, have just given a death sentence to untold numbers of young men and women who will be called off to fight in new wars, perhaps in Syria or Iran for starters. Bush voters have just said that it is OK to ignore the effects of global warming, to let American jobs go overseas, and to roll back civil liberties. The worst president in history now has four more years to wreak havoc upon the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

All that progressives can do now is keep fighting and step up the pressure on Congress to deny Bush any free passes. Personally, I will be supporting the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. See http://www.votetoimpeach.org

What to do on November 3rd

2004-11-01T10:05:00.000-05:00

On November 3, 2004, all citizens who care about democracy in the United States must get to work for electoral reform. The United States, with its two-party monopoly on political discourse and its disproportional representation, has one of the most backward, antiquated democracies in the industrialized world.

The first step in electoral reform is voter registration. This should be a simple, convenient process. All states must pass same-day registration laws so that citizens are able to register and vote on election day.

Second, states must remove all ballot access obstructions -- such as signature gathering and percentage systems -- for third parties. The present system is set up by the Democratic and Republican parties to keep third parties out of the electoral process, but smaller parties should be valued and welcomed as part of the democratic process.

Third, abolish the electoral college so that citizens can directly decide, by popular vote, who our president and vice president will be. House Joint Resolution 109, sponsored by Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., would add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution eliminating the electoral college.

Fourth, develop a system for instant run-off voting. This system is also known as "direct democracy." Citizens will vote for their first three choices in order of preference. The City of San Francisco is using an instant run-off system in 2004, so the success or failure of this experiment will do much to help us prepare for a national instant run-off election.

Fifth, stop all paid political advertising and require broadcasters to devote free air time for public forums and candidate debates. This requirement should be tied to the FCC license renewal process. The airwaves are not owned by the broadcasters, but by the public. Broadcasters lease the airwaves from us with the stipulation that they will serve the public interest. Paid advertisements have become nothing but negative personal attack ads, whereas debates and candidate forums offer more thoughtful discussions about real issues.

Sixth, the election season can be shortened considerably if the statements and platforms of all candidates are published and distributed free to every voter. This, along with televised debates and candidate forums, is a much better use of federal election funds.

These suggestions for electoral reform are merely suggestions off the top of my head and do not represent a final list of needed reforms, but I see these as the most crucial now. Proportional representation also needs to be addressed so that women and minorities are fairly represented in government. Also, voting machines need to be capable of instant run-off voting and counting proportional votes and we need to rethnk the wisdom of excluding felons and former felons from active participation in the electoral process. Citizenship and voting could be an important and inexpensive rehabilitative program. Why exclude them?

Readers should begin the process of electoral reform in their own states by urging their representatives to support HR 109 and by working with state legislators to overturn ballot access obstructions and provide for same-day voter registration.

Criticism is the right and duty of citizenship

2004-10-20T09:48:00.000-04:00

With the general election less than two weeks away, I find it unbelievable that Republicans still tolerate Bush's lies. Even those who claim to have "Christian values" turn a blind eye to his lies and convince themselves that he has their best interests at heart, that he can keep them safe from terrorism.

But a Bush victory in November would give the president a mandate to continue his policy of preemptive war, to continue corporate welfare through tax cuts, to further erode the First Amendment rights of individuals, to privatize Social Security, and to cut even more funding from social services. In spite of his campaign promises to the contrary, we can expect an attempt to, slowly but surely, reinstitute the military draft. We can also expect an attempt to alter the Twenty-Second Amendment (term limits for the presidency) so that he may run again in 2008. A continuation of Bush's policies will lead to a rapid erosion of the American standard of living. Unemployment will increase while wages and access to health care and social programs decrease.

Like his father and grandfather before him, George W. Bush believes in an imperial world view. Bush sees the corporation -- not the collection of individuals within a nation-state -- as the dominant power in the world. Bush wants corporations to have the unrestrained power to make money without having to worry about pesky environmental regulations, labor union contracts, or taxes cutting into their profits. This is what Bush means when he mentions the word "freedom." He is not talking about individual freedom, but corporate freedom. Bush wants to use preemptive war -- which may soon include the use of nuclear weapons -- in order to secure oil fields and pipeline routes for corporations. Never mind the turmoil and misery he creates. Just forbid the media to show the gruesome disfigurement that bullets and bombs leave on human flesh. Just forbid the media to show the body bags and caskets returning home. Just keep the television images clean and sanitized and convince people that you are fighting for some "higher purpose." And, of course, just stifle dissent by calling the dissenters "unpatriotic."

American GIs played a major role in bringing the troops home from Vietnam and similar actions are needed now against the unjust war in Iraq. War is the ultimate form of terrorism and there is no other way to look at it. In the days before the U.S. invasion and occupation, the Iraqi people were nervously shopping at open-air markets while children played nearby. Like all of us, they were hopeful that common sense would prevail and war would be avoided. Today, in an occupied Iraq, there is nothing to smile about. While families are being torn apart on all sides of the war, at least we Americans can sleep at night knowing that the Iraqi oil fields are safe. Never mind the death and destruction. Never mind that acts of terrorism will increase against us. At least the Oil Barons are making record profits!

Bush supporters say that open criticism of the Iraq war aids the enemy and hurts troop morale. But they fail to understand that criticism of elected leaders and their policies is the right and duty of U.S. citizenship. Blind deference to those in power is not only undemocratic but ignorant. GIs understand this. Unfortunately, the Bush loyalists don't.

Coral Gables Presidential Debate

2004-10-01T01:40:00.000-04:00

The real losers in last night's debate were the American people. If you believe in the two-party system, sure, Kerry gained strength as a rich intellectual and Bush came off as a spoiled (some would say retarded) child of the Bush crime dynasty. We would have been better served by a larger field of candidates. At the very least, Ralph Nader should have been included in the debate in order to widen the area of discussion beyond two-party politics.

I am not a Kerry supporter, but I will likely be a Kerry voter because I have had all I can stand of Bush. Because Kerry is more intelligent, there is a better chance that he will be more reasonable. He did say that his goal is to build international alliances rather than take a unilateral approach and I do agree with this. Of course, we all know that corporate America makes the real decisions and that they want a president who can best advance their interests and increase their profits.

The after-debate spin room was a disgusting display of politicking, nitpicking and outright lying about what we had all just witnessed. The Bush spinsters could hardly contain their anger through their phony smiles as they continued to pound away at Kerry as a "flip-flopper." They know that repetition works. It does not matter what is true: Just repeat something often enough and it will seem as though it were true. I don't have to remind anyone of the repetitive themes the Bush administration used to build its case for war in Iraq. They were all lies, but the mass media repeated them over and over without challenging them. The supposed "imminent threat" of Saddam Hussein was based on old intelligence and false intelligence. CIA analysts, United Nations weapons inspectors, and anyone else who worked on Iraq issues, knew that the Bush administration was lying. Kerry should have been more forceful in calling a lie a lie.