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Re: COUP d' ETAT IN WASHINGTON
by Tim Jones
26 June 2003 17:48 UTC
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I've been reading the posts on this list for some time picking up and passing on informative bits of news and opinion.
Thank you!

I think "cowardly" Americans aren't so much just plain chicken to speak up as brainwashed and whipped into fear, hatred and the consequent nationalistic fervor by the corporate right wing media. Seek out the financial sources for the distribution of information and you'll see that the same corporations buying government in this country also influence the news of the day to promote their expansionist agenda. And the Republican majority FCC is merely trying to deregulate the degree of government sponsored propaganda.

Perhaps you just saw on CNN George Bush in Sacramento playing mouthpiece for the biotech industry. The president of the United States is a shill for Monsanto Corporation. And Halliburton, etc, etc. The electoral process in this country is driven by money, not principle. The majority in Congress and the media aren't cowards, they're in on the corruption. For example
look at how environmental law is being rolled back for the sake of industry to the detriment of human health

The United States has been taken over by the military industrial complex. Endless war is the plan and corporate profit is the goal.

There may be some hope out of this ever widening quagmire if 1) the Republican business/government juggernaut dooms itself through its own excesses, 2) and the imminent energy crisis can't be mitigated, 3) and the Dems get their act together and promote a populist agenda. 4) ....or terrorists pull off a really big hit.

Most likely all this is so much fluff as the world peak in energy production is reached this decade and economies crash because energy resources become unavailable. We're already at war about it. And then there's already the natural gas crisis in the United States. There are so many wild cards in the deck that the future's a toss up. That is to say that the US is at war to sustain its energy supply. The outcome of war isn't predictable at all.

As for China.... go down to the Ace hardware store in your neighborhood and try to find something NOT made in China. China's going to be encircled by US aircraft carriers and armies running out of gas if the Bush / PNAC / WTO -Pentagon megalomaniacs
stay in power.

IMHO of course.

Tim Jones


Monday, Jun. 30, 2003
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460213,00.html>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460213,00.html
I Want My Al TV

Liberals look to break the conservative stranglehold on talk radio and TV. But will anyone tune in?
By KAREN TUMULTY

With its ornate chandelier, Italian tile floor and antique gilded mirror, the little salon tucked just off the Senate floor looks like a spot designed for polite conversation. But the dialogue was anything but polite when media magnate Rupert Murdoch lunched there in early June with Democratic Senators. The session was supposed to be a private discussion of the effects that looser media-ownership rules would have on consolidation and competition. Instead, the Democrats spent an hour venting about Murdoch's enormously successful Fox News Channel. They complained that the cable network, whose slogan is "fair and balanced," shuts out and even mocks anything but right-wing views. California's Barbara Boxer told Murdoch his network's only balance is between the right and the far right, and suggested a new tag line: "Fox News: the right slant."

With Fox's comfortable dominance in the high-pitched world of cable, it's easy to forget that in the mid-1980s it was the right that felt abused and ignored on the airwaves. In 1985, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms launched a campaign to get 1 million conservatives to buy 20 shares of stock in CBS each and "become Dan Rather's boss." Conservatives still argue - garnering huge and sympathetic audiences in the process - that the traditional media giants lean left. But these days, that familiar spiel is done more for rhetorical effect. Conservatives know their power in talk radio, cable television and publishing, and they exult in it. Democratic Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota recently commissioned a study of a week's worth of programming by the nation's 44 top-rated radio stations and found they broadcast 312 hours of conservative talk programming, compared with 5 hours of liberal shows. And with conservative authors staked out atop the nonfiction best-seller lists, the country's two largest publishers, Random House and Penguin Group, have added conservative imprints to their roster.

All these outlets combined still reach only a smallish slice of the population, but it's a motivated and committed slice - that all-important group of people who actually vote. They're the ones who helped put the Republicans in power in the White House and in both houses of Congress. That's why Democrats are increasingly eager to find a microphone of their own. As first reported by TIME's website last week, former Vice President Al Gore has been exploring the idea of creating a cable-television network, as well as helping Chicago venture capitalists Sheldon and Anita Drobny start a liberal talk-radio network.

The initial challenge is not political but economic. Gore and Friends have to convince potential backers that there's a market. Said a Hollywood source familiar with Gore's original TV proposal: "When it first came around, people were, like, 'How is this thing going to make money?' These are Democrats, but they're business people first." That's why Gore and his partner Joel Hyatt, who co-founded a nationwide chain of storefront legal clinics, have refined their proposal to be less ideological and more entertaining. It would not be a traditional news network, says a person familiar with their plan, but "something totally different in concept and format." Both Gore and Hyatt declined to be interviewed.

Whether there really is a market for entertaining liberal media is a question mark. A few liberals have tried to make a go of talk radio and television, but none have developed anything close to the following of radio's Rush Limbaugh and Fox's Bill O'Reilly. Perhaps it's because liberals are too earnest. But even as gifted a gabber as former New York Governor Mario Cuomo failed as a talk-show host because his program was, in a word, boring.

Many Democrats are convinced, however, that if someone can build a network to showcase their point of view, the ratings will come. As evidence of an appetite for liberal media, they point to the fact that Hillary Clinton's just-released memoir is on track to becoming the fastest-selling nonfiction work of all time.

But others argue that all the hand wringing over the lack of a liberal alternative to conservative media misses the left's real problem: a lack of new and coherent ideas. That's why key figures from the Clinton White House, led by former chief of staff John Podesta, are launching a new liberal think tank to rival such conservative intellectual bastions as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

It's all part of what Hillary Clinton might call a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. But there's a long way to go. It took conservatives 30 years - from Barry Goldwater's call to action in 1964, to Newt Gingrich's takeover of the House in 1994--to put all the pieces in place. In the meantime, Rupert Murdoch is not likely to be accepting any more lunch invitations from the Democrats.

Copyright © 2003 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460213,00.html>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460213,00.html


At 2:41 PM +0800 06/26/2003, btws549 wrote:
I did think about the part on the encirclement of China, and just wondering if the Chinese would know what to do about this geopolitical strategy by the Bush administration. It is so obvious, but the mainstream press or academic circle seem to be oblivious to this situation.

One question about all the alleged cowardly behaviours of the Congress and the Media in the states, since the US is the democracy it is, why can't they speak up? Is it because of nationalism, or is it because all the financial strings and political powers are vested in this Presidency?
Nationalism is quite a hard argument to subsantiate, as the corporatist culture with the migrant society in the US would make it difficult to really develop such strong nationalist characteristics. Political power in the Executive can, in theory, be curbed by the Congress, despite its limitations. But what we're seeing are the most outright violations ever known, at least to me, by any American administration, and the Congress is so helpless about it! Vested interests in going along the lines of the administration? Or just plain cowardice in challenging a wartime President?
Main question is, are they really cowed in because of these, or are there any other reasons? I find it hard to understand their behaviour.

Justin

--
<http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>


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